Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's air: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
