The Amber Spyglass synopsis and excerpts

Will and Lyra both start out in tough spots in The Amber Spyglass. Lyra has been snatched and spirited away to a cave by her mother. To keep the willful girl from running away, Mrs. Coulter keeps her in a drug-induced sleep. Meanwhile, Will is under the care of two male angels, Baruch and Balthamos. These angels are rebel angels, who encourage Will to bring his subtle knife, a.k.a. the “god-destroyer,” to Lord Asriel for use in his quest to kill the Authority. Baruch and Balthamos are also homosexuals, and Will is touched by their passion for each other. Metatron, theAuthority’s regent and the strongest of all the angels on the side of the Church, attacks Will and his two companions. They escape, and Baruch flies off to visit LordAsriel and inform him that Balthamos and Will are attempting to free Lyra from Mrs. Coulter’s clutches. Baruch is again attacked by agents of the Authority, however, and dies just after delivering his message. Though Balthamos is devastated by the loss of his love, he continues on with Will. But they are not the only ones looking for Lyra. The Church has learned of the witches’ prophecy that Lyra will be the new Eve. In response, theMagisterium’s Consistorial Court of Discipline dispatches a priest named Father Gomez to kill the girl in order to prevent another fall from grace. Father Gomez is chosen to be Lyra’s killer because he has prepared himself by doing “preemptive penance.”49 (According to the book, one can obtain forgiveness for a future sin, through selfflagellation and other such mortifications, and then commit that sin while remaining in a state of grace.) He takes off after Mary Malone, believing the doctor will lead him to the girl.
Will rescues Lyra from the cave as agents of the Church fight with Lord Asriel’s supporters. The two venture down to the world of the dead, which is “a place of nothing.”50 They free the dead souls into another world, where the spirits float up and dissolve into nature.
Mrs. Coulter is captured by Lord Asriel’s army, but escapes and heads to the Church’s Consistorial Court of Discipline. The priests promptly arrest her for hiding Lyra instead of turning the girl over to the Church. Mrs. Coulter, who has had a change of heart about the Church and has come to grow fond of her daughter, accuses the priests of having lecherous sexual obsessions. AsMrs. Coulter sleeps, a priest creeps into her room and steals the patch of Lyra’s hair that she wears in a locket around her neck. The priests use the hair to create a bomb that will destroy Lyra, but it fails to kill her. Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are reunited, and they know they are now on the same side—the side that is against God. Mrs. Coulter successfully lures Metatron into following her by using her powers of seduction. (It is the angel’s great regret that he can no longer enjoy a physical body.) Coulter and Asriel tumble off a cliff, and bring Metatron down with them.

Will and Lyra stumble upon God himself. He is not an imposing force, however. Rather, he is encased in crystal and being terrorized by ghoulish beings called cliffghasts. He is “so old and he was terrified, crying like a baby and cowering away into the lowest corner…Demented and powerless, the aged being could only weep and mumble in fear and pain and misery.”51 The children release God from the case, and he dissolves into the air like the dead. Father Gomez, who had been stalking Lyra, is killed by Balthamos.

The war over, and God and his agents gone, Lord Asriel’s followers can now settle down to building the Republic of Heaven on Earth. Dr. Mary Malone’s job, however, still is not done. She is able to play the serpent by telling Lyra and Will about the joy she experienced when she quit being a nun to pursue a relationship with a man, and the pleasure—both physical and mental—that accompanied her decision. Dr. Malone opens the children’s eyes to erotic love, and they soon confess their feelings for each other. Lyra and Will kiss, and in doing so, they become consciousof the pleasures of the body.

Though the children are blissful for a short time, they soon learn that they cannot live for long in worlds other than their own, and every path between worlds but one will have to be closed. If the doors remain open, too much Dust will escape and several worlds will be ruined. Will and Lyra know they could keep the window between their two worlds open and periodically visit each other. However, they selflessly opt to leave open a window in the world of the dead so that departed souls can always find their freedom.

The children part from each other, resolving to live good lives full of hard work so they can help build the Republic of Heaven in their own worlds.

Selected quotes:
_ Dr. Mary Malone: “I used to be a nun, you see. I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn’t any God at all and that physics was more interesting anyway. The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all.”52

_ Mrs. Coulter, to a priest, after she leaves the Church: “Well, where is God…if he’s alive? And why doesn’t he speak anymore… Is he still alive, at some inconceivable age, decrepit and demented, unable to think or act or speak and unable to die, a rotten hulk? And if that is his condition, wouldn’t it be the most merciful thing, the truest proof of our love for God, to seek him out and give him the gift of death?”53

_ Ogunwe, an ally of Lord Asriel: “I am a king, but it’s my proudest task to join Lord Asriel in setting up a world where there are no kingdoms at all. No kings, no bishops, no priests. The Kingdom of Heaven has been known by that name since the Authority first set himself above the rest of the angels. And we want no part of it. This world is different. We intend to be free citizens of the Republic of Heaven.”54

_ Balthamos, a rebel angel: “The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, El, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty— those were all names he gave himself. He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves—the first angel, true, the most powerful, but he was formed of Dust as we are, and Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself.”55

_ Serafina: “I met an angel: a female angel…She told me many things…She said that all the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity. She and the rebel angels, the followers of wisdom, have always tried to open minds; the Authority and his churches have always tried to keep them closed.”56

_ FatherMacPhail, president of the Magisterium’s Consistorial Court of Discipline, discussing Lyra: “Still just a child, I think. This Eve, who is going to be tempted and who, if precedent is any guide, will fall, and whose fall will involve us all in ruin. Gentlemen… I propose to send a man to find her and kill her before she can be tempted.”57

_ Dr. Mary Malone, on what she thought about good and evil when she was a nun: “I knew what I should think: it was whatever the Church taught me to think…So I never had to think about them for myself at all.”58

_ Mrs. Coulter on why she did not turn Lyra over to the Church: “If you thought for one moment that I would release my daughter into the care—the care!—of a body of men with a feverish obsession with sexuality, men with dirty fingernails, reeking of ancient sweat, men whose furtive imaginations would crawl over her body like cockroaches—if you thought I would expose my child to that, my Lord President, you are more stupid than you take me for.”59

49 Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass, p. 64.
50 Ibid., p. 286.
51 Ibid., p. 366.
52 Ibid., p. 393.
53 Ibid., p. 293-294.
54 Ibid., p. 188.
55 Ibid., p. 28.
56 Ibid., p. 429.
57 Ibid., p. 64.
58 Ibid., p. 398.
59 Ibid., p. 292.