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The Amber Spyglass is, without a doubt, the least opaque of purpose in the trilogy. As is well known, Pullman was comfortable with the stratagem of turning over his hole cards after his audience was firmly snagged on the craftsmanly literary-line of his adventure. Whether this is considered devious, or simply wise, is likely in the eye of the fan or critic; in any case, it wasn’t a stratagem that Lewis — despite the professional alienation that he suffered as an out-of-the-closet Christian in the English academic world — felt necessary in Narnia.

The Formalist should be able to draw the meaning without too much effort, with help from plot, character, setting, and word use. In the third chapter of the trilogy, the war is waged head-on. Some of the heroes search for the Authority’s cloud; some of the heroes try to kill Pullman’s malevolent Archangel; and some of the heroes will set the dead free from their imprisoning world the Authority has put them in, coming out into the world to become dust and stars and grass. Another example of Pullman’s atheistic touch.

The book sets up Mrs. Coulter and Asriel as moral heroes. In The Amber Spyglass, their last, sacrificial, move is to kill Metatron (originally the historical Enoch from the Bible) by pulling him down in a no-space pit together. In The Amber Spyglass, the Authority is evidently looked as some kind of mistake; someone set up the wrong thing at the wrong time and doesn’t really know what’s going on.

Metatron, given all power from the Authority, is the key target of the anti-God heroes; we read it as a deep emotional triumph when Mrs. Coulter and Asriel kill the God-Authority. Also, the setting of an Angel (more usually referred to as the Archangel Gabriel) as a fiend to be killed at any cost, is a typical (but more blatant) plot event for The Dark Materials series.

The grim fate of the Authority emerges in the final book. Lyra see the Authority; He is a bedridden, sick old man who knows nothing of anything (!).

God dies, apparently from simply being too old and fragile to come to Earth. His death is the logical culmination of the plot mechanics in the last two and a half books. Once God is dead, everyone in the books boasts of their glorious freedom and how they must know get their own work done; sacrifices were made to start building the Republic of Heaven, which is the human’s version of heaven in the books, and what it stressed as right.

At the very least, it could be said, from a Formalist’s point of view, from the word use, that Pullman is not just trying to brainwash children into his way of thinking; he is genuinely trying to explore the question of what things would be like without a God. At first everything is beautiful yet hurtful, aching in every way. However, as time passes on, everyone agrees that their mission must continue, that they are doing the right thing by building their own spiritual kingdom.

In The Amber Spyglass, we attain enlightment: “This was the very thing she’d told Will about when he’d asked if she missed God… When she’d been a Christian, she had felt connected, too; but when she left the Church, she felt loose and free and light, in an universe without purpose.”

Dust, and the childrens’ own humanity and love for life, brought them their mission to build a new realm brought purpose back to the world.

“Had she thought there was no meaning in life, no purposed when God had gone? Yes, she had thought that. ‘Well there is now,“ she said a loud, and again louder, ‘There is now!‘”

So Pullman posits simply that God was the wrong answer; that humanity’s own passions were the only forces that ever really meant anything; and that those self-oriented passions would be the foundations for a new heaven; a right heaven.

“He meant that the Kingdom was over, the Kingdom of Heaven, it was all finished. We shouldn’t live as if it all mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.”

And to quote the very last two lines of His Dark Materials, “’And then what?’ said her daemon sleepily. ‘Build what?’ ‘The Republic of Heaven,’ said Lyra.” (518)

Americans of course protested the film, and Americans argued for the film. His Dark Materials incites appreciation in Purists and atheists, and even in some church-goers, for offering what they imagine to be a new perspective.

It repels Christians and people of faith all over the world, causing parents to want to protect their children against such theories, even as Narnia repels Pullman.

The imprint of this work of literature will be on people’s lives worldwide, creating such a controversy because of its meaning. It perhaps is not the Formalist’s duty to declare the meaning good or evil, but it is within yours and mine.