The Subtle Knife

“A murderer was a worthy companion.”

This is the advice Lyra receives when she first asks the alethiometer about Will. She decides that being a murderer, he will not be a burden to her. Lyra’s willingness to accompany a murderer reflects her fearlessness and belief that she can stand up to any foe.

“True invisibility was impossible, of course: this was mental magic. A kind of fiercely-held modesty that could make the spell-worker not invisible but simply unnoticed.”

The magic in The Subtle Knife is never explicitly stated to be supernatural. In this passage, Pullman tells the reader that invisibility is not possible. Serafina’s “magic” is very similar to Will’s method of blending into the environment.

“The witches were democratic, up to a point: every witch, even the youngest, had the right to speak, but only their queen had the power to decide.”

Pullman, in creating a fantastical world, lays out its rules for the reader. The witches are an all-female, largely egalitarian society. All witches appear to live in clans, each with its own queen. While the queens’ personalities differ, they appear to typically follow their clan’s desires.

“Sounds like what we call physics, your experimental theology. You want scientists, not theologians.”

Pullman uses Will and Lyra getting to know each other as a way to explain discrepancies between their worlds. Both have advanced scientific knowledge, but in Lyra’s world, academia is still largely tied to religion, whereas in Will’s world it is not. Calling physics “experimental theology” allows the reader to consider the interplay between religious doctrine and scientific theory.

“We got to look as if we belong there so naturally that people don’t even notice us.”

Like Serafina, Will is good at blending into his environment. He is frustrated with Lyra at first, because she does not mind standing out. This passage also shows Will’s naivety in the early chapters; he still believes he can blend in, even though he is a known murderer.

“[…] this Oxford was so disconcertingly different, with patches of poignant familiarity right next to the downright outlandish […]”

This passage gives the reader a glimpse into Lyra’s perspective. She finds things like busses and streetlights “outlandish,” as she is not used to them, but details like a friend’s name carved in a stone are exactly the same. The coupling of the familiar and unfamiliar adds to Lyra’s sense of the uncanny.

“Was there only one world after all, which spent its time dreaming of others?”

In the museum, Lyra sees artifacts and photographs from her own life, when she was held captive on a sled in the Arctic. The book does not explore this topic further, but suggests that the characters in (and readers of) The Subtle Knife may be mistaken in believing that there are many separate worlds.

“And then, brutally, the revelation that not all the danger had been in her mind after all. There really was someone after her.”

Will begins to realize the reality of his mother’s situation as the book progresses. While growing up, he believed that his mother was suffering from paranoia, but as he reads his father’s letters, he learns that she was guarding his secrets from many enemies.

“Sky fall open, and spirits move between this world and that world. All the lands move. The ice melt, then freeze over. The spirits close up the hole after a while. Seal it up. But witches say the sky is thin there, behind the northern lights.”

Lee speaks with people across the Arctic on his way to find Stanislaus Grumman. Many of them know about multiple worlds, and it is suggested that they have used windows for ritual purposes for many years. Pullman paints the Arctic and its inhabitants as isolated, spiritual people. This quote adds to the world’s sense of mysticism and magic.

“In the innocence of children there’s some power that repels the Specters of Indifference.”

A major theme in the His Dark Materials books is the difference between adults and children. The Specters are presented as real, menacing creatures. Their behavior and the way they destroy their victims suggests that they are also a metaphor for losing the creativity and wonder of childhood.

“They didn’t give him a proper lodge, like a real Oxford college, just a big wooden counter, as if it was a shop.”

Lyra is appalled to find that the physics department is in an ugly, nondescript building rather than an elegant, ancient hall. This highlights how Will’s Oxford doesn’t value traditional scholarship as they do in her own city.

 “He was bound to her now whether he liked it or not.”

Lyra and Will never completely choose to work together, but their destinies are intertwined. Both become frustrated with each other, but they realize that they will only succeed together. This passage highlights Will’s growing feeling that he has little choice about his future and the book’s examination of Free Will Versus Destiny.

“It was a dusty, battered tube of ordinary antiseptic cream, such as Will could have bought in any chemist’s shop in his world. The old man was handling it as if it were made of myrrh.”

The men of Citagazze became rich by stealing from other worlds, but in exchange they destroyed their own with the Specters. In this passage, Pullman shows how a common, basic medication in Will’s world has become a precious ointment in a place where all cultural infrastructure has crumbled.

“It was like delicately searching out the gap between one stitch and the next with the point of a scalpel.”

Pullman uses a simile—where something is compared to something else using “like” or “as.” When Will cuts the fabric of the universe with the knife, he feels that he is ripping into a physical barrier. This suggests that the borders between worlds are tactile and physical.

“I thought she was your daemon, for a second. She done what a good daemon would have done, anyway.”

In The Amber Spyglass, the cat that Will follows becomes his daemon. This is foreshadowed several times in The Subtle Knife, most explicitly in this passage, after the cat saves Will and Lyra from Charles and Mrs. Coulter.

“Lee Scoresby disembarked at the port in the mouth of the Yenisei River, and found the place in chaos […]”

The areas closest to the large window that Lord Asriel opened up feel the greatest effects of the rift. While little has changed in places like Oxford, the remote Arctic is in shambles. The effects are suggestive of climate change. This reflects how environmental disruption impacts the most vulnerable places in the real world.

“I can discover things in the spirit where I cannot go in the body, and I spend much time in trance, exploring that world.”

Stanislaus Grumman/John Parry describes his shamanic powers as he travels with Lee Scoresby. Like many real-life shamans, he uses ritual trances to learn about the world beyond the human eye.

“They weren’t individual children: they were a single mass, like a tide.”

Here, Pullman uses another simile, comparing the mob of children to a “tide.” In this way, Pullman conjures an image of a writhing, inhuman mass of children. He inverts this image a few paragraphs later, when the witches arrive and the children revert back to a group of scared, injured, dirty kids.

“You must play the serpent.”

The Dust gives this message to Mary Malone as she leaves her lab for the last time. This references the main source material for the book, Paradise Lost, and the serpent’s role in the biblical fall of Eden. The Dust does not explain what it means, but as a former nun, Mary knows that she must help Lyra and Will discover the reality of Dust.

“It was plain to him that the spell hadn’t worked, and he could see she knew it too.

Immediately after the witches’ elaborate spell, Will feels that his body is beginning to respond. By the next day, though, he is bleeding again. This quote, like many others, suggests that the witches’ magic is not truly supernatural, and that the herbs in Citagazze may simply be different than those in Will’s universe.

“How often he and his companions had played that heroic battle, taking turns to be Danes and French.”

Lee Scoresby faces difficult odds in his final battle with the magisterium forces. The text alludes to the Battle of the Alamo in 1836, a key battle during the Texas Revolution. This suggests how Lyra’s world’s history differs from that of our own; there, the conflict was between Denmark and France.

“Her daemon’s little black horny hands were stroking the serpent daemon.”

This scene highlights how Pullman approaches sexuality within his world. Mrs. Coulter, who often uses her looks for evil intent, has her monkey daemon seductively stroke Charles’s snake as a way to lull him into complacency before killing him.

“They invented a device that could split open the very smallest particles of matter, and they used it to steal candy.”

The men of Citagazze were doomed by their own greed and did not realize the true power of the subtle knife. This passage highlights the book’s message about how technology is dangerous in the wrong hands, and the problems inherent in unlimited power.