The Dune Reread is about to kill a very important man, then arrive at an awakening of our psychic abilities! That sounds like fun, right? Well… that’s where you’d be wrong.
Index to the reread can be located here! And don’t forget this is a reread, which means that any and all of these posts will contain spoilers for all of Frank Herbert’s Dune series. If you’re not caught up, keep that in mind.
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There is a legend that the instant the Duke Leto Atreides died a meteor streaked across the skies above his ancestral palace on Caladan.
— the Princess Irulan: “Introduction to A Child’s History of Muad’Dib”
Summary
Baron Harkonnen watches his forces trap the Atreides fighters and leave them to die in a cave. Piter de Vries arrives to tell him that the Sardaukar have captured the duke, and the baron thinks that he will have to kill Piter very soon—but not before the people of Arrakis are made to hate him so that Feyd-Rautha can become their savior. He has Yueh brought in, and the man knows immediately that Wanna is dead. The baron says he will keep his end of the bargain and permit him to join her, letting Piter kill him as Yueh gasps his last words, claiming that they did not defeat him. He demands to see Leto, and finds that some of the wind has been taken from his sails over Yueh’s words. He asks about Paul and Jessica, and Piter is forced to admit that the men sent to dispose of them were found dead, though it might have been a worm that caused the problem. One of the duke’s men got away, either Halleck or Idaho in all probability. The baron asks after Kynes, aggravated that he’s nowhere to be found when he’s supposed to be the Emperor’s man.
Leto can hear them talking through a veil of drugs and knows that Jessica and Paul are at least safe. The baron berates Piter for killing Yueh too quickly before they knew everything, noting the absence of the ducal signet ring. The duke is coming in and out, and remembers the tooth. When he finally comes to he’s groggy and mesmerized by the baron’s propensity for compulsive touch. Baron Harkonnen questions him, demanding to know where Jessica and Paul are, wondering if he sent them to live with the Fremen. He insists that if he doesn’t comply, Piter will torture him of the information. The duke sees that the baron is about to move away, so he breaks the tooth and expels the gas. Piter dies, but the baron’s shield combined with the clue of Piter’s choking helps the baron gets away to safety in time. He appoints a new captain of the guard just as one of the Emperor’s Sardaukar comes for a report on Leto, as the Emperor wanted to be certain that he died without pain.
Baron Harkonnen is upset because he knows that the Sardaukar colonel bashar will see the scene before it’s been cleaned up and realize that he slipped—and that the Emperor will see that as weakness. He consoles himself with the fact that the Emperor did not find out about the Atreides raid on their spice stores. He knows that he’ll have to put Rabban in charge now on Arrakis to get his plan moving again. He tells a nearby guard that he’s hungry again and wants them to bring a boy to his sleeping chambers that they bought on Gamont, and to drug him so there’s no struggle. The boy looks like Paul.
Commentary
The baron is like a great vacuum that does nothing but consume, and the narrative here supports that through exposition and his own thought process. Everyone around him is a “rabbit” while he is a carnivore. As he watches the battle at the beginning of this section, all of the description terms are related to consuming; “The guns nibbled at the caves”; “Slowly measured bites of orange glare”; “The Baron could feel the distant chomping”…. The Baron Harkonnen’s mode of destruction is by hunting and then absorbing things into his being.
His ever-precise control is given even more credence here, and it makes a great deal of sense when considering the alternative; the the baron was nothing but a pile of wants, then he could never achieve power. Instead, he is precisely controlled in all things to an extreme. While puzzling over Yueh’s threat, the confusion results in a lack of control that causes him to raise his voice to an inappropriate decibel and even this very slight change is extremely bothersome to him. Because his indulgences are so over the top, his control must be even more sharp. This is further played out in his knowledge of the vices of literally every person in his employ. He only keeps on people he can manipulate, and he knows everyone’s sticking point as a matter of professionalism.
The description of Leto’s death here is beautifully done. The random surfacing of thoughts, the confusing and blankness. I’m not sure how that would relate to a poisoning, but if you’ve ever been knocked out (say with anesthesia for surgery), the sensation is much the same. It’s only odd in its abruptness, as a character who has been so important up until now dies with very little fanfare. But then, death is seldom all that grand in reality, so perhaps it’s more appropriate.
The use of descriptors get a bit irritating here because Herbert really sticks it to us in terms of equating their relative levels of badness with their personal looks and traits. In some cases it can be clever—such as Leto noting the baron’s roving touch, making the character’s mere presence seem like an assault. But then there’s the repetition of “effeminate” where Piter is concerned, thereby equating the idea of an effeminate man with great evil. It sort of makes me glad that he dies so quickly so we don’t have to keep hearing it over and over.
And then there’s the now explicit mention of the baron going to rape a drugged boy. This is grotesque on several levels; we have rape, pedophilia, slavery, and then the mention of the boy looking like Paul. Which gets an extra layer of awful stacked on when we find out just one section later that Paul is technically his grandson, though he doesn’t yet know it. Here’s the part where everyone shouts “but the Baron Harkonnen is based on the debauchery of Roman aristocracy and they practiced pederasty, so it’s totally fine for Herbert to drop this in here!”
Look. When you create a society where you code good and evil very carefully, and evil is codified by using both homosexuality and pedophilia and linking the two, and there is little-to-no mention of anyone else in this universe being queer without being evil, I am going to have a problem. I have the problem in part because queer people are not pedophiles (or evil obviously), and in part because Paul Atreides’s character is largely based off of T.E. Lawrence—who was gay. But, of course, Paul is not gay because he’s the main character and the “good guy” for a certain definition. Both Saying that someone is a product of their time is all well and good, but it’s still upsetting and disappointing to have one of my favorite books make it clear that the only place for any form of queerness in this universe is alongside the most heinous brand of evil. It’s not a great feeling.
EDIT: It has been pointed out in the comments by Crane that T.E. Lawrence was likely asexual, so my sincere apologies for the inaccurate label. All sources I’ve read labeled him as gay, but that could have easily been the result of academics without an understanding of LGBTQIA identities presuming that someone with homoromantic leanings was automatically homosexual–or presuming that a person who is aromantic and asexual must simply be “hiding their homosexuality.” Both are incorrect assumptions, of course. I’ll do more research, since I’m now deeply curious about error.
Moving away from that, I think it’s important to highlight how Baron Harkonnen uses the phrase “I’m hungry” to refer to all manner of hunger, not just a need for food. This drives home the concept of his “evilness” being about consumption, tied to how much he can ingest, power included. And his rate of consumption is constant; he literally flits from hunger to political machinations (which is about his hunger for power) to hunger again. There is no room for anything else at all. In some ways it makes the baron seems less than human—he is a great gaping maw, a black hole for things to fall into.
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O Seas of Caladan
O people of Duke Leto —
Citadel of Leto fallen,
Fallen forever…— from “Songs of Muad’Dib by the Princess Irulan
Summary
Paul is sitting in the stilltent with his mother, having been rescued from the impending wormsign by Duncan Idaho. He’s trying to parse out a sudden awakening in his abilities, which seems like Mentat power only more. Suddenly he can see things far more clearly than his mother, and he tries to process the grief of his father’s death and finds nothing. Thinking back to Gurney’s words on mood, he realizes that now it not the time to feel. Jessica is talking of gathering what Atreides men have escaped, but Paul insists that they must secure their atomics. Jessica realizes the shift in Paul and finds herself fearing it. He has her turn on the receiver Idaho left them, and they hear that Sardaukar are running around in Atreides uniform; the Emperor wants the Guild to be angry with them for destroying their bank, effectively marooning them on Arrakis so that they can be wiped out.
Paul tells Jessica that they can wait another day for Idaho to return, but they must leave at night because there’s chance he might have been captured by that point, and they can’t survive without supplies forever. He has to explain to Jessica that the people who truly control this planet are the Fremen—they are paying the Guild in spice to keep satellites from keeping careful track of what goes on on Arrakis, the real reason why weather satellites would have been so expensive. Jessica is sure he can’t know what yet without being a Mentat, but Paul tells her he will never be that, that he’s a freak instead. He thinks to himself that he wants to mourn his father, but he’s not sure that he’ll ever be able to do it.
Jessica examines their Fremkit and the tools within. Paul notes their sophistication, betraying advancement that they are hiding from outsiders. Paul realizes that this may be the only convenient chance he has to tell her about Leto’s true suspicions. He tells her that Leto never believed Hawat, that he loved her, and that his only regret was not making her Duchess. Jessica cries, and as Paul is still unable to mourn, he fixes his mind on the problems at hand. He feels all possible futures stretching out before him, all of the people and paths. He thinks of being accepted by the Guildsman, but knows that his sight extends farther than navigating spaceships.
As he extends his computations and begins to see the finer detail of things, he feels as though there’s a bomb ticking down inside of him, and proceeds to throw a tantrum (then instinctively logs the reaction in another part of his mind). Jessica tries to calm him, but he begins asking what she wanted for him, why she decided to give him this training that has awakened “the sleeper.” He tells her that he has had a waking dream that she must listen to; he has realized that the spice gets into everything and that it would kill them to be without it—they will never leave without taking a part of Arrakis with them. He tells her that spice changes a person, but because of her training he can see the change instead of leaving it in his subconscious. He tells her that he knows she’ll give birth to his sister on Arrakis, and that the Bene Gesserit have bought them a place on this world. How he knows of this and the Missionaria Protectiva is frightening to Jessica. Paul feels some compassion toward her and tries to explain the view into the future he has received, where the path is hidden and where he sees more clearly. Jessica realizes that he has come to terms with mortality and that he is no longer a child at all.
She brings up the Harkonnens and Paul tells her to put those “twisted humans” from her mind. She tries to tell him not to use the term human without awareness, but he has more information for her: they are Harkonnens. Jessica tries to insist that they might be from a renegade house, but Paul tells her that she’s the baron’s own daughter from once dalliance in his youth when he let himself be seduced. Jessica realizes that she was meant to bear the Kwisatz Haderach had everything worked out correctly, and that Paul is that. But he insists that he isn’t, that he’s something that even the Bene Gesserit could not predict. He sees two main paths toward the future, one where he confronts the baron, another where a religious war begins under Atreides banners. He does not want to choose that way, but he sees that the only way to remingle all these genes, to move forward, is jihad.
Jessica asks again if the Fremen will take them in, and Paul confirms it, saying that they will call him Muad’Dib: “The One Who Points the Way.” And now that he’s laid it all out he finds he can mourn his father, and begins to cry.
Commentary
And now the “science of discontent” that was mentioned in the opening of a section in last week’s reread comes to the fore. The stress Paul undergoes in their escape triggers a release of his abilities, and suddenly he can see many paths, many timelines, many bits of minutiae that propels him far ahead of his mother’s abilities. Certain themes that will be very important going forward surface right here: Paul’s disconnect from his humanity, the difficulty in being able to see many possible futures, the fear that his power inspires in others, the idea of his arrival being in step with the Kwisatz Haderach yet something more.
I like this perhaps more than the average mythic arc because Paul’s “specialness” is merely intrinsic to the circumstances of his birth, not something that Herbert pretends he earns through hard work and sacrifice in the traditional sense. Which is not to say that Paul’s training up to this point hasn’t been helpful, but more than when Paul finally unlocks his abilities, it’s not his Special Destiny Time where he learns how to be a hero and accept how great and important he is—he’s already keyed into the near-full extent these powers, and their blessings are circumspect at best. Not all protagonists can be awesome people who learn how to use their abilities responsibly, and feel good about the things they do. Especially not Paul Atreides.
Paul keeps his word to his father and tells his mother than Leto never mistrusted her and wanted to marry her, and while it is a moving sequence, it’s always fascinating how emotions are set firmly in the background of this story. Or they’re refocused—part of the interest in this moment is observing how Paul is incapable of connecting to his own emotions while his mother is in tears, his sudden instinct to look outside of himself and catalogue his own reactions and outbursts as part of computation. He claims that this is beyond what an average Mentat would do, which makes you wonder how precisely that is true.
This is the point where Jessica’s place in the narrative shifts and takes a backseat to Paul’s coming of age. Her choices are still something that must be heavily scrutinized however, because they are what has allowed all of these things to come to pass. It is perhaps perfectly summed up in one of my favorite exchanges of the series:
“You!” he said.
‘I’m here, Paul,” she said. “It’s all right.”
“What have you done to me?” he demanded.
In a burst of clarity, she sensed some of the roots in the question, said: “I gave birth to you.”
The fact that the answer calms Paul down is one of those perfect details. And while Paul does question her decision to train him in the Bene Gesserit fashion, this ultimate answer is still here: You cannot blame your mother for giving birth to you any more than she can blame you for being born. That is always the root of your relationship, regardless of how it grows and changes over time.
This is also the first time in the book that we see the word jihad if I’m not mistaken, and it comes in Paul’s awakening to the religious war that is coming on the path he must likely follow. There are a lot of revelations in this section; the reveal that Jessica is the Baron Harkonnen’s daughter, that the spice is addictive and you eventually must continue consuming it to live, that the Fremen are truly in control of Arrakis by keeping eyes off of the planet. They are good reveals for the end of “Book One” because they leave us with many more questions to start into a new part of the narrative.
Paul Atreides is no longer a child, and the time of Muad’Dib is on the rise.
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And here is your audio snippet for the week!
Emmet Asher-Perrin is really looking forward to Book Two. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
I can’t add anything to your analysis of the second part, which I really enjoyed.
Regarding the Baron – your description brings to mind Ungoliant in Lord of the Rings to me. More of a primal force.
“Saying that someone is a product of their time is all well and good, but it’s still upsetting and disappointing to have one of my favorite books make it clear that the only place for any form of queerness in this universe is alongside the most heinous brand of evil. It’s not a great feeling.”
I always looked at it as the Baron is disgusting and evil because he enjoys raping people.
The Baron is gluttony personified.
“Jessica realizes that she was meant to bear the Kwisatz Haderach”
No, her daughter (who was to be wed to Feyd Rautha Harkonnen, ugh) was to be the mother of the Kwisatz Haderach. Paul came a generation early. Small miscalculation over such a long timeframe.
Oh, and it was a cave complex the Atreides fighters were trapped in, not just one cave.
It’s possible that Jessica was ordered to bear a daughter not because the genetics weren’t ready, but because of the conflict between two houses that carried the necessary genetics. A female child could have been wed to house Harkonnen to end the feud, ensuring a ‘safe’ environment in which neither family would be trying to kill the child, and arguably there’d be sizeable impetus to have the child raised securely, far away from his father, given how the Harkonnens ensure the family madness is passed on. And who else but the Sisterhood would be willing and able to step in…
They assumed they controlled everything. One wonders how long it would take them to duplicate the breeding scheme if Paul had died as they thought. Surely they weren’t so arrogant as to have no backups.
I’m too lazy to go get the book and check, but shouldn’t, in the quote at the beginning, it be “Atreides” and not “Strides”?
@5 – Fixed, thank you!
(This got really long and more complicated as I went on, apologies.)
Your analysis of the Baron as a consumptive force is correct, but I think you’re mistaken on the score of Herbert’s typing homosexuality as universally evil. For a start, look to the Fish Speaker episode in God Emperor of Dune and the way Moneo handles Duncan’s old-fashioned reaction to it. It is a profound error, I think, to assume that Herbert’s treatment of Vladimir Harkonnen as emblematic of his position on anything other than Baron Harkonnen. Consider his reduction of the masculine and feminine to “an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives.” Consider the Baron’s consuming nature as something of an avatar of the very extreme form of that taking force. He’s someone whose every action is destructive, and as such, the one “good” thing he can be said to have done–creating Jessica–was something that was LITERALLY against his nature. The Baron’s sexual orientation is thus emergent from the need to make the Baron self-indulgent in all things, not the other way round. Now that sounds bad, but it ties into a larger point and is not—I don’t think—an outright condemnation of homosexual behavior.
Herbert turns everything about the Baron’s behavior sour: he eats to excess, he can relate to other people only through the manipulation of the worst parts of themselves, he forms no love attachments, he uses his nephews like pawns in pyramid chess. All his sexual enterprises are as removed from, say, Leto’s relationship to Jessica (or Paul’s to Chani) as is possible. That is to say, the Baron is as far from a loving, sexually involved, procreative relationship as can be narratively construed. He is a serial rapist and a pedophile. More than that, his partners are slaves, owned by him (in stark contrast to the equality and respect Paul and Chani share of one another as Fremen, despite Paul’s titles). And yes, he is homosexual, but I don’t think we need condemn Herbert outright for his making this narrative choice. That said, I recognize that some people might write off the above point as heteronormative, but it’s bigger than that. Kindly bear with me, please.
Dune is a series about humanity, in aggregate, overcoming its hierarchical structure. This seems like a strange claim to make about a series with psychic ubermenschen Emperors as their primary figures, but it’s true. Look at Leto II’s Golden Path and why he walked it. Because of this, Herbert’s primary concern—as author and ecologist—lies in the perpetuation of the species within its ecological niche, which is to say “bounded by its Darwinian imperatives.” Namely reproduction, as without reproduction the human race cannot continue on long enough to overcome its animal nature (which is why the human/animal distinction at the beginning is so important). Because of this, Herbert may put some tacit significance on heterosexuality as the social vehicle for said reproduction, and you may consider that heteronormative—that’s your prerogative—but like I say, it’s the Darwinian imperative to continue as a species that takes the front seat.
In God Emperor, Herbert briefly addresses the role he sees homosexuals playing in this reproductive scheme (he refers to it as propagation), and let me tell you, does he ever have Moneo shut Duncan’s homophobia DOWN. “Moneo spoke in a soothing tone, but his words shook Idaho. ‘I will tell you this only once. Homosexuals have been among the best warriors in our history, the berserkers of last resort. They were among our best priests and priestesses…’” (Herbert). Now, this is still tied into Herbert’s essential premise that we all try to self-actualize, and that when something blocks that self-actualization (ie. being forced into the closet by assholes), we tend to collapse into pain-seeking behaviors, namely being soldiers, at least in the context of the scene. He’s also low-key implying that Duncan has some issues to work out, which is hilarious. In this schema, Herbert finds a way for homosexuals to participate in the propagation of the species without directly contributing genetically: by protecting the cultures to which they belong, either as soldiers or as artists or priests, etc.
But the Baron has failed to self-actualize basically from square one. He’s unable to climb up Maslow’s hierarchy and is wrapped up in his pleasures, pleasures which must do nothing except please himself or else Herbert doesn’t make his point as precisely. Again, remember that Jessica is the only good thing the Baron ever did, and it’s something he would never have done willingly under normal circumstances, AND it’s something he doesn’t even KNOW he did. That’s significant. Now I can’t stress strongly enough that the Baron’s homosexual tendencies are subordinate to this point about his consuming nature. That is to say: the Baron is a bad man AND a gay man, he is not bad because he is gay. He’s bad because he cannot self-actualize as a gay man, like Moneo says.
I’ll give you Piter’s descriptors being troubling, but I think even that might be salvageable if you consider Count Fenring, who is generally effeminate (I can’t recall if the word is used of him specifically). He’s a genetic eunuch, and so typed as evil because of his inability to help in propagating the species in any traditional sense. Like the Baron, is is an avatar only of the taking force (and a failed Kwisatz Haderach to boot), and one that doesn’t properly align with the cause of the species. As such, Piter’s descriptors may be a lazy shorthand way of associating him with the Baron and Fenring. Curiously, you’ll note that these characters who are most closely associated with the masculine taking force tend to be more feminine in bearing than Paul or Leto, suggesting that something has “gone wrong” in all three men’s ability to actually relate to women, so they may be symbolically compensating for their lack of femininity in their relationships. This seems counter-productive on Herbert’s part, but it may be that the point he’s making is that anyone who distances themselves from self-actualization, engages in pain-seeking behavior, and fails to participate—even tangentially—in the propagation of the species, in rendered in some way unnatural in their own person. As such, Piter, Vladimir, and Hasimir Fenring’s more effete descriptors may indicate less that something is wrong with femininity more than they indicate that something is wrong with them generally. Gene Wolfe does something similar with the person of the Autarch in New Sun, but that is a point for another day.
While I think those are some excellent points, Christopher Ruocchio, it’s worth pointing out that the themes of Herbert’s work change, as do some of his positions. I don’t think we can interpret Dune in the light of later works because of that fact.
Also, if I recall correctly, Herbert’s positions on homosexuality are said to have changed as he came to terms with his son coming out as gay. I have no clear idea of what his personal views were at the time he wrote Dune. I would also point out, though, that the Baron’s sexual ‘relationships’ are about as far from what we’d expect of a psychologically healthy homosexual as from a psychologically healthy heterosexual. It wouldn’t really help matters if he were interested in raping young girls instead of young boys. And since he tends to murder his victims, the potential ‘saving grace’ of reproduction would never come into the matter. He had children only through the machinations of the Bene Gesserit, and presumably he doesn’t know.
I did not mean to imply that it did, melendwyr! That was certainly not my intent. I only meant to indicate that the Baron’s being homosexual was only another metric by which Herbert might distance the character from Paul or Leto, as a way of heightening the extremity of the Baron’s character. You make a fair point regarding God Emperor’s having no real say on what the original Dune says, but I do not think that my interpretation is any the worse off for it. I’ve never been much bothered by authorial intent, for one (and Herbert was notoriously tight-lipped about these things, thank heavens. Authors can ruin their works gabbling if they’re not careful). But I think the theme of the series taken as a whole is still a legitimate point to be made in literary discourse, and I think there’s enough in Dune proper (the taking force/giving force dialectic, for a start) to make my point without resorting to God Emperor. I brought up God Emperor in the first place primarily to save Herbert’s memory, because it’s the only place I can think of wherein he directly addresses the topic, and people might be moved to crucify his ghost.
I concede your point about a hypothetical heterosexual version of Baron Harkonnen, my only rejoinder there would be to point out only that adding “infanticidal” to the Baron’s list of personality traits might have suspended disbelief a little too far, he’s already a bit ridiculous as a character, and difficult enough to understand properly as is.
Last point: Taken meta-textually, the notion that Herbert’s themes change as he progresses through the series actually reinforces my point about humanity evolving. I doubt it was a planned thing, but consider for example his attitude towards Empire. Paul is very much Pro Imperium (pardon the pun), seeing his reign as a way of controlling the worst excesses of his jihad (his visions showed him a future very much worse, recall. This gives way in Children to the Golden Path. It’s a pity we’ll never see his thesis brought to its conclusion. By the time of Heretics, he’s rid his universe of all the old patriarchal power structures–them being ultimately more concrete and susceptible to damage. He had only to shake off the quieter shackles of the matriarchal Bene Gesserit somehow before ensuring that humanity would be permanently free. I think you can make the case that Herbert’s themes evolve because he is addressing different issues–and if that evolution matches his own maturation, his own progression from animal to human–then all the better.
Looking the comments over, I’m reading some, I assume, men–presumably straight, or at least with internalized “heteronormative” ideas–telling a queer woman how she ought to feel about, or ought to parse, the only representation of not-hetero sexuality and how it is presented in this book and twisting into all sorts of pseudo-academic gymnastics to excuse a classic male author’s writing. Which is…familiar on pretty much every forum I’ve been on.
(I only say pseudo cuz there isn’t nearly enough recombining of critical theory terminology into new made-up words to form a point)
We spend a LOT of time, in and out of academia, debating what writers “meant” or how to take things “in the context of their time.” We watch overly ambitious high school teachers drive students away from literature with heavy-handed interpretations, when it really can be as simple as: the writer screwed up. Cuz they do. All the time. It’s pretty simple, cuz they’re just as human as everyone else.
A product of time? Sure. Personal internalized prejudices? Possibly. Regardless of Herbert’s intentions, or changing attitudes; regardless of his later writing in the series: the argument of the pedophilic raping homosexual who then murders his victims as another manner of showing off the Baron’s evil misses the point of how terribly over the top it already is and yet still seems so acceptable. Same with the constant descriptions of the effeminate men around him and as encompassing evil. We get it from so much else through the narrative.
There’s a reason the trope is called “unfortunate implications” and all the things that term umbrellas over. Like all forms of art and media, literature not only reflects people and society, but helps to shape it, and those who interact with it; media opens people up to and shows them new ideas–or reinforces old ones. People want to see themselves in media, and too often, certain people only see themselves as the criminals, the villains, the bullies, or maybe the victims. They aren’t allowed to be good or heroic in too many stories, and we see it so much it seems perfectly normal and we make long forum posts and even longer journal papers excusing a favorite writer who fell into a old, worn out shorthand–even then!–that regardless of intention of story and character, is disgusting in and of itself, aside from the character’s actual actions.
For all science fiction and fantasy are meant to be the genres of limitless possibilities and new ideas and horizons, they still tend to reflect their times, writers, and a limit to imagination in regards to storytelling beats and character descriptions that are as old as the pyramids, particularly in terms of race, sexuality, and gender issues. This is something that comes up a lot in classic science fiction; I put down Heinlein’s A Stranger in a Strange Land because as much as I liked some other things he wrote (also when I was younger), the gender and sex politics of Stranger just didn’t strike me as “revolutionary”–just more of the same with a different twist to it.
I remember reading Machiavelli’s The Prince, getting to the part about how a ruler is wise to appoint a cruel lieutenant and then depose same “bad guy” in order to win the hearts of his subjects, and thinking that Baron Harkonnen must have read him some Machiavelli.
Going to add another point about the baron. There’s a strong suggestion in the text that the baron, as a young man, was not consenting in whatever happened between him and Jessica’s mother (I’m assuming we’re not taking the Dune books by Anderson as strictly canonical). We also have hints that she used the Voice and possibly other control techniques on him. For example, he tells anyone why he has such a deep distrust of Bene Gesserit even when questioned by Feyd-Ruatha. While I can’t see the baron admitting to a vulnerability to Feyd, telling him he’s seen first hand how manipulative and dangerous the Bene Gesserit can seems like it could be done safely.
Also, it’s worth noting that the baron never fully realizes what happened with Yueh. The baron’s view is that everyone is corruptible or open to manipulation. As I understand it, Suk doctors are supposed to be conditioned in a way that murder is literally unthinkable to them. The baron thinks that he’s set up a situation that gets past that. He’s given Yueh a choice between saving his wife/freeing her from torture and protecting the duke. Instead, the baron broke down Yueh’s conditioning to the point that Yueh wants to kill him and is no longer entirely sane. The baron never grasps that he has driven Yueh to the point that he is willing to let thousands die if that means seeing the baron dead. He’s not a pawn, he’s a scary monster.
A note: T. E. Lawrence was almost certainly asexual, not gay.
From various of his private correspondence:
“For myself, I haven’t tried it, & hope not to.”
“Your last page, about fucking, defeats me wholly. As I wrote (with some courage, I think: few people admit the damaging ignorance) I haven’t ever: and don’t much want to.”
“I couldn’t ever do it, I believe: the impulse strong enough to make me strong enough to make me touch another creature has not yet been born in me.” (this last specifically in the context of homosexual encounters)
It would be nice if you wouldn’t carelessly perpetuate asexual erasure.
Thanks! :-)
Myself, I think Frank Herbert matured over the years he wrote the Dune series and his other books. This explains the discrepancy between books like Dun and the views expressed in God Emperor of Dune. But he’d started with taking pivotal figures in his stories out of the gene pool anyway. Irulan being the most prominent example, Scytale being another, and Edric being a third … then he closes the first trilogy with taking Leto, Paul’s son, out of the gene pool.
Christopher Ruocchio @7 and @9
Count Fenring isn’t presented as evil. He’s Bene Gesserit to the core, yes, but not evil. He and Lady Fenring discuss the evil of the Harkonnens, and how admirable Feyd Rautha would’ve been if raised by the Atreides. And at the end of Dune he refuses to fight Paul.
I first read Dune when I was 12 and the Baron being homosexual went right past me. As a 12 year old in the mid-70’s I simply wasn’t exposed to the idea of homosexuality at all. Heck, I didn’t perceive “effeminate” as being more than a descriptor, sort of the physical opposite of being a tomboy. I knew guys who were “effeminate” but who are definitely straight, girls who were tomboys who are likewise straight, and jocks who turned out to be gay. Consider that Chani, like other Fremen women, is every bit as dangerous in a fight as any man, goes on combat patrol with men, and yet is very feminine.
Having the only openly homosexual character also be a twisted murdering pedophile is definitely presenting the homosexuality as being a part of his twistedness which is certainly, in the 21st century, problematic.
Come to think of it, Dune may have been the first work where I saw any presentation of homosexuality.
“There’s a strong suggestion in the text that the baron, as a young man, was not consenting in whatever happened between him and Jessica’s mother (I’m assuming we’re not taking the Dune books by Anderson as strictly canonical.”
Paul said that the Baron “sampled many pleasures in his youth” and that “he permitted himself to be seduced”. That doesn’t sound like he was forced into the tryst, but he had major regrets afterwards.
I think Yueh was careless to blurt out his triumph to the Baron. Although it’s an hour later, I think it puts the Baron enough on edge that he escapes the tooth by his quick retreat.
@crane – I am sorry for the mistake, and I’ve added an edit in the text to reflect the correct information. Thank you for bringing that to my attention!
@@.-@, they most certainly had multiple avenues for the KH. The way I read it is that the joining of the Atreides and Harkonnen lines was simply the most promising. Christopher Ruocchio pointed out in comment #7 that Fenring was a failed KH, probably one of many over the millennia.
If Paul had died of the Gom Jabbar, Alia was already on the way, though they didn’t know it. If Jessica had died, I expect they would have tried something with Feyd-Rautha (and possibly Princess Irulan, given the relationship between House Corrino and House Atreides?)
I notice this is another example of the trope that people with superpowers are either from rich families, or secretly from rich families.
@@.-@, @19, @20: Feyd-Rautha for sure. We’re explicitly told he’s a genetic treasure when he duels Paul, and as the B.G.’s intended father of the Kwisatz Haderach he would have to be pretty awesome anyway. I’d never considered who they’d match him with if not Alia, though. Irulan does seem like a good candidate.
Do I remember right that they were eager to get a child from her and Paul? Of course any child of his would bring them half his genes, and that’s nothing to sneer at, but I’m sure they’d rather load that child’s other 23 chromosomes with the best stuff they could arrange. Imagine how many generations it would waste if they had to build back up from a child who was genetically half Kwisatz Haderach and half a complete dud. So that certainly suggests that Irulan had the goods.
Farad’n Corrino turns out to have a lot of the goods too. In Children, IIRC, under Jessica’s tutelage he learns to look at his hand at many ages, older and younger. I always used to wonder what to make of that. I kind of suspected it was merely a matter of his controlling his own mind to override his senses. Today, though, I wonder if it isn’t a genuine higher-dimensional vision. He had a share of relevant genes — generally, as a Corrino kinsman of the Atreides, and specifically as a near relative (nephew?) of Count Fenring. And of course, Leto II bears this out by making him and Ghanima the foundation of a new breeding program for prescience-proof humans (which makes the Fenring connection especially relevant).
Whoever Jessica’s mother was, she must have been genetically superb, and I’m sure the B.G. didn’t give Leto I their only copy of those genes.
If I were the Bene Gesserit, I’d also take advantage of foundering Houses: Guide their marital alliance attempts toward useful genes, and then stash those genes away on Tupile. Bring them back as needed by arranging for Tupile-born girls to be trained as B.G. adepts.
One big resource they missed, though, was the Fremen. They had native wild Reverend Mothers. Leto II and Ghanima, with half their genes from Chani (eventually a Reverend Mother herself), had no less talent than Paul. If we credit humanity’s need to mix its genes through the jihad as one of the forces that made Paul what he was — the unexpected Kwisatz Haderach arriving in the only circumstance that could take him from B.G. control — then I’m inclined to think the human species must have collectively created the agents of the jihad as well. (I believe the Paul-as-expression-of-species-needs bit was in Dune, but it might have been Messiah.) And of course, the Fremen had to be remarkable humans in order to survive the desert, transform the planet, control the Guild, and never give a sign of it to offworlders.
Someone has also pointed out (rrr, I forget who) that Paul in Messiah prophesies a lot about his unborn son, but never about his daughter. Perhaps she too is an early, incomplete manifestation of prescience-proofness? It makes another good reason for Leto II to start his program with her.
@20, while it is the trope about rich/powerful families, there’s in-story logic to it. The Bene Gesserit are manipulating politics as well as genetics. They don’t just want to breed people with certain abilities, they want those people to be in positions of power
@21, you are right that they discounted the Fremen. They did this specifically because they had no idea the genetic stock they would be getting in such a union. This is why Irulan secretly gave Chani a contraceptive, to get the genetic line back under control. This is something they had next to no hope of if he sired a child by Chani.
If I recall correctly, Paul’s prescience did not see Ghanima. He knew he was having a son, but the daughter was a complete surprise to him. So your theory may have root in fact.
@23 – hah, suddenly now I’m thinking of Vader’s complete surprise that he also had a daughter and not just a son (even though one would think he had sensed the presence of the babies at some point).
Sorry, geek moment :)
Things I Am No Longer Allowed To Do To My Pregnant Partner:
* Tell the bump “I feel your presence!”
* Tell the bump “I am your father: you know it to be true.”
@24, never apologize for a geek moment. Geekiness is life. :) You’re right though. I never saw the correlation between Vader and Paul in that regard. Since Lucas was known to borrow parts of Star Wars from other stories, I wonder if he got that aspect from Dune.
@25, my wife is currently pregnant. I am 100% doing this.
My son’s name is Luke, although we have mostly refrained from the whole ‘I am your father’ thing, haha. (I mean, really, the line doesn’t even actually have Luke’s name in it anyway). Mostly ;)
Congratulations to you both :)
@27, Thank you! It was certainly a surprise, but a pleasant one.
Also, I have a son named Connor (Highlander). Gotta pass on the geekiness.
And I immediately read/heard that in my head as, “A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.” HAHA. I have kind of a dumb love for dropping innocuous Star Wars quotes (but with the right cadence) into every day situations/conversation. My favorite being “….Possibly.”
I am honestly kind of waiting for somebody to suggest going to the beach simply so I can tell them, in detail, why I do not like the beach. (Hint: it gets everywhere. Anakin speaks 100% truth on this topic.).
And in fact, that brings us back to Dune/Arrakis, which is probably a planet I’d hate to live on for aforementioned reasons :)
@29, I love to quote Obi-Wan and tell people that “a great deal in life depends upon your point of view”. :) It fits in so many situations.
Agreed on sand. Anakin had it right, even if he sounded like a dork when he said it. Arrakis would not be on my list of vacation destinations.
Regarding Ghanima: My own understanding is that she is the living demonstration of a principle Leto II refers to in God Emperor of Dune: no visionary sees everything, no vision is complete. Paul was operating entirely on his memories of a vision, and that vision was so accurate it was as though he were sighted. But there were tiny flaws that no one could notice, and one that stuck out.
I think that, if Ghanima were immune to prescience, Leto II would not have had to work for so long to recreate the effect. Count Fenrig was such a person, and something was profoundly wrong with his genetics (he’s called a “genetic eunuch”). I grant you, Leto was trying to create a dominant version that could be swiftly bred into all humanity, so I suppose it’s possible Ghanima had some less robust form of the trait. But Alia never expresses anything unusual about Ghanima, or specifically fails to see her, and her prescient visions are on a level with Paul’s.
@29, 30: Cross-reference Anakin’s short, accurate dissertation on sand with “Seaside Lament,” by da Vinci’s Notebook.
(Although, note the one simple technique for not getting sand in your pants, alluded to in the song’s bridge.)
OMG :) I didn’t realize there was such a wealth of sand hating related art.
If we’re talking about songs bemoaning sand (this is totally related to Dune, right? I feel so bad for undermining Emily’s very insightful analysis.), this is totally hysterical. To me, at least. Star Wars, the Musical!
(The whole thing is hilarious but if you really want to hear about sand, skip to about 2:53. But if you do watch the whole thing there’s a little stinger at the end).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqc6Vvq10_I
@33. Sheer genius. I want the entire musical now! It almost (but not quite) makes the incredibly awkward scenes with Anakin and Padme watchable.
Getting back to the subject at hands (although I love the SW comments!), this is where I knew Paul could be the ruler he needed to be in this mess. He felt so cold right here. But it was absolutely necessary. It just makes his meeting Chani that much more important. Something has to balance that out.
@35 – that is a really interesting observation, because I was reading Dune at about the same time I was starting Wheel of Time and there are ton of parallels you could make there between Rand/Paul, the Aes Sedai/Bene Gesserit and the Aiel/Fremen and the various prophecies/purposes each group has for their chosen one, and the fact that said chosen one unites elements considered both masculine and feminine. I’ve never heard if Jordan (who was pulling from numerous sources) ever stated if Dune was a direct reference or not. And when you mentioned Chani I thought, ‘oh, that’s kind of like how Rand was becoming pretty stone cold crazy without his lovers to temper him’. In and of itself that’s probably a common trope, but it does add a little more to the comparison (especially as one of his lovers was Aiel)
@33, that was a work of art :)
Here’s a refrigerator moment years in the making; it had not occurred to me until now to wonder, in the Year 10,000 with antigravity LEDs or the equivalent universally used for lighting, how in the world “hot tallow” would be considered an improvised torture method!