"Handling" Wonder: Tools, Tasks, and the Enchantment of Materialistic Engagement in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy

The centrality of objects to alternative universes can be most palpably surmised from the plethora of titles feeding the fantasy canon. From J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings to Alan Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen , C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , and Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara to Jonathan Stroud’s The Amulet of Samarkand , countless fantasies ceaselessly devote special value to nonhuman materiality in thriving, sentient terms. The genre’s mobilization of things often takes place in synchronization with human work, the overall effect of which produces a sense of enchantment both within the text as well as in the reader’s mind. This article studies the link between human efforts and man-made objects in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy (1995–2000), whose three installments include The Golden Compass (the American title for the British Northern Lights ), The Subtle Knife , and The Amber Spyglass . It argues that meticulous expressions of practiced labor in the form of embodied tasks are key to the particular sense of magical wonder being worked out by Pullman. While much critical attention has been paid to the series’ human-animal relationships in order to understand its specific variety of enchantment, not to mention the role of philosophi cal and theological debates therein, a detailed study of human gestures in concert with the titular tools is conspicuously absent. Leaning on fresh theories of materialistic engagement hitherto unused in children’s literature research and literary research in general, the article lays bare the intricate mechanisms that undergird the trilogy’s tool-based activities. It creatively brings the insights of the British anthropologist Tim Ingold and American sociologist Richard Sennett to bear upon Pullman’s