Edited by Scott Westerfeld - Teen Libris

Lord Asriel: Dad from Hell or Heroic Rebel? 35
Coulter’s influence as well before he went into exile: he made sure that
Lyra’s mother would never have her. He did not want her to be brought
up in the world of the Church, of course, but little did he care that she
not only missed out on ideological indoctrination, she also missed out
on having a mother.
Or is that too harsh? Is the truth of the matter that, like so many revolutionaries,
Asriel has deliberately burnt away all traces of gentler feeling
in order that he may survive and fight another day, and perhaps also
so that his daughter can survive as well? He must have some feeling for
her that isn’t ideological, or else why does he look so horrified when she
comes into his house in Svalbard, and he thinks she is the child who
must be sacrificed so he can cross into other worlds? And keeping her
from her mother may not have had a solely ideological purpose; he may
have recognized the emotional and spiritual harm Mrs. Coulter could
have done to her daughter. In this reading, Asriel is a heroic rebel who
gives up all that makes life worthwhile for most people, for the benefit
of the “greater good.” Life will be better in the “Republic of Heaven”
than it was in the old tyrannous Kingdom, or so he firmly believes. And
that means for his daughter, too.
Many commentators have pointed to the fact that the trilogy is not
only inspired by Milton’s Paradise Lost, it is also a kind of anti-Paradise
Lost, in which God, or the Authority, becomes the enemy, and Satan, or
the Rebel, becomes the hero. They’ve also pointed to Blake’s insight that
Milton was of the Devil’s party without knowing it, because at least to
post-Puritan sensibilities, Milton’s Satan appears to be the more heroic
figure-or in any case the most interesting, and most accessible of the
two, God being too arbitrary, tyrannous, remote, and unknowable.
Paraphrasing Milton, Pullman himself has said that, “I am of the Devil’s
party, and I know it” (Vulliamy).
But although Asriel could be seen in many ways as a Satanic figure,
interestingly, his name does not have a Luciferian ring. It is not one of
the Devil’s many names that the author chose to riff on, but rather that
of Azrael, as he is known in Hebrew lore, or Izrail, as he is known in
Koranic lore: the Angel of Death.
In the Koran, Azrael/Izrail (whose name means, ironically enough in
our context, “whom God helps”) is depicted as the biggest of the angels,
with a pleasing shape that differs according to the beholder. His raison