Good and Bad Character and Behaviour: Ethics and Morals Learning Outcomes By the end of these lessons students should have a knowledge and understanding of: • Religious teaching about ethical behaviour • Religious teachings about human status and value • Religious teachings about relationships By the end of these lesson students should be able to reflect upon and evaluate: • Personal qualities • Relationships Our Personalities In Lyra’s world, the personality has an external form – the daemon. Children’s personality-daemons change showing how they are experimenting, and they settle at puberty into a mature unchanging form. In Will’s (our) world daemons are invisible except to the imagination. Daemons answer the question, ‘What kind of person am I?’. Fader Coram of the Gyptians hobbles on two sticks but his cat daemon is strong, healthy and sleek. His body might be damaged but inside he is still strong, determined and a powerful intellect. The servants’ daemons are generally dogs – faithful, obedient. Powerful Lord Asriel has a snow leopard, evil Mrs Coulter a manipulative yellow monkey. Lyra’s daemon is Pantalaimon: he can be inconspicuous, as a moth, or be a bird or many other things. By the end he settles to be a pine marten. The choice of daemon symbolises a person’s general personality or ‘soul’. Pullman suggests that children explore and are adaptable until they ‘settle’: whether they end up cruel or kind depends on what they do with childhood experiences. In our world, you have to look carefully to discover someone’s true personality; if they are good people, or bad people, you can usually sense it, although it might take time. Task 3.1 On Stagework , go to Productions - His Dark Materials - Daemons . Notice how it was decided to represent daemons on stage. In Lyra’s world, inner spiritual realities are described as visible entities (good as well as bad). Task 3.2 Think about what would be appropriate daemons for the following characteristics: Proud, Arrogant, Cruel, Lazy, Independent, Kind , Cautious, Ambitious, Opinionated, Fearful, Leader, Follower. What animal daemons can you suggest for some of these? Why? What animal best suits your personality? Body, Soul and Spirit Sometimes, people are described as “body, soul and spirit”. • The body is our physical self. Most people are not very happy with it: they want to be taller, or thinner, or more beautiful, or have a better nose. • The soul is our personality, emotions, creativity – our inner world which is sometimes called ‘spiritual’. This is what the daemon represents in Lyra’s world. • The spirit is that bit of us some people believe lives on. Some believe that it is reincarnated into a new body, some that it goes to paradise, or heaven or into some heavenly state. Some believe that it simply dies with our physical body. The Bible (St Paul) talks of the spirit being the eternal part of us that lives on after death. Life after death is a mystery. In HDM, the discovery that the spirits of people live on in the underworld leads to the task of setting these spirits free so they can merge into everything. The good need not fear death. According to the Bible (New Testament), the physical body will be resurrected in the last days. HDM explains the underworld as just a stage through which the dead go: their absorption into all matter is the teaching of Hinduism and Buddhism. Task 3.3 According to Christianity, only humans have souls and spirits, not animals; and in HDM, animals do not have daemons. Do you think humans are special or are just intelligent animals? We sometimes say that someone’s will or spirit is broken. This can be done by violence – beatings, or abuse; or psychologically through sarcasm. If you tell someone they are an idiot for long enough, they may begin to believe it. This is what happens in HDM when the daemon is cut away from the child – the child becomes a zombie, not a real person, not fully alive – and may even die of despair. We see all this in the children whose daemons have been cut away. Think of ways that people in our world can have their spirits broken – by dictators who terrorise their people, or criminals who rule by fear, or parents who terrorise their children, or children who bully and terrorise others. Write about some examples from your imagination; and when doing this, think about how people can fight against it (non-violently, of course). Mrs Coulter abusing Lyra There is a good example in HDM when Lyra is staying with Mrs Coulter, who has turned out to be her mother. She seems to Lyra to be kind and good, as well as rich and beautiful: but – Lyra mentioned Dust to Mrs Coulter, and her daemon “snapped his head up to look at her, bristling, as if it were charged itself. Mrs Coulter laid a hand on his back” (NL, p.83). It was just like seeing shock in someone’s eyes and expression before they quickly cover it up. A little later, in a petty row, the golden monkey leaps at Pantalaimon (as a polecat), pinning him to the carpet, with a paw around his throat and pulling his ears. “Not angrily, either, but with a cold curious force that was horrifying to see and even worse to feel. Lyra sobbed in terror. “Don’t! Please! Stop hurting us!” Mrs Coulter looked up from her flowers. “Do as I tell you, then” she said. “I promise”. (NL,p.87) Task 3.4 On Stagework go to Productions - His Dark Materials - Lyra meets Mrs Coulter , look at the video clips and read the script. What kind of person would you describe Mrs Coulter as? Who is good, who is evil? It is hard to know who is good and who is evil. HDM opens with the Master trying to poison Lord Asriel in order, it is said, to avert greater danger. However the Master turns out to be a friend and protector of Lyra, keeps her as safe as possible, and gives her the alethiometer to guide and protect her. Fader Coram, whose down-to-earthness we trust, says of him: “I see the Master having terrible choices to make; whatever he chooses will do harm; but maybe if he does the right thing, a little less harm will come about than if he chooses wrong. God preserve me from having to make that kind of choice.” (NL p.129). Mrs Coulter in the story is generally bad, and is ambitious and feared – her actions include murder and the kidnapping and torturing of children. Yet in the end she protects her daughter and sacrifices her own life. Task 3.5 On Stagework go to Productions - His Dark Materials - Alethiometer , where Lyra is given the alethiometer. Discuss the purpose of the alethiometer. Task 3.6 Heaven, hell or what? As a class use Stagework and go to Productions - His Dark Materials - The Boatman on Stage . Look at the clips and read the script The boatman comes from the ancient Greek story of the spirits of the dead having to cross the river Styx to get into Hades, the underworld. This is the parallel world that Lyra and Will enter. Lyra’s daemon and Will’s soul cannot enter but are separated from them. It is a real psychological hell, organised by the harpy ‘No Name’. The land of the dead is revealed as a prison created by religious fear – people need to be freed from this fear and a route out into paradise is organised for the spirits, guided by the newly directed Harpies. Task 3.7 For most people, life after death is a mystery that we will never understand. Pullman’s story suggests that the atoms of the spirits merge into total being (a bit like a drip of water becoming part of an ocean). Research: find out what Buddhism teaches about nirvana. Background Notes for Teachers Daemons Milton wrote of a council of spirits called Pandaemonium: this gives us the word daemon, and maybe also the name of Pan (Pantalaimon) Lyra’s daemon. In Greek, panta means everything, and laimon the throat, Pan’s normal resting location. The body + daemon is the whole person; the throat is the source of life (eating and drinking) and of communication. Buddhism Teachers do not need to have an in-depth knowledge of Buddhism for this unit because the discussion is at a general level. Those who wish to find out more will find the following short and inexpensive guide from Oxford University Press useful: Damien Keown, Buddhism, A Very Short Introduction , (ISBN 0-19-285386 4). | 
