The Death Writing In His Dark Materials Trilogy

The focus on death has a long tradition in English Children’s literature,which is unique in the depth and breadth of the theme of death.Particularly,the writing of death in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy and the ways of its expression play a unique role in the writing of death in British children’s literature.The work reveals unprecedented details about the "Dust" through the multiple space-time conversions and the exploration of the young people,making the boundary between life and death blurred during the risky actions of the characters.And also,the concept of death is deconstructed in the story,so as to build a unique fantasy world,which explains the distinctive opinions about death and life of the author.In Pullman’s works,the writing of death has three main dimensions: religious killing,war killing and spiritual loss.By presenting the theme of death through three types of death writing,the author constantly places the young characters in different worlds in the multiple encircling of life and death,the value of faith,historical space and time and spiritual consciousness.He tries to highlight and describe the ambivalence,position of thinking and behaviors of the teenagers when they face the death,so as to present the transformation process of the teenagers in breaking through the inner and outer predicament.The space-time structure,the image of "betrayer" and the ritual of "division" presented by the author constitute the narrative mode of the novel’s death writing.The free and diversified plots under the multi-time-space structure,the narrative mode under the comparison of the original stories of characters’ depravity and redemption,and the emotional problems during teenagers’ growth and adolescence etcetera help to present the characteristics of multi-dimensional bursting of this fantasy novels series.In his works,death writing actually implies the author’s intention of writing: to subvert the traditional view of death,and at the same time,to permeate his attention to the inevitable problems of children’s life and growth,and to explore the aesthetic paradox of death writing.Through death writing,the works show the children’s fantasy journey of bravely experiencing adventure,thinking about human nature,understanding the world,and saving themselves and others,and profoundly reflect the meaning of the philosophical propositions about survival and death,light and darkness,good and evil,which children will inevitably face and explore in the process of growing up.Pullman’s death writing in His Dark Materials Trilogy is the inheritance and breakthrough of the death writing in British children’s literature,and also a challenge to the multidimensional writing of children’s spiritual growth.