To Live is to Die- A Spiritual Journey

I think the roots of most fantasy has started with children. As kids, we are allowed to like dragons and fairies, look into our closet and perhaps find Narnia. But as the characters we love mature, we begin to mature as well and with that comes frightening realities. Maybe in the back of the closet there is only hangers and coats, maybe the fireflies outside are not fairies but rather, just fireflies. But does it have to end for them? No, it usually only goes to a darker, more complicated world. There is no longer just elation at the start of an adventure but the tension of a thousand emotions that they are not sure of.

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman is a superb example of this. Often I remember reading the beginning of that book and thinking it needless children's literature but then the undertones come through. It's like when I was a child and though I had never been to church, there was the thought of God all around me and my family. I never quite came out and said that I thought the stories of God were just as ridiculous as Jack and the Beanstalk, but it was there. But when I grew older and I saw what it really did to people all in the name of "good", I realized that I was right to stay away. Lyra finds that out very early. There is a group of powerful people in the book that don't think that people should have daemons anymore. And the best way to cut the demon (or brainwash as in our world) is to start with the children. Learn to live without your daemon, desires or need to rebel. Cut out the bad stuff before the dust settles, so to speak.

I think that is the main reason why I really enjoyed The Golden Compass. Nothing excites and makes me feel more at home than a bit of fantasy that is out to give light to an institution that likes to give reason to doing really bad things. I intend to read the rest of the series to fully have the enjoyment of Lyra's journey.

Though I was never truly crazy about the Harry Potter novels, since I read six of them I have to admit they are a good example of this. I enjoyed the novels most when Harry was younger and the plots were a little less needlessly complicated. The Sorcerer's Stone opened to a boy who was living with his aunt and uncle who treated him more like a serf than even a slave. They worked him to the bone and even when his letter from Hogwartz came, tried everything in their power to make sure he was not able to go. Well, normal people can't foil magic so in the end Harry went off to the magic school and began the greatest journey of his life.

But journeys are wrought with pain and danger.

Harry finds out the truth about his family and in that also finds out about an item called the Sorcerer's Stone which grants eternal life. Of course, there has to be somebody after the artifact and of course our main character has to be in the middle of it. It ends up with Professor Quirrell who is a servant of Voldemort, the wizard who kileld Harry's parents and gave him the scar, trying to get the stone and is of course usurped by Harry and his two friends. As the series progresses, the task grow harder and the journey more dangerous, Harry realizing that he has to become a man and an able wizard to destroy the force about to rock the world to its very core. He learns to deal with death and heartbreak, a child still but growing faster than he would have liked.

These fantasy stories about spiritual journeys are books that you read when you are younger and don't fully understand all the extra wonder that is truly packed into them until you are older. I remember when I first began to read Anne Rice which was in about seventh or eighth grade and many of the themes horrified or confused me but now they are taken with grim acceptance. I am sure if I had read The Golden Compass or the Harry Potter stories as a child, I would not have understand the full implications of what was being presented to me until much later.

That is the joy of such novels as those. They offer more than just a fun tale- they give you more to chew on when you sit back.