The Perfect Hero(es)

As most kids, I grew up with hero narratives. From Hercules to Harry Potter, I encountered heroes in every setting, situation, and storyline possible. As most middle-school girls, I read a lot of dystopian fiction (think The Hunger Games, Matched, Divergent), but even at that age, I recognized the plots as cheesy and cliché. That was mostly my relationship with hero stories in general – I wasn’t really there for the plot. My favorite things about Harry Potter were the intricacies of Hogwarts (I always got mad at Harry for tuning out of the Herbology or Transfiguration lessons – those things seemed so cool!), my favorite things about The Hunger Games was the complex government of Panem, and my favorite thing about The Lord of the Rings was Tolkien’s ridiculously detailed universe. I loved world-building, maps, settings, and the promise of a far-away land. That promise is mostly what tied me to hero narratives.

There is one series that stands out to me, and that is the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman (the first novel The Golden Compass was made into a movie that people might know). Watch out, summary incoming:

The first book follows a girl named Lyra who lives in a world similar to ours but subtly different. She lives in her world’s version of Oxford, where children are being snatched from the streets and kidnapped to a far-away northern camp. When her best friend Roger is kidnapped, she joins a boatload of traders, a talking polar bear named Iorek, and some witches to break her friend out. She ends up unlocking a conspiracy about her entire universe, and basically dedicated her life to ending the oppressive regime perpetuating it. The story has all the classic marks of a hero’s journey: a call to action (her friend being kidnapped), allies (the boat people), enemies (the child-snatchers), a mentor (a man named John Faa who teaches her how to use the Golden Compass (her talisman), in the same way Obi-Wan teaches Luke to use the Force), an ordeal (which I won’t spoil in case anybody out here will ever read this book), and so on.

The plot is pretty complicated, but a lovely read, I highly recommend. If you want a more detailed summary, you can find one on Sparknotes or Wikipedia, but honestly, if you have a spare moment, these books are worth their time.

Lyra is in some ways a perfect hero – she is selfless, brave, and charismatic; she has a special gift (the ability to read the Golden Compass); not to mention, with tomboy sensibilities and brown hair and eyes, I can’t say I didn’t see myself in her when I was younger. At the same time though, she struggles, a lot, in a relatable and realistic way. Pullman manages to pull off a character that makes sense to a child without making her one-note or simplistic.  

As the series progresses, two more heroic characters are introduced. The second book, The Subtle Knife, follows Will, a boy from our world, as he searches for his father. He accidentally crosses paths with Lyra, and they form a duo. In the final novel, The Amber Spyglass, Dr. Mary Malone is introduced. She is a dark matter physicist who basically discovers the answer to the series’ leading conflict. It’s interesting because each time I reread the books, at ages 10ish, 14ish, and last summer, I saw myself as each of the different characters. As a 10-year-old, I wanted to be Lyra – riding around on polar bears, discovering secret plots, fighting epic battles. As a 14-year-old, I wanted to be Will – sensible, smart, calculated, and the level head to Lyra’s emotions. Now, with my most recent re-reading, I am drawn to Dr. Malone. A badass woman in physics, who has her own research lab and basically discovers the keys to unlocking the secrets of the universe. She is a mythical version of what I want to do as an adult.

As I dissected this series, its heroism, and why it resonated with me so much, I discovered that what sets it apart from other stories for me is that it doesn’t feel like a hero narrative. The reasons I was tired of dystopian books and the plot of The Lord of the Rings bored me was because I knew what was going to happen only a few chapters into the book – the main character would struggle, fight, and then in the end conquer the antagonist. In the His Dark Materials series, that outcome doesn’t seem certain. Good and evil blur, switch sides, and the fundamental concepts of what even is good or evil are undermined and redefined. Large swathes of the final novel focus on Christianity and God – with many of the antagonists being traditionally “good” angels: the very root of the conflict is an archangel, Metatron. While the main characters all go on their separate hero’s journeys, I don’t think the series embodies many traditional heroic ideas – good doesn’t conquer evil, the two people in love don’t end up together, and some of the most beloved characters die, sometimes pointless, non-heroic deaths.