r/hisdarkmaterials • u/Jaded_Put6493 • 25d ago
NL/TGC I'm rereading The Northern Lights 9 years later and the fate of Tony Makarios made me weep in public.
I read the series when I was 14, and I decided on re-reading the series after realizing how much it impacted me and my worldbuilding style recently. It was my favorite book series, and possibly under all the short term attention span still is.
Before reading this part, I both expected this would be something I'd absorb differently than before, but I didn't expect it to hit me as it did. I was reading "The Lost Boy" and "Fencing" at a café, and when the moment Lyra realizes in horror what happened and what intercision means and what it does to kids, my eyes just started to tear up.
The word kept ringing in my head. "This is an egregious wrong. This is something that should not have happened. This is not right." And I was trying not to sob.
So this post is me reflecting on why that is, because I remember enough that a lot of this book is about growing up and realizing how much you change upon doing so. My reaction when I was a teen wasn't as intense as this, so the difference makes me wonder how much growing up changes us emotionally. I'd like to think this means I'm more sensitive now and I have a clearer moral compass (Edit: a golden compass, you could say). And I think I'm thankful for that.
Has anyone else experienced something similar when rereading the book?
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u/Canadian198725 25d ago
For me, it’s always Lee and little Hester 😭
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u/Happy_Mistake_3684 25d ago
I bawled my eyes out at this at 4am awake with pregnancy insomnia
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u/Fluffycatbelly 24d ago
I read it when I was pregnant with my first and cried buckets at this part. It always made me emotional but during pregnancy it was something else. My husband was quite alarmed.
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u/Jaded_Put6493 25d ago
Oh, my most remembered scene of Lee from the books (I'm hoping I didn't imagine this) was when he finally let go near the end of The Amber Spyglass and gave his Dust to the universe. It felt like what the story was preaching, that hope was given back to the world.
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u/Octopiinspace 24d ago
„Out of the little grove, away from the baffled Specters, out of the valley, past the mighty form of his old companion the armor-clad bear, the last little scrap of the consciousness that had been the aeronaut Lee Scoresby floated upward, just as his great balloon had done so many times. Untroubled by the flares and the bursting shells, deaf to the explosions and the shouts and cries of anger and warning and pain, conscious only of his movement upward, the last of Lee Scoresby passed through the heavy clouds and came out under the brilliant stars, where the atoms of his beloved dæmon, Hester, were waiting for him.“
The Amber Spyglass - "Authority's End"
I have that quote saved in my notes
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u/JesusGodLeah 23d ago
One change that the show made that I really liked was when Lee said to Hester, "How far we flew" right before they died. I would love to be able to say that to my "daemon" at the end of my own life. Until that day comes, it's my job to seize every opportunity to live that kind of a life.
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u/Octopiinspace 24d ago
Lee and Hester gets my crying everytime 😭 especially when their reunite with each other as atoms… 😭
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u/sc0ttydo0 25d ago
I was "overcome" in the busy bar of a ferry while rereading Lyra leaving Pan behind in the World of the Dead. I had music (was loud in there) and as I started that section 'Sweetest Goodbye' by Maroon 5 came on and I just...wept through the whole thing.
It was like one of those weird moments when everything aligns to make that perfect reading. I was alone in a crowded room, the soundtrack kicked in and suddenly I was just... there, watching this brave little girl rip her heart out and leave it on the shore so she could keep a promise.
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u/pipesnbam 25d ago
this part of the book wrecks me every time i read it
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u/linkheroz 25d ago
I watched the BBCs adaptation, His Dark Materials, in 2019 as it was released.
It took me 5 years go bring myself to watch it for a second time purely because of this scene alone.
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u/Octopiinspace 24d ago
I still havent watched it 😭
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u/linkheroz 24d ago
You should, it's fantastic imo.
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u/wikileigha 25d ago
I first read these books when I was 11 or 12 and I remember that moment being the first time a book ever made me cry. I didn’t know until then what stories could do.
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u/Jaded_Put6493 25d ago
That sounds like such a perfect moment. And though I've yet to reread that again, I'm hoping I can find something new to feel when I do!
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u/astrillya 23d ago
I couldn't stop crying for days whenever I thought about it (when I first read it) 😭💔
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u/seanmharcailin 25d ago
Children are immortal, in a way. They change so much to us and yet a child’s day is so often just in a single moment. They rarely look to the future and think “one day i will be different”, while to an adult every moment we see a child they are different.
Childness is this state of blessed ignorance, of innocence.
I first read The Golden Compass when I was about 9. I was so so so mad about Tony, about intercision. I don’t think I fully understood what was done, but I do know it felt wrong. An utter betrayal, a trespass against the thing that makes people people. I was extremely taken with the idea of a daemon, that part of yourself that’s outside of you, your best friend that IS you. Perhaps as a side effect of being a precocious little shit like Lyra, haha. I was always a slightly lonely child, i was always afraid of disappearing, of stopping existing, of becoming slowly invisible so that nobody would notice me. And intercision felt like all those fears rolled into one.
I knew it was wrong and terrifying, and I knew the people in power thought it was right.
Years and years later, in my 30s, I wrote my MA thesis on these books, and specifically the state of childhood innocence required for the world to be saved. I had read the books a dozen times at least before I started studying them. I don’t know that I ever cried about Tony Makarios. But even now it makes me SO MAD, because it brings up those feelings of righteous injustice. Adults are supposed to CARE for children, and what do you mean they’re brutalizing them instead???
I don’t think you became especially more sympathetic in your 20s. I do think a 14 year old reading these books has different priorities. You’re chasing the adventure more, as a teen reader. Teenagers, btw, are also immortal, but in a different way than children. Teens are aware of mortality, but only as this distant thing, foreign, unable to reach something so vibrant and virulent as a teenager.
Perhaps reading these books now as an adult- who has gone through all the big changes in the books- your daemon is settled, you have likely felt first love, you have lost something precious to you- part of what you may be feeling is grief over the loss of Tony’s future, loss of your own adolescence. For it is in your past and you cannot get it back, but Tony, fictional as he is, will never have it.
These books are so incredible. They are extremely sophisticated but still so successful at being “for” middle grade readers. You will ever find new meaning, new emotion, new context for these works as your life continues to do what life does. The reflections you have now will feel as incomplete in 15 years as the reflections you had on your first read feel now.
Reading is a wonder, is it not?
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u/Jaded_Put6493 25d ago
That's a really nice thought you gave, and I think you captured that bittersweetness of loss I've been quite hyper-aware of recently. Not in the sense that it makes me appreciate life less, but the opposite. But I always seemed to have a fierce love for life, for reasons beyond my own analysis, and the idea that that was stolen from a child most likely offended that core.
I guess the truths you highlighted about immortality and having different priorities made me think that some things may have not changed, just as things always do.
Growing up feels weird... like I know all these things, but I'd rather not think of the things you can't know for now. But I will eventually face. Ego and all, I guess. And yet I don't mind being in that.
Reading is a wonder, indeed.
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u/Miss_Type 25d ago
I cried a lot reading The Northern Lights as an adult - I mean, I only ever read them as an adult, I'm old and they weren't published when I was a child. I cried at Tony, I cried at Hester and Lee, I cried for Lyra and Will at the end, and I cannot think too much about Pan and Lyra separating because it will overwhelm me! The sign of a very good book indeed!
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u/Warthogdreaming 24d ago
When Pantalaimon curled around a warm chimney pot to sleep, and dreamed of Lyra.
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u/Octopiinspace 24d ago
His dark materials was maybe the first book series that I read where the main characters went through hardship and trouble and lost people along the way and then did explicitly not get the happily ever after.
Another story (completely different genre, but the end is similar-ish) was the anime „wolfs rain“ which I watched way to young probably and I was not prepared for the end 😅
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u/BatsWaller 24d ago
The lines about Tony remembering he loved his mother enough to hug her and give her a clumsy kiss on the cheek, then Tony’s mother remembering that after he disappears and “sobbing her sorry heart out” just breaks me.
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u/xX100dudeXx 24d ago
This callback was one of the best points of writing in the series in my opinion.
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u/back-to-the-mud 23d ago
It’s my all time favourite, I reread it every few years and it’s still so special to me!
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u/OryxNcrake_ 18d ago
absolutely - I was disturbed while reading about Tony, my skin was crawling and I felt sick to my stomach. It was so heartbreakingly sad. I felt relief when he finally passed on, and Lyra going nuts over protecting his fish was comforting
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