The Ending of The Amber Spyglass
Negative View of the Ending
Posted by Will on 22:41:50 3/14/2001 from 131.210.251.34:
I thnk the amber spyglass is the best book so far, though the ending was pretty bad. What do you guys think?
Posted by Jopari on 16:41:38 5/24/2001 from 194.176.222.97:
: I thnk the amber spyglass is the best book so far, though
: the ending was pretty bad. What do you guys think?
I think it's time to get over the end. But it's fun to speculate about the fate of the worlds involved.
The world of Cittagazze returns to its pre-knife state. A nice place to live.
The world of the Mulefa also returns to its previous state. A good place to be a ghost.
In Lyra's world, the Church loses its power base. Within a generation or so it comes more closely to resemble our secular world. Perhaps they also discover a safer means of air travel - for example, hot air is much less flammable than hydrogen and a lot of Zeppelins got destroyed in HDM...
Our world - now that's interesting. Perhaps the sciences - or their use/abuse by business - become less important. But what effect would that have? Do we all become New Age flower children? Any ideas?
*grin* Y'know, I've come to believe that a mark of HDM's greatness is the furor over its ending.
I happen to like the bittersweet tone that Pullman established, but I can understand how the lack of closure disturbed some people.
Posted by Kirjava on 21:25:19 3/16/2001 from 62.7.95.82:
Actually, I like the ending too. IMO, I wanted a Will/ Lyra pairing for ages, but when you want a pairing so much and then you finally get it, everything becomes, well, boring. (Like in Frasier- Daphne and Niles..) So the ending turned out to be pretty good.
My personal favourite (book) was The Subtle Knife.
Posted by Adobe Scribe on 3:37:37 3/19/2001 from 63.15.255.33:
: My personal favourite (book) was The Subtle Knife.
You know, I'm inclined to agree with you. The Golden Compass had some wonderfully fantastical elements, and The Amber Spyglass had such depth and resonance, but I think I liked The Subtle Knife best of all.
It was so...gritty, and desperate. The dangers confronted in the first and last books are relatively bizarre and therefore safely distant, while the stuff that Will goes through protecting his mother in Oxford and fighting off vengeful children in Cittagazze is just...painfully realistic, I guess. It's so neat to see Lyra from another perspective, and the contrast between Will and Lyra when they first meet is so very, very striking.
*shrug* I loved it, what can I say?
Posted by Andrew on 5:21:19 4/11/2001 from 209.102.67.187:
I agree with you, Adobe. The ending was the only thing it could have been, if you think about it. To have the ending by different (Yay! Let's have a magical solution where Lyra and Will get to live happily ever after...) would be to cheapen the book as a whole. After all, this kind of tragic, bittersweet ending is what great books are made of. (Romeo and Juliet would be one, although it is, technically, a play). Personally, I'd like nothing more than to have a fourth book in which everything turns out all right, but again, it would undermine everything the third book did. Just my opinion...
Posted by Jazzie on 7:23:37 3/25/2001 from 208.5.140.102:
I just finished reading "His Dark Materials" and it may be the best fantasy trilogy I've EVER read, which would be saying quite a lot. There were some incredibly striking scenes, too, especially in "The Amber Spyglass..." I was particularly struck by the Balthamos/Baruch relationship, too - how bittersweet!
I loved these books mostly because, though they were fantasy, Pullman really had something more to say in them than just "this is a story and this is what happenend." He's actually trying to say something and raise some tough questions that others are too afraid to ask. I admire that.
By the way, since it seems to be a topic of interest here, I'd just like to say that I thought the ending to the books was as it should have been. Everything doesn't come wrapped up all nice in a bright gold ribbon - least of all a book like this one... it would have betrayed the whole purpose.
Posted by Arcian on 0:04:02 4/17/2001 from 161.184.200.227:
Is it too late to launch into the "long time reader, first time writer" bit?
Posted by Lumbher on 23:57:53 5/6/2001 from 62.174.136.220:
I agree that the end is really the end that best suits the story, but... well, who needs to read for finding sadness?, from Will and Lyra i expected otherwise. I really admire Mr. Pullman but i think i'll never forgive him for that.
(As you can guess i'm not english-speaker, so forgive me my mistakes)
Posted by Ashley on 16:51:30 6/14/2001 from 205.188.196.52:
Posted by Karen on 3:04:13 6/15/2001 from 63.253.54.187:
I'm glad they discovered what was obvious to the reader since they first met- that they loved each other. I completely agree with your opinion on that, and think that it added a whole new prospect to the story: After coming through all these physical dangers, they still had to overcome perhaps the greatest challenge of them all- learning to live without the one thing that is most valuable to them, but at the same time knowing it was because they loved each other so deeply that they had to separate. (Am I seeing something that isn't really there? I'm just...trying to get my opinion out on it...)
Like you said, things don't always turn out the way we want them to. I think that by ending it in the way he did, Pullman really brought the reader back to the real world...whatever that may be.
Okay...enough deep thinking for me...hope you've enjoyed it. :)
Posted by Nick on 21:13:35 6/20/2001 from 172.191.53.59:
::spoilers, btw::
Posted by Jo on 19:01:43 6/23/2001 from 64.20.3.124:
Posted by Guildwick on 9:52:22 6/24/2001 from 195.36.218.35:
Posted by Jo on 20:44:28 6/24/2001 from 64.111.16.2:
Posted by Nick on 23:43:15 6/23/2001 from 195.93.32.192:
Yes, I know. I think the Lyra one is more likely- even probable. But I think the best Pullman can do is leave them alone now...
Oh, incidentally... the last couple of hours I watched 'The Devil's Advocate' ...it was a little mindless, but there are some corkers: like what the Devil calls himself... and the last hour was intense. And no, I'm not being random: it relates quite cleverly to Genesis and Milton.
Again, as I thought, Dust alone isn't destroyed by links between worlds; indirectly, I suppose, Dæmons loose their health when in someone else's world- they're linked to the Dust in their homeworld, I think.
True, Dust is created by conscious beings, but dæmons loose health when not in thier own worlds. Pullman leaves no loopholes: I think he's pretty clever with that- by living together, eventually they'd kill each other.
Remember Xaphania says there's a way of traveling between worlds without windows, (p494 again) like angels, like the way John Parry did. He says, "It uses the faculty of what you call imagination... (but) nothing like pretend. Pretending is easy. This way is hard, but much truer." Will has to learn it over a whole lifetime, like Lyra with the Alethiometer.
What was one of the hard things- and Pullman specifically says it's all going to be hard- is for Will and Lyra to be happy in their own worlds without each other. I think they manage it, though.
Posted by NoFate on 4:32:32 10/18/2001 from 62.104.206.66:
Posted by Sophie on 23:34:40 10/18/2001 from 195.92.168.163:
Posted by Adobe on 15:14:09 10/18/2001 from 63.15.253.187:
Well, everyone finds their own personal meaning and interpretation in the ending, and I'd like to think that, if nothing else, that kind of reflection underscores what a great ending it is. You can't just put down the book and skip onward - it demands reflection and argument and meditation. Mark of great literature, that.
My own personal peace with the ending comes from this: They are children becoming adults. Children live in a womb of comfort and restriction - they never know true sacrfice, just like they never know true freedom, or true love, or the deeper levels of human emotion. Whereas adults are constantly forced to make sacrifice, either to suffer hardship for the sake of the individual (killing the Authority) or to give things up for the greater social good (closing the windows).
The book - the whole series - is about a willing rise above the state of graceful, happy innocents. Innocents don't know pain, they don't know sacrifice, but they don't know love either. The price for Will and Lyra's self-awareness is inevitable - Pullman simply choose to illustrate this physically. On some levels, this series works as an allegory, and the ending is perfectly in tune with that.
Posted by Lord Axiom on 9:08:37 10/21/2001 from 209.148.195.114:
Emotion has to do with understanding, and understanding has nothing to do with age.
Posted by Rachel on 13:48:52 10/21/2001 from 66.19.65.152:
Very few people - in fact, nobody in my experience or the experience of any of my friends - was fully emotionally mature at 14.
Perhaps you are capable of love at a young age, but your emotions change and deepen and so does the definition of love. The blind unthinking adoration of a young child towards those who provide for them is very different from a preteen's first crush is very different from a teenager's passionate, two-year romance is very different from a mutual commitment to stay together through thick and thin by two mature adults with all of their baggage taken care of. Yet all of these emotions are considered "love." It's only when we realize that we all have true working definitions of what "love" (a very ambiguous word) truly is that this discussion can come to some sort of conclusion.
Posted by Adobe on 16:46:06 10/18/2001 from 63.15.253.187:
Many people try to wiggle out of the ending by offering rational alternative (like keeping two windows open). This has obviously puzzled me, because those solutions ignore Pullman's purely emotional point: having gained self-awareness, the former-innocents must be driven from Paradise.
Posted by Meeks on 5:44:07 10/18/2001 from 155.100.27.249:
I think that the fact that Pullman makes no heroes--in the public figure sense of the word--is a major disappointment to some people. I simply see it as a point of interest. I remember reading the inside of the book jacket and it saying something like "...the ordinary children whose extrordinary adventures..." and that bugging me. After reading it a second time I came to a different conclusion. They really *are* normal kids, what makes them so heroic is the fact that they always make the right decisions. Like it said when they were emerging from the trees after they'd discovered they were in love, "They would seem the true image of what human beings always could be, once they had come into their inheritance" (The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman, pg 470).
Basically what I'm getting at is that I don't think the books were meant to be realistic anymore than the original myth that they were based on (Adam and Eve). I think he was trying to show us what he believed human kind was capable of, in doing things that were humanly possible, but, as you said, not even Ghandi would do. But, it is humanly possible, or it wouldn't have made you feel anything.
Posted by NoFate on 2:01:17 10/19/2001 from 217.82.231.108:
I was struck with dissappointment on the missing "realism" of the protagonists behaviour in TAS due to the truly unmatched quality of realism in the first books. Having read a lot of classic European literature, and loads of fantasy books, too, this series of "children's books" (what a mistake!) proved itself superior to almost everything in imaginative fiction. It was the Tolkien feeling, and that's a rare thing.
The world of HDM seemed no less real (or it's existance possible) than the actual "real" world (don't get this wrong, I'm not a mental patient or some kind of super-nerd who's only friend is a computer :-) I guess you know what I mean anyhow).
Now in book three this whole world in my mind gradually collapsed. It's full of good ideas, but to me it lacks it's predecessors magic. The wide, seemingly endless horizon of northern lights and the subtle knife narrows more and more. Pullman, to me, has lost part of his depth perception there. A story full of spirit and philosphy is somehow drawn to starck materialism. The fortress of heaven being a gigantic rock, flying in midair. That's preposterous.
Still, there are some brilliant scenes. God, aged beyond recover, finally free vanishes to nothingness with the expression of senseless happyness -that reminds me of all the old people that quitly die unnoticed in the retirement centers of western industrialized countries.
I also like the "carpe diem" tone of the story, and the cristal clear light of -and the love for- the ideas of enlightement shining from every page, building a contrast to the antihuman religion.
The narrative perspective of the third book is different to the others, too. TAS lacks the sense of childlike wonder and adventure. You might say they're growing up now, but still... It's the disillusion, the settling of matters I can't bear.
And the end of the book -well, it is not only the unsatisfied longing for a happy end (which, of course, is quite infantile [does this word exist in english?]). To me, the great promise of the first book ("the light of another world was shining on them") comes to a rather unspectacular ending. There is no more promise or hope in it, for my sight on it. I would very much prefer something comparable to the end of "Sophies World" (a great, great book by the way). Or if it needs to be tragic, like in "The Great Gatsby".
We live in times at which even young adults already bitterly regret the end of their childhood, unable to see a sign to the sense of their existance in the endless freedom of the superficial modern world. The books are about just that: The end of several opportunities in the metaphore of daemons finding their final form. The author just shouldn't have robbed the protagonists of the greatest opportunity of adulthood as well.
As a compliment for Pullman, I'd rather say: I have come to like Will and Lyra too much, to let this happen to them.
All I have to say about about the ending is that in the long run, I was quite happy that Mr. Pullman didn't cop out and write a gooey "everyone lives happily ever after" ending to the entire saga, despite the fact that HDM is thought to be aimed at children. They may make people depressed, and some even quite upset, but all in all, I don't think I would have happy with a happy ending, if you catch my meaning. Sometimes, people just need to be told that "this is how the world works... You can't have everything you want all the time", even if they don't want to hear it.
So, um... Long story short: The ending made me quite sad at first, but what I'm trying to say is that I liked it.
Blame me for fool, but when i read book like this i expect the happy end, or not end at all. I mean, the end of the trilogy may seem a quite real one, since it's a quite sad end... well, when i want to know of real life y read a newspaper or turn on the tv, but when i read that kind of books what i want is to find the things i don't find in real life. Sometimes i need to forget real life, and even knowing it's true in this kind of books i can forget real life for a while and for a while think that happy ends really exists.
The more I think about it, the more I've grown to like how it ending. Well, after you get over the initial heart-wrenching sense of loss, that is. ;-) I agree with what other people have written that it was the only ending that really would've fit the trilogy... I mean, it was about Temptation and The Fall, for which there have to be consequences... which, for Will and Lyra, were apparently finding out that things aren't always good, and that there isn't always a way around something, some things you have to just face up to... like them having to be separated. When you fall in love, you also open yourself up to the heartbreak that may come along with it, not that it's something that can be helped. And in the end, it's worth it anyway, as I'm sure that neither Will nor Lyra ever wished that they had never met one another. So, the ending just seemed... right, in a way that was totally unfair and unjust. Hehe- total paradox. It's true though. The way it ended makes you want to change it, but at the same time it wouldn't have rung as true if it had ended any other way. Just my two cents.
Hey Ash! Well, I have to say, that at first I found the ending kind of disappointing myself. I kind of thought that after all Will and Lyra had come through together and after all they had accomplished, they would have found some way to overcome this obstacle too. It was a very touching ending though, and the more I think about it, the more I'm glad it turned out the way it did.
::Blinks:: I've just had exams, and the rest of the world sortof blurrs out during them. It's great to see the message board a little more lively in the last couple o' weeks.
It's kindof amusing seeing everyone clutching at straws as to how Lyra and Will could see each other again: Personally, I wouldn't be happy if any future, more 'final' ending was any happier than TAS's... That's sort of why I loved that Lyra and Will's last kiss wasn't long and perfect, but rushed and bumpy. I've never disliked the ending Pullman chose, basically; I'm glad he won't write more of Will and Lyra, and I can't see a better ending being written.
I agree. It wouldn't be the same if it was a big happy ending and they lived happily ever after. But it was so frustrating and heartbreaking to read that ending. I thought about it for days. Then I looked at it again and there are a lot of clues that could mean they will see each other again. I mean Lyra will learn how to use the alethiometer again and Will will learn how to travel from world to world like the angels. And remember when Lyra and Will are on the dunes and Xaphania comes to them. Well she was not as sad as the others because she could see what was in store for Will and Lyra in the future.
Yeah, you're right. You know what? Reading what you've written made me feel so much better! really, 'cause... you know... they're gonna see each other again, as you said. But you know... Will has to learn how to travel from world to world with just imagination. Is it gonna help them to se each other again? I mean, it won't be for real, will it?
Well in the book Will asked if it was going to be just pretending and Xaphania said no. So it is real I guess. Hopefully this "Book of Dust" clears up some questions we still have.
:: I looked at it again and there are a lot of clues that could mean they will see each other again. I mean Lyra will learn how to use the alethiometer again and Will will learn how to travel from world to world like the angels. And remember when Lyra and Will are on the dunes and Xaphania comes ::
I agree that it's so painful to not want him to write a sequel, but... In a way, this Book of Dust- or whatever- the book he's writing in the same Universe- is perfect: It quenches our desparate need for more, while retaining the ending's near-perfect status. ne?
...if Angels, really have the power to kill Specters, as the subtle knife... well.. that's really good, even if it's too late, since Will broke the knife! Damn it! I wish I could go in the story, and yell at them, in their ears, saying: "Why didn't you think about that??? Why? Angels CAN kill specters! SO you guys can live together". And I really think that if Will and Lyra had stayed together, they would have created more Dust. Dust is created with love too, right? And what would have not let them be curious, happy, giving and stuff if they were together? Now they're alone, they're sad, not curious, depressed.. that's not logical! Don't you think so? .
::goes and gets his copy of TAS:: Wow, I'd forgotten what a wonderful typeface it's in... *ahem*, anyway. As I thought, btw, The Abyss is made by the bomb that was going to kill Lyra- not by the knife. (US hb version, mid-p.494).
I've never been to this forum before, so I don't know if someone ever posted something similar.
i just read the (long awaited) third book, and I'm awfully dissapointed of the end. It may add to the 'literaric quality', or something, that it lacks an happy end. However, i consider this ending inadequate. Lyra and Will literally free the world of the living and the dead, however they themselve must suffer most painful.
"The amber spyglass" had some good ideas, though never really achieving it's predecessors genius. i could still accept that if not for the end. not even tolkien, how carried the romantic idea of parting and being separeted forever very far didn't expect that much of his readers.
Apart from the fact, that this ist truly unbelievable. The protagonists show an amount of altruism that is no longer human. Even Ghandi wouldn't go that far. What ist it to put a few specters in the world, if the lovers are still able to see each other? A small price to pay, if you ask me, after all the good they did to the world. This is only a book mind, still i will never like the idea of it.
I've read a lot of comments like these, and I'm sorry, but I can't see where you're coming from.
The ending was so 'in tune' with HDM, so 'perfect' an and to the greatest trilogy of all time (my opinion), and I felt PP hadn't just shoved a sad ending on for the sake of a sad ending; it was meant to be.
If they'd have created spectres, think of all the lives that would have been taken - and the whole thing about HDM is sacrifice; there's a lot of sacrifice in it, and a lot of betrayl, and the ending suits every aspect of HDM perfectly.
And if you read the ending line, it's so full of hope, which is another thing that makes HDM great.
I'm afraid I must beg to differ on this point - HDM is amazing, and the ending is one of the best (although saddest) parts.
Ah, the ending.
I personaly fell in love at the age of 14 (still a "child" in the scheme of things), and I know it was love because even though we havent been dating for some time, the breakup was nasty, and we faught alot. I still feel it every day, and I know I always will.
I don't know about that... I personally feel that understanding is something that broadens and deepens as you age and realize your own limitations and those of people around you. Understanding has a lot to do with environment as much as any innate intuition, and part of the reason it broadens as you get older is because (for most people) in your teenage years, your environment (both socially and broader world-view) is continually in flux, causing a reevaluation of yourself, your past self, your life experiences, and what you are looking for.
[After mentioning Ian Johnston's analysis of Oedipus Rex]: rationally, the ending to Oedipus Rex doesn't make any sense - Jocasta's immediate suicide seems a little extreme, and the fact that everyone just kind of stands around and watches (with the exception of Antigone, I suppose) while Oedipus blinds himself and wanders off to live as a vagrant seems slightly odd (he was a hero who saved them from the Sphinx and ruled them well for many years - you'd think they'd have some impetuous to stop him). But that wasn't Sophocles' point - he was trying to make a deeper statement about the nature of humanity and hubris and fate. Oedipus Rex makes sense, even if it's not rational.
Let me see. First of all, it's always the ending that people talk about, one way or the other. If you go to amazon.com you'll see that 95% of the reviews are one star or five. Naturally a great deal of the one star people say that they're evil, but you didn't. Hmmmm...
Thanx everybody for your replys!
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