As I was thoroughly engrossed reading His Dark Materials the other day I didn’t blog on this as soon as I wanted; but a certain passage stood out to me.
In chapter 6, Lighted Fliers, in The Subtle Knife Lee Scoresby takes it upon himself to find out whether Stanislaus Grumman is actually dead or not. His head was the one Lord Asriel displayed for the scholars at Oxford. Scoresy receives the assistance of an old Tartar named Umaq from the Ob region. Umaq agrees to drive Scoresby, via dog sled to an observatory where Scoresby hopes to gather information about Grumman.
Umaq immediately stood out to me, he’s intriguing. He doesn’t speak well but he gets his point across, which is that he and his people know what is going on in the world(s). Umaq tells Scoresby the sky opened before “many thousand generation.’ He even goes so far as to tell Scoresby about the spirit world and a chance of a “big war. Spirit War.” It turns out that Scoresby gathers as much info on Grumman from Umaq as he did at the observatory where the priest nearly killed him. Umaq says about Grumman, “Maybe he not dead, maybe he is. Maybe neither dead nor alive. In spirit world. Maybe he in spirit world. Already I say too much. Say no more now.”
That’s about all we hear from Umaq, and it’s really all we need to hear as he has fulfilled his role in the story. I would bet that if you did some research one could write a good paper about characters and patterns in literature such as Umaq: the driver or transporter who is also somewhat of a messenger and prophet and who know a lot more about what’s going on than he appears to. Pullman does an excellent job incorporating Umaq into the story and he is one of my favorite side characters thus far in the story.
One last pic: Go Iorek!
