47 pages • 1 hour read
Philip PullmanThe Golden Compass
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1995A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 14-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Bolvangar”
Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary: “Bolvangar Lights”
Everyone is on edge about Mrs. Coulter. As they travel, Lee monitors the weather and believes there will be fog. They stop to wait it out in the mist, but as they are waiting arrows fly toward them and kill three gyptian men. Pan turns into a leopard and knocks Lyra to the ground to protect her from the arrows. Lyra cannot see who is attacking them, but suddenly a dæmon attacks Pan. Lyra is tied up, and a bag is put over her head. She is thrown into a sled with Pan, who is injured. She cries for help from Iorek and holds Pan. Pan, as a mouse, says he thinks they were attacked by Tartars and that John Faa was hit. They ride for a long time, and when they slow down, a man removes Lyra’s hood and asks for her name. She lies and tells them her name is Lizzie Brooks. The man asks about the armored bear and the people with her. Lyra lies, saying they are just traders. They stop outside an arena, and the man cuts the cord around her ankles. They take her Inside, and at the doctor’s instruction, Sister Clara, a nurse, inspects Lyra and asks her questions. Sister Clara searches Lyra’s things and asks about the alethiometer, which Lyra says is just a toy. She makes Lyra shower and eat. A man with a black marmot dæmon sits down with Lyra and talks to her. Lyra lies about everything she can to protect her identity, except she tells them there was a fight with arrows. The man dismisses this, saying the cold makes people see things. He sends her to bed and says they will talk again the next morning. Lyra shuffles to bed and wakes up in a room with three other girls who want to know if more children are coming. They think Lyra was drugged with sleeping pills. One of the girls tells Lyra that the people here–the Gobblers—measure the Dust. The girls talk about the Tartars, the Dust, Mrs. Coulter, and what happens there. They are all aware that Mrs. Coulter takes the children, who they speculate are all killed since none of them return. Despite that, the girls admit they have been treated fine enough so far.
Part 2, Chapter 15 Summary: “The Dæmon Cages”
Lyra is reunited with Roger in the canteen the next day at breakfast, where she finds him sitting with five other boys. Lyra continues to hide her identity and Roger plays along as their dæmons gather information from listening in on other children’s conversations. One girl tells of Tony, who was taken by the adults. She says she heard the adults make a cut to sever the dæmons from the child so they grow up. The terrified girl is summoned by the nurse, and the children go off to exercise. At lunch, Lyra sees Billy Costa and informs him his family is coming to their aid. Lyra is then taken and measured for Dust, and she uses the occasion to question the nurse about Dust and cutting dæmons from children, which the nurse denies. There is a fire drill, and everyone meets outside in a courtyard where Billy, Roger, and Lyra regroup. Lyra starts a snowball fight, and, in the chaos of the moment, the three of them slip away to explore the grounds.
Lyra goes to open a forbidden door with Roger when a bird flies in; it is Serafina’s goose dæmon. The goose helps Lyra open the door, and she sees what is inside: severed dæmons in glass cases. The dæmons look horrified, and the goose warns Lyra and Pan not to look. Lyra tells the goose about the severed child, Tony. There are empty glass cases awaiting other dæmons. Lyra wants to set them all free, but the goose suggests they must first have a plan and urges Lyra to spread the snow around the open cages to make it look less suspicious. The goose advises Lyra to rejoin the other children so as not to draw attention to herself since the gyptians are coming soon. Lyra tells Billy and Roger her plan with the sound of the fire drill. A zeppelin arrives and Pan tenses up—it is Mrs. Coulter with her golden monkey dæmon.
Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary: “The Silver Guillotine”
Lyra hides her clothes and the alethiometer in a ceiling panel before rejoining the other children. Mindful of an encounter with Mrs. Coulter, she tells Pan to pretend someone kidnapped them and not mention any of their allies. She blends in with the other kids while sharing her escape plan with one of the girls, indicating the fire alarm will be the signal. Later that night, Lyra hides in the ceiling panels and crawls over a meeting. She hears about their plan to separate children from the dæmons, and when Mrs. Coulter leaves the room, they discuss how much pleasure she seems to take in the procedure. Lyra accidentally thumps her foot. The adults hear her and find Lyra; to punish her, they separate her and Pan in mesh containers with the silver guillotine overhead. Mrs. Coulter comes in, and when she sees Lyra, she orders them to stop.
Part 2, Chapter 17 Summary: “The Witches”
Lyra and Pan are terrified and reeling from the experience, but Lyra manages to lie to Mrs. Coulter about how she got there. She says she was kidnapped by the Gobblers, and Mrs. Coulter believes her. Mrs. Coulter tries to soothe Lyra, assuring her that the silver guillotine is an idea too big for her to understand. She states that many people have had the cut, including the nurses at the facility, which allows the adults to keep dæmons as pets rather than burdens. All the while, Mrs. Coulter’s dæmon searches around for the alethiometer. Lyra hands her the tin where the spy fly is hidden, and when Mrs. Coulter opens it, the spyfly attacks her and her dæmon, which gives Lyra a chance to escape. Lyra hits the fire alarm, turns on the stoves, gets her alethiometer, and escapes into the snow with the other kids while the building catches fire. Lyra starts another snowball fight to hold off the soldiers, and the witches arrive to attack the Tartars. Iorek hurtles past the children to attack and kill some of the Tartars. A huge battle ensues as the gyptians arrive, including Lord John Faa and Farder Coram. Mrs. Coulter grabs Lyra and Roger, but Lyra, who carries Roger with her, is saved by a witch who drops them into Lee’s balloon with Iorek. Lyra talks to Serafina who tells her that the other kids are safe and that Bolvangar has been destroyed.
Part 2, Chapters 14-17 Analysis
Lyra’s cunning nature carries her through this section of the story, as plenty of adults like the nurse and Mrs. Coulter pretend to help her in order to get what they want. Lyra knows how to play the adults, like when she pretends to be grateful when the Sister offers her a doll, and how she lies to Mrs. Coulter about being kidnapped, stroking both of their egos by allowing them to feel like saviors rather than villains. The Clear Perception and Truth in Children theme features heavily here, especially when Mrs. Coulter tries to explain religious ideas related to Dust and justify her actions to Lyra, the latter of whom knows about The Nature of a Soul and understands how connected humans are to their dæmons. Lyra does not accept what Mrs. Coulter tells her, but she does not tip her hand about that either. One of Mrs. Coulter’s big faults as a character is that she underestimates the intelligence of children and, thus, undermines their agency. She is blinded by her own will and vision and enacts what she wants on others, including her own daughter. This ruthless quality makes her a strong antagonist but also leads to her setbacks.
This section also reveals how the quest has outgrown itself along the way. Initially, Lyra just wanted to find Roger and go north, but now that she has found Roger, she has also found herself in a lot of tangled conflicts. Like the previous section, this one is action-heavy with as many battles and scuffles as there are schemes. The Risks of the Quest grow as the scope of the quest grows, demonstrated by Lyra’s near miss with intercision when she is caught spying.
Despite Lyra’s brave choices, she is still a child, which is especially evident when she sees Roger again for the first time. She is good at hiding her true feelings which says more about how she has been forced to grow up than about her love for him. Pullman uses the setting to mirror the emotional state of the novel. The frigid nowhere-land of Bolvangar mimics the coldness of the people and the events that take place there. The nurses are followed by unfeeling dæmons , from whom they have been severed. And Mrs. Coulter’s reappearance in this land reinforces this coldness, for while she presents a warm façade, she is a cold and dishonest parent to Lyra and cruel to other children. Even her kind act of saving Lyra from intercision shows that she knows how wrong it is deep down. Conversely, the children are represented by the fire they set at Bolvangar. Lyra is alive, spirited, and warm, and the way she destroys the facility shows her capacity to spark change.
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