Astor Meredith-Goujon
November 16, 2014
The Subtle Knife
The
Subtle Knife is the second book in the “His Dark Materials” trilogy. The series
is about a girl named Lyra and a boy named Will. In her world everyone has something called a
daemon. It is an animal that is tied to a person. If a person is too far away
from his or her daemon they will die. A daemon is like a soul. The big aspect
of this trilogy is something called Dust. Dust is when matter becomes aware of
it self and can communicate with people in certain ways or tell them things
that would be extremely hard to find out. One of the biggest things that
effects what the characters do and ultimately the story is love if it’s friendly love, romantic love or love for an object.
One
example of this is when a group of kids try to kill the main characters because
they indirectly killed the bother of two of the kids. In the book it says, “ Will
managed to make out Angelica’s voice high over them all 'You killed my brother
and you stole the knife! You murderers! You made the specters get him!! You
killed him, and we’ll kill you! You ain’ gonna get away! We gonna kill you same
as you killed him.'” This shows how much they want to kill Lyra and Will. It
shows the love that this kid has for her brother. It also shows how much
Angelica’s friends love her and her brother because they will kill people for
their friends. Also these kids didn’t even kill the brother they should find a
way to get revenge on the specters not kill these kids. This event even help
Will to learn how to use the knife better which changed the story.
Another
example of love effecting what people do and ultimately effecting the story is
at the end when it says, “But in that same moment, as the lantern light flared
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… But will
was there before she could find her foot, and the subtle knife was at her
throat. ‘Why did you do that?’ he shouted. ‘Why did you kill him?’ ‘Because I
loved him and he scorned me’” the person that she killed was a big character.
He was the father of Will, one of the main characters. In the story you never
learn anything about this character. He just died. He was really important. You
know this because he was mentioned many times thought the story as an important
character. So him dying is a huge deal and deprives you of a lot of
information. This affects the story a lot.
The
last example of love affecting the story is when Lyra’s alethiometer got
stolen. The guy who stole it wants the subtle knife. This makes Will end up
getting the subtle knife and changing the entire story. It even helps them get
the alethiometer back while still retaining the knife. Lyra’s love for the alethiometer changed the story in a
huge way. The most important object in the story is the subtle knife. Now that
Will has it he has a lot of power which means that people will want to kill him
or take the subtle knife which in turn does effect the story. He also can
control people with the subtle knife if they really need it. He can offer
himself and get reward from having the subtle knife and knowing how to use it.
Love
is a very big deciding factor in what we do as humans. It can give us the drive
to kill or change our lives in a huge way. It can affect other people in big
ways. Love is what we live for. Love defines us as people and can change our
lives in ways we can’t imagine. Love is the most powerful thing in life.
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