Serpent

From Srafopedia

Symbolic Background

The serpent in the His Dark Materials trilogy is the same idea as the serpent in Genesis. By enticing Adam and Eve to eat the God-forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden (and so gain knowledge of right and wrong, shame and fear and so on), the serpent makes them commit "Original Sin" - the sin that caused all of humanity to be sinful and forced God to cast Adam and Eve out of the perfect Garden of Eden, with the words:

"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return"

This, in the final chapters of Northern Lights, is used by Lord Asriel to put his case to Lyra that God himself is partly sinful by saying that the human race was created, and still is, dust (it is possible to interpret this as the human race being Dust).

Relevance to His Dark Materials

The serpent in the His Dark Materials trilogy is the character Mary Malone. Originally a scientist for the Dark Matter Research Unit, she leaves her world (the world that we know), to pursue her own destiny as the one that causes Will and Lyra to fall in love. Obviously, one person cannot do this alone, but Mary Malone was the "straw that broke the donkey's back", causing a liason of unclear proportions between Will and Lyra, and saving Dust from escaping each world, and therefore saving all sentient life upon them. Mary Malone was also responsible for the creation of the Amber Spyglass, created from the amber sap of the trees in the Mulefa world, allowing her to see what was happening to the particles of Dust that should have been falling from the sky.

Sir Charles Latrom's dæmon is also a serpent.