Read-A-Thon Mini Challenge: Most Hated Character
Posted 11th April 2010
Category: Challenges Genres: N/A
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This mini challenge is hosted on Lindsey’s site. Participents must discuss their most hated book character. Be aware you may encounter spoilers here.
The thing about Mrs. Coulter of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials is that not only is she a dreadful person, there is, in a way, two of her. In the series humans have “daemons” which are akin to their soul; creatures who follow them around guiding them, lending an ear, and sometimes hurting others for their human. This is what Mrs. Coulter’s daemon does often on the woman’s behalf. So you might have thought that the woman herself is completely evil a person, but she gets worse.
Mrs. Coulter is the founder and active leader of The Oblation Board, a church-approved body that hides it’s missions under a cover of seeking to do right. What they really do is kidnap children and do terrible things to them. It seems the only child Mrs. Coulter is willing to protect is Lyra, the books’ heroine.
The Oblation Board separate children from their daemon, believing daemons the key to ridding a person of original sin. Although a child can live without their daemon, as experiments showed, it is only a half-life full of pain, depression, and confusion. The child may get their daemon back but the relationship will never be the same again, the creature will be but a pet. This is demonstrated by way of a nurse at the Oblation Board’s head quarters who walks around as if in a daze with an equally dazed daemon.
Where their is Mrs. Coulter there is also her golden monkey (she kept her own intact) a creature so wretched along with it’s human that it will take hold of another daemon and keep it tight. You can imagine the effect this has on the corresponding human. Where there is Mrs. Coulter there are people who go against the unwritten rule and actually touch other’s daemons. Can you imagine the pain of someone literally touching your soul, someone who has only evil in their heart?
Mrs. Coulter is a wealthy lady, prim and proper, but this is a mask. Even if she believes she is right, and I question this, though it wouldn’t be entirely impossible given the nature of the church in the books, she commits an evil as awful as any devil. Stealing the children she works on in itself is a far lesser crime. Mrs. Coulter will get what she wants and once she’s got that she’ll be coming for you next.
April 11, 2010, 2:22 pm
That sounds horrible! You are awesome though for powering through! Thanks for participating in the most hated mini-challenge!
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April 11, 2010, 11:34 am
Hold your eyelids up! Almost at the finish line! You can do it!!