For those who haven’t read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, and at some point intend to, look away now. A major spoiler follows (as well as a long rant).
I’m currently reading The Subtle Knife, and while it so far isn’t a patch on Northern Lights/The Golden Compass, I am enjoying the story as a whole.
However, I’ve just read the scene where Will finally meets his father, only to see him die after all those years of searching, and it is one of the most shoddily written scenes I have ever read. After building up the meeting throughout the first half of the novel, it comes and goes in the blink of an eye and in the coldest and least emotional way possible.
Feeling desperate, tired and utterly alone, Will wanders up a mountain on his own. A deep darkness descends and he’s suddenly accosted by some strange man, whom he fights and knocks the wind out of. Why this supposedly spiritual man would come across this kid on a mountain and decide to grab him and crack him across the back of the head when the kid tries to get free is beyond me.
When Will does free himself, does he call for help from the witches? Does he escape back to the camp to warn the others he’s just been attacked? No. He sits quite calmly and has a conversation with the man, going so far as to proffer him his wounded hand.
In darkness still too deep to see each other’s faces, the man applies a healing ointment to Will’s wounded hand, dresses it, then decides to light the lamp he’s carrying so he can see the boy’s face.
A brief flicker of recognition from them both, and the man’s shot and killed by the witch whose love he spurned many years previous (a plot point fleetingly referred to way back in the early part of the novel).
If it had been a cinematic scene, the moment between father and son, when the realisation dawns, would’ve been drawn out a little to show some kind of emotion between the two - confusion; relief; joy - and to allow the audience to connect with what’s happening. Obviously this is a bit trickier in a novel as simply stating, “The two experienced confusion; relief; joy,” is very dry and in no way conveys the intended emotions, but there are options. You could back-reference some of things each character has gone through to bring them to this moment; the trials they’ve overcome so they could finally find each other. You could delve into the characters’ memories of all the things they’d missed while they were apart. You could even have each character looking forward to all of the good things that will come now that they’re together again.
“But in that moment, as the lantern light flickered over John Parry’s face, something shot down from the turbid sky, and he fell back dead before he could say a word, an arrow in his failing heart.”
That’s it? They recognise each other, he’s shot with an arrow and dies?!
The confrontation between Will and the witch was well handled, but after she’s topped herself and Will has said an emotional farewell to his father, there immediately follows a bizarrely cold description of Will taking ‘the dead man’s’ things and spying his feather-trimmed cloak. “His father had no more use for it, and Will was shaking with cold.” I wonder if anyone could come up with anything more emotionally detached than ‘His father had no more use for it…’.
I know it’s only a small scene in the grand scheme of the trilogy, but that in itself is part of the problem. It should be one of the most emotionally powerful scenes in the novel and is instead dealt with as if it’s just another little obstacle along the way; as if Pullman wanted to get it out of the way so he could get to the ‘juicier’ stuff.
I such a huge and intricate story, crammed with such high quality writing, the whole scene is a massive let-down; a bizarre and confusing disappointment.
I’m currently reading The Subtle Knife, and while it so far isn’t a patch on Northern Lights/The Golden Compass, I am enjoying the story as a whole.
However, I’ve just read the scene where Will finally meets his father, only to see him die after all those years of searching, and it is one of the most shoddily written scenes I have ever read. After building up the meeting throughout the first half of the novel, it comes and goes in the blink of an eye and in the coldest and least emotional way possible.
Feeling desperate, tired and utterly alone, Will wanders up a mountain on his own. A deep darkness descends and he’s suddenly accosted by some strange man, whom he fights and knocks the wind out of. Why this supposedly spiritual man would come across this kid on a mountain and decide to grab him and crack him across the back of the head when the kid tries to get free is beyond me.
When Will does free himself, does he call for help from the witches? Does he escape back to the camp to warn the others he’s just been attacked? No. He sits quite calmly and has a conversation with the man, going so far as to proffer him his wounded hand.
In darkness still too deep to see each other’s faces, the man applies a healing ointment to Will’s wounded hand, dresses it, then decides to light the lamp he’s carrying so he can see the boy’s face.
A brief flicker of recognition from them both, and the man’s shot and killed by the witch whose love he spurned many years previous (a plot point fleetingly referred to way back in the early part of the novel).
If it had been a cinematic scene, the moment between father and son, when the realisation dawns, would’ve been drawn out a little to show some kind of emotion between the two - confusion; relief; joy - and to allow the audience to connect with what’s happening. Obviously this is a bit trickier in a novel as simply stating, “The two experienced confusion; relief; joy,” is very dry and in no way conveys the intended emotions, but there are options. You could back-reference some of things each character has gone through to bring them to this moment; the trials they’ve overcome so they could finally find each other. You could delve into the characters’ memories of all the things they’d missed while they were apart. You could even have each character looking forward to all of the good things that will come now that they’re together again.
“But in that moment, as the lantern light flickered over John Parry’s face, something shot down from the turbid sky, and he fell back dead before he could say a word, an arrow in his failing heart.”
That’s it? They recognise each other, he’s shot with an arrow and dies?!
The confrontation between Will and the witch was well handled, but after she’s topped herself and Will has said an emotional farewell to his father, there immediately follows a bizarrely cold description of Will taking ‘the dead man’s’ things and spying his feather-trimmed cloak. “His father had no more use for it, and Will was shaking with cold.” I wonder if anyone could come up with anything more emotionally detached than ‘His father had no more use for it…’.
I know it’s only a small scene in the grand scheme of the trilogy, but that in itself is part of the problem. It should be one of the most emotionally powerful scenes in the novel and is instead dealt with as if it’s just another little obstacle along the way; as if Pullman wanted to get it out of the way so he could get to the ‘juicier’ stuff.
I such a huge and intricate story, crammed with such high quality writing, the whole scene is a massive let-down; a bizarre and confusing disappointment.
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