How Philip Pullman Used Fantasy to Tell the Truth About Being Human
For more than 30 years, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials has quietly shaped how millions of readers think about growing up, belief, imagination, and truth. What began as a fantasy story that many people assumed was “for children” slowly revealed itself to be something much bigger: a long, thoughtful conversation about what it means to be human.
One of the most powerful symbols of this impact can be found in Oxford’s Botanic Garden. There’s a simple bench there, once easy to miss, now unmistakable. It’s the place where Lyra and Will part forever at the end of The Amber Spyglass. Over time, it was covered in carvings, names, and messages from readers who felt changed by that moment. Eventually, a statue of their daemons was placed behind it. That bench says a lot about Pullman’s work. These stories didn’t just entertain people; they stayed with them.
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His Dark Materials follows Lyra Silvertongue, a young girl who journeys between worlds, facing powerful institutions, dangerous ideas, and painful truths. Along the way, she encounters witches, armored bears, scientists, angels, and perhaps most memorably, daemons—animal companions that represent part of a person’s soul. There is also Dust, an invisible substance tied to consciousness, awareness, and experience. Together, these ideas allow Pullman to explore enormous questions without losing the excitement of adventure.
Pullman earned a reputation as the “anti–CS Lewis” because of his sharp criticism of organized religion, especially the way it can be used to control people. In the books, a powerful church-like authority attempts to stop children from growing up, treating knowledge and curiosity as sins. Instead of portraying innocence as something that must be preserved at all costs, Pullman celebrates growth, self-awareness, and even sexuality as natural and necessary parts of becoming fully human.
But it would be a mistake to see his work as simply anti-religious. Pullman has described himself as a “religious atheist,” someone deeply interested in spiritual questions without claiming absolute certainty. In fact, his later trilogy, The Book of Dust, adds an important warning: blind rationalism can be just as damaging as blind faith. When imagination, mystery, and storytelling are dismissed entirely, something essential is lost.
Across both trilogies, the real enemy is not belief or doubt, but dogma—any system that insists it alone owns the truth. Again and again, Pullman shows how authoritarian thinking thrives when curiosity is crushed and stories are reduced to propaganda.
In the end, Pullman’s greatest loyalty seems to be to storytelling itself. He uses fantasy not to escape reality, but to tell the truth about it. Through Lyra’s world, readers are reminded that imagination is not childish, that questioning is not dangerous, and that growing up, though painful, is something to be embraced. Thirty years on, His Dark Materials still feels alive, because it speaks honestly about who we are—and who we’re still becoming.
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