The Golden Compass Themes

The Golden Compass follows 11-year-old Lyra as she embarks on a quest to save her best friend, Roger. In Lyra's world, which exists parallel to the reader's world, all humans have dæmons, physical manifestations of a person's soul and conscience that take the form of animals. Because Lyra is still a child, her dæmon, Pan, can change his form at will, but as children reach puberty, their dæmons "settle" into a form…

The Golden Compass is extremely concerned with what it means to be alive and what it means to have a soul. Within the world of the novel, a dæmon is a physical manifestation of a person's soul, while other creatures like animals don't have dæmons and other races, such as the bears, state that their souls are contained in their armor. Given the vast range of options that Lyra sees when it comes to manifestations…

Lyra, the heroine of the novel, is, without a question, a regular and skilled liar. She lies about everything, from whether she's been on the Jordan College roof or not to eventually orchestrating the duel between Iorek and Iofur by telling Iofur that she's Iorek's dæmon. Initially, the novel treats Lyra's penchant for lying as a normal part of being a child, but as the novel progresses, it begins to suggest that lying…

Though Lyra, the protagonist of the novel, doesn't know it, her life is guided by fate. Lyra's existence was foretold in a prophecy, which says that she's destined to both save the world and unwittingly lead someone else to their sacrifice. An important part of the prophecy, however, is the fact that Lyra must not know that she's destined to do this—she must believe that she's acting of her own free will, or she's…