sarahtaylorgibson:

Okay but chapters 17 and 18 of Inkheart. For those of you who need recollecting, that’s when Meggie and Co. are taken into the tumbledown church where Capricorn holds court, which I will remind you has been defiled and washed a violent, decadent bloodred. The statue of the saints have been pulled down an replaced with a garish statue of self-worshiping, megalomaniac Capricorn, and he’s erected a throne on the spot where the altar once stood. Capricorn, deathly pale Capricorn with his crimson robes, is always described in terms of absolute evil (we’re not going to talk about the fact that Capricorn is the astrological sign of the goat, which is traditionally associated with Satan) so I don’t think it’s a stretch to pick up some hellish overtones here. And then there’s Dustfinger, the betrayer, crouched on the steps leading up to the throne like a dog at the seat of his master, stinking from the guilt of dragging a self-sacrificing magical man (or girl, alternate readings are a thing) in for humiliation and extortion, and if that doesn’t smack of Judas I don’t know what does.

And then it gets better because Dustfinger is ordered to light the fire that consumes nearly every copy of Inkheart, and even though he rebels at the last second, the damage has already been done. While knowledge (and the salvation it offers) is consumed by flames Capricorn assures Mo that he’s always been able to have as many worldly servants as he likes because "there’s a lonely boy who wants to play with fire in every village.“ And I know that line is not addressed to Dustfinger, our sineater, our trickster, our tragic never-the-hero poised on the precipice of light and darkness with his soul up for grabs, but it’s not a frikin accident.

For such stalwartly humanistic work (Cornelia Funke makes it clear that Meggie is quite happy to have grown up without God and is moderately baffled when it comes to religion) it is just rife with religious imagery. And no I don’t think it’s allegorical or anything, I was just like what a beautiful muddle of symbolism and had to share.