One Emperor enters! A different Emperor leaves!
It is the final countdown for Dune! The last section of the book!
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.
* * *
And Muad’Dib stood before them, and he said: “Though we deem the captive dead, yet does she live. For her seed is my seed and her voice is my voice. And she sees unto the farthest reaches of possibility. Yea, unto the vale of the unknowable does she see because of me.”
—from “Arrakis Awakening” by the Princess Irulan
Summary
The Baron Harkonnen waits for the Emperor to enter, as he was summoned for a reason he knows not. The presence of Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohaim reveals that this is a very important meeting. The Emperor asks him where Thufir Hawat is. The baron admits that Hawat has been gone for five days, that he was meant to land with smugglers and infiltrate the Fremen. He admits the poison he has been using on Hawat, knowing that the Mentat will die soon either way. The Emperor is very angry over how much of his time this difficulty has taken up. He asks if the baron has taken hostages, which he has not—because the Fremen don’t seem to care about them, treating each hostage as if they were already dead. The Emperor suggests that he has taken the wrong ones, and the Baron Harkonnen realizes that he must know something.
The Emperor reveals a little girl—the sister of Muad’Dib. Alia is hardly impressed with the baron, and she says so, seeming unperturbed by the situation. She claims that she allowed herself to be captured so that she would not have to tell her brother that his son was dead. The Emperor admits that his light force just barely got away with three prisoners… from the southern reaches that the baron insisted were impossible to reach. The Emperor believes that Baron Harkonnen has been lying to him, that he knew of all of this. The Reverend Mother suggests that this is not the case, which Shaddam can hardly believe, but Alia confirms it, stating that her father was never in league with the baron and that they have never met before. She reveals herself to be Duke Leto’s daughter, and the sister to Paul Muad’Dib.
The Emperor commands her to be quiet, but she insists that she will not take his orders and looks to the Reverend Mother for confirmation. The old woman calls Alia an abomination, saying that her birth should have been prevented at all costs, but one of their own betrayed them. Alia shows her how it truly was, and that she played a hand in it as well. The Reverend Mother wants her killed, but the Emperor wants Alia to communicate with her brother and tell him to surrender for her life. Alia says she will not, and that her brother is coming presently regardless. There is a rumble and the Emperor gets word from his men. He says that they will regroup in space, and that they should give Alia’s body to the storm.
But Alia is not afraid and she backs into the baron’s reach. The baron grabs hold of her on the Emperor’s behalf and she stabs him with a needle, telling him that he’s met “the Atreides gom jabbar.” He dies abruptly. The shield wall is breached. Muad’Dib’s forces shoot off the nose of the Emperor’s ship. The doors open and Alia rushes off to find a knife and kill more of the enemy. Fremen warriors seem to emerge from the storm and attack. Then sandworms arrive carrying many more troops. The Sardaukar are briefly awed by the impossible sight before launching into battle. The Emperor and his people are driven back and sealed against the onslaught, and he looks to the faces in the room with him. He sees his daughter and the Reverend Mother, then looks to the Guildsmen. One of them has lost a constant lens, and his true eye such a deep dark blue that it is nearly black.
The Emperor tells the Reverend Mother that they need a plan, and she agrees. Their plan is treachery. She tells him to send of Count Fenring.
Commentary
So. However you expected the baron to die when you first read this book, I bet it wasn’t like that.
I do love it, though. I love Alia and her inability to be silenced, and I love her no-nonsense desire to dispatch her horrid grandfather. It is no surprise to me that she does not make it into the final section of the book; she is untamable, and would take center stage in Paul’s theater no matter what anyone wanted. As well she should.
Also, “the Atreides gom jabbar.” Think on that for a moment. If Alia takes up that mantle, then she is a being who can separate out the animals from the humans, isn’t she? That’s what Gaius Helen Mohaim said, after all. We don’t get enough time to sit with Alia as a character in this book, but their must be something especially awkward about being too small, too young, too fresh for all the experiences that you know. It must be aggravating… but also marvelous to be able to mess with everyone’s perceptions.
It is interestingly to me that the baron dies before the final act, so to speak. And while it may be a bit abrupt, I do think the placement is entirely intentional; for all his scheming, Baron Harkonnen dies after being humbled and belittled by the Emperor, being told that he had was too stupid to know what was truly going on. He cannot believe that people were living in the southern reaches. He cannot believe how effective the Fremen are at fighting. He cannot believe that Paul Atreides is alive, and that he has a sister. It collapses on him all at once, and nothing can truly save him because he was never worth saving in the first place. He dies an ignoble, quick death, and no one will remember it. It’s like there’s a code for dispatching the truly terrible villains—it either has to be a momentous thing, or something small and insignificant. The Baron Harkonnen is more a Voldemort than a Sauron.
And then we get the image of a true fighting Fremen force, which even awes me as a reader, to be fair. We sort of get to goggle like that Sardaukar, to learn at the same time as the Emperor does what it must truly be like to come under the full weight of their wrath. No more options, except for treachery, of course. And we’re not meant to know what the treachery is, but we can guess.
This story does love its poisons…
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He was warrior and mystic, ogre and saint, the fox and the innocent, chivalrous, ruthless, less than a god, more that a man. There is no measuring Muad’Dib’s motives by ordinary standards. In the movement of his triumph, he saw the death prepared for him, yet he accepted the treater. Can you say he did this out of a sense of justie? Whose justice, then? Remember, we speak now of the Muad’Dib who ordered battle drums made of his enemies’ skins, the Muad’Dib who denied the conventions of his ducal past with a wave of the hand, saying merely: “I am the Kwisatz Haderach. That is reason enough.”
—from “Arrakis Awakening” by the Princess Irulan
Summary
They bring Paul to the governor’s mansion that the Atreides occupied when they first came to Arrakis. Gurney doesn’t like it and thinks a cave would be safer, but Paul insists it’s symbolic, especially because Rabban had been living there. He asks Gurney and Stilgar to check for any more Harkonnens or traps. He asks for Chani and his mother to be brought and asks for Sardaukar to send to the Emperor to give their terms. He is caught up in his sight, seeing only the jihad through every crack in time. He manages contact with Alia because even she has an ability with time that he does not. She tells him that she has killed their grandfather. Paul tells Stilgar that he knows they’ve found that baron’s body, shocking the man.
Paul tells a Sardaukar to bring a message to the Emperor, that he will keep them safe if they surrender their arms and come to meet him. The man is sent away. Stilgar tells Paul that Chani is taking a moment to be alone in grief and that Jessica has gone to the weirding room, though he doesn’t know why. Paul explains that his mother is yearning for Caladan, where water comes from the sky. Stilgar is awed by this, and in that moment Paul sees his friend become his worshipper and finds the man lessened. Stilgar tells him that Rabban is also dead, and Paul notes how the guards are hoping for his notice, that no one knows he plans to take the throne only to stop the jihad.
Jessica enters, finding that her minds rebels at the memories of this place, as though she had never lived there at all. She finds no compassion for Paul, noting the change in him. He tells her that his experiences of so many lives has allowed him to plumb the depths of human cruelty and kindness both. Jessica says he had denied that he was the Kwisatz Haderach before, but Paul insists he can no longer deny it. He asks her to stand with him when the Emperor and his entourage arrive, his future wife among them. Jessica tells him not to make her mistakes, but Paul sees the princess as a means to an end, and tells his mother that there are no innocents anymore. She says that he should tell that to Chani, who has just entered the room as well. She is crying, and Paul can only truly mark their grief through her. He tells her that they will have other sons, that Usul is the one who promises it.
The Emperor and his people are coming, Gurney has checked them all for throwing weapons. Paul worries that he might lose Gurney as he has lost Stilgar. Gurney tells him that Fyed is among them, and a Reverend Mother, and also Thufir Hawat. Gurney explains what he’s been doing all this time, and that he’d thought it best to lead him to it. Paul sees one version of the future where Hawat carries a poison needle that the Emperor will command him to use. Paul marks the people who have approached with the Emperor, and sees Count Fenring—he fears the man’s face, but he does not know it, nor has he ever seen it in any vision of the future or past. He asks his mother about him and she tells Paul his identity. Paul realizes that though he has seen many futures with his death, he has never seen how he dies, and wonders if this man is to be his killer.
Paul asks that Thufir Hawat stand apart. Hawat apologizes to Jessica knowing that he was wrong about her betrayal. Paul asks if he is his father’s son, but Hawat claims he is more like his grandfather. Paul says he will grant Hawat anything he wants for his years of service, including the chance to strike him dead. Hawat knows that Paul is aware of the treachery from the Emperor, but he tells Paul that he only wanted to stand before his Duke one last time. Paul realizes that Hawat can barely stand and rushes to brace him. Hawat tells him that he is pleased to see him again, then holds the poison needle aloft and taunts the Emperor for believing that he would ever betray the Atreides. Then he dies, and Paul has his body carried away.
The Emperor tries to tell Paul that he’s done wrong, violating their laws, using atomics. Paul insists that he only used them on a feature of the desert for the purpose of being able to ask about some of their activities. He tries to dismiss the Guildsmen, who tell him that they do not take his orders. Paul says that they will do as he says with no room for negotiation or he will destroy all spice production on the planet. The Guildsmen realize he is serious, and do as he asks. He tells the Emperor that he also has no choice in this matter, that even the Reverend Mother is trembling. Mother Gaius agrees that Paul is the one and that Jessica be forgiven her abominable daughter for his sake, but Paul insists that she has no call to forgive his mother anything. The Reverend Mother says that he is human, as she said before. Paul insists that though he was made of a Bene Gesserit breeding program, he will never do her bidding. She is appalled and demands that Jessica silence him, but Jessica has no intention of that. Paul tells the woman that he could kill her with a word, and will let her live out her life knowing she cannot control him.
He looks to Irulan, insisting that they have the power between them to settle this thing. The Emperor won’t hear of it, but Irulan points out that Paul is indeed worthy to be his son. Chani asks Paul if he wants her to leave, but he won’t hear of it. The Emperor and the Reverend Mother are fervently discussing these terms while Gurney approaches Paul to point out Feyd’s presence and his desire to kill a Harkonnen. Paul asks about whether Feyd is part of the entourage, then tells the Emperor that Duke Atreides might recognize his company, but Muad’Dib might not. Feyd-Rautha then invokes kanly, a fight to the death. Gurney and Jessica are against it, but Paul accepts. Jessica insists that Gurney let Paul be in this mood, and tells him that there is a word planted in Feyd by the Bene Gesserit that would make his muscles relax if Paul gets in trouble, but he won’t hear of using it. The Emperor agrees to have Feyd fight on his behalf and Paul realizes that this is the place where he cannot see the outcome. The jihad will happen no matter what, but this is where possibility entered and humanity had a chance to rid itself of stagnation.
Feyd is entirely overconfident in this fight, believing Paul to be a yokel to dispatch. Paul calls him cousin, then remains silent as the fight begins, knowing that Feyd is a talker and grows uneasy in silence. The Reverend Mother is mortified, knowing that both of them might die in this attempt, the culmination of the Bene Gesserit breeding program in its entirely, with only Alia and Feyd’s unknown daughter the only back up if they both fail. Paul gets the measure of Feyd’s fighting style, then sees that his girdle is hiding a poison dart. He gets knocked by Feyd’s blade, and realizes that the man is a better fighter than he’d thought. And the blade has a soporific on it, enough to slow him. Paul knicks him in return with acid. Feyd gets close again and Paul notes another poison dart near his belt. Feyd pins him to the ground, ready for the kill, and Paul remembers the word his mother mentioned. He shouts aloud that he will not use it, and the confusion gives him the upper hand to flip Feyd-Rautha onto his back and drive his knife into the na-baron’s brain.
Paul stands and look to the Emperor and Count Fenring, He can tell that the Emperor is asking the Count to do away with him. Paul realizes that the reason he never saw Fenring in any of his visions is because the Count himself was an almost-Kwisatz-Haderach, prevented only by a flaw in his genetics, by being a eunuch. The Count declines the command to kill Paul. The Emperor punches him across the jaw, and Fenring decides to forget this out of friendship.
Paul tells the Emperor that he will rule on Salusa Secundus now, and Paul will receive the throne. Salusa will become a gentle world, and Arrakis will have water some day, and always belong to the Fremen. But they will keep enough desert that the spice production can continue. The Reverend Mother glimpses the jihad coming, tells Paul he cannot unleash the Fremen on the universe, but Paul begs to differ. The Emperor has no choice but to accept, and Irulan is not bothered by the deal. Paul asks Jessica to negotiate the terms for him with Chani by her side. Paul wants the Emperor stripped, all of his CHOAM holdings as dowry. He wants a directorship for Gurney on Caladan, and power and titles for every living Atreides man. The Fremen are his and Stilgar will be governor of Arrakis. He asks what Jessica wishes, and she asks to go to Caladan for some time.
Jessica asks what Chani would like, but she begs for no title. Paul insists that she will never need one, that Irulan will have no affection from him, nor children. Chani is not sure she believes him, but Jessica assures her that though Irulan may get the Atreides name, history will call women like them wives.
Commentary
Practically everything here is symbolic. The location. The people in the Emperor’s entourage. The costumes everyone wears. It’s Thunderdome now. It’s a very polite gladiatorial ring. Strap in.
There is a crazy perfect storm of loyalty here, alignment between the Atreides family and the legend of Muad’Dib. The Fremen are looking to Paul and solidifying his legend in their minds, and moments where a man meant to kill their beloved leader turns around and essentially flips the Emperor the bird are going to stick in their minds. Many of the people in this room cannot distinguish from loyalty to the Lisan al-Gaib and loyalty to the Atreides family, and they are wildly different things; loyalty born of a belief in a godlike figure and loyalty to a man who won trust from others through years of building bonds. We see the conflict for people like Gurney and Jessica, the people who know that whatever Paul is, he is still only a man. The sudden and frequent comparisons to his grandfather here are not meant as a compliment.
The flip side to this is Paul watching Stilgar morph from friend to believer. Knowing that someone who you love on an interpersonal level has bought into your myth must be a deeply disconcerting experience, and it must be that because every believer Paul gains is another person who no longer sees him as human. I think that’s really the crux of what’s going on here—Paul doesn’t want to be divorced from his humanity, but more he fulfills his odd destiny, the more people will forget he was ever a man.
A side note to give Herbert props for not making Paul’s rise to religious figure overly-Jesus like in its trappings. Western epics practically never fail to do this, and it’s just boring. It’s been done so many times, and practically never with anything new to add to the concept.
There an abruptness to the ending of Dune that I could never quite get my head around. While I appreciate Herbert’s ability to wrap up his material quickly and succinctly, it does feel strangely rushed. That might just be down to writing style at the end of the day; Herbert’s flare for prose is undeniable, but he’s not particularly florid. There are also so many character present that you run the risk of swapping POV far too many times and confusing the whole thing. But there’s so much happening and so quickly, and we never get to see even a hint of the aftermath to these decisions. It’s an interesting choice, but ultimately feels like being cut off mid-breath. I’ll take Tolkien’s extra-long denouement any day, just to get a proper sense of closure.
Paul humbles the Guild is short order and then it’s just a matter of the Emperor realizes by bits and pieces that he has lost and has no choice in the matter. Irulan recognizes it from the beginning, and I have already loved how nonplussed she is by the entire event. She’s like ‘sure, I’ll marry that guy, he seems cool’ and keeps trying to get her dad to chill out. At that point, you have to wish that the book had delved into her arc more, rather than presenting her as a scholar only. We could use a bit more of her personality her, a bit more insight into her mind.
The Reverend Mother is horrified throughout, but the one thing that really terrifies her is the thought that Paul and Feyd might both end up dead as the result of kanly, and then the only parts of their breeding programs left are Alia the abomination and Feyd’s daughter. And while I know what’s coming for Alia, I feel like there’s an alternate universe version of events where that’s precisely what happens, and the next story is what happens to those women as they come into their own… and I’m kind of sad that I never got to read it.
We have the fight with Feyd-Rautha, and while the story does an excellent job of making him an intricate opponent for Paul, it seems such an odd place to go. The fight is interesting but reads as unnecessary, a move to make sure that Feyd is out of the way because he’s just a troublesome guy. If it hadn’t been Paul, it would have been Gurney. He’s not the person who Paul cannot see (Fenring), so while he makes a good show, he doesn’t have that mysterious veil of threat hanging about him.
We’ve had a hint that Count Fenring had an important role here from Irulan’s earlier text indicating that Fenring’s greatest act against her father was refusing to kill a man when he commanded it. And while I appreciate that cool bit of warning I’m not sure it plays out well here with that reveal. Fenring is a cool character, but to insist that he is another Kwisatz Haderach potential? I dunno, the segment is strangely written, and it seems like the suggestion is that being a eunuch (or the traits that made him correct to be a eunuch, which who the hell knows what they are) is the reason why he couldn’t be “the One.” Which… like, what? So, he doesn’t have genitalia and that’s somehow a prerequisite for being the chosen dude? Sorry, I’m just going to need a little more explanation for that to fly because right now I’m not buying it.
I still do love Fenring’s defiance before his buddy the Emperor, and his instance that he’s fine with the choice and will overlook his friend decking him. It’s just classy.
So… these final lines are weird, right?
Here’s the thing. There is what was intended, and there is how the text reads. Now, the story of Dune has done an excellent job of building up this theme between Jessica and Chani both, these women who love men who cannot marry them out of political necessity. We come back to this difficulty for them both, time and again. And there is political intrigue to this, and also emotion as well. The problem is, when the hyper focus on this aspect, this angle, everything else about these women is sidelined. You have ended your grand epic on the suggestion that while Paul Atreides can be god-emperor of the universe and exact his perfect revenge, the best that the women of this story can ever hope for is that history will remember them… as wives.
I mean, without intending to, the book has hyper-focused on one of fiction’s greatest problems. That women are only what they mean to men. That women have nothing outside of their families and their husbands. That women do not have their own grand tales and awesome deeds. But it’s okay. Because even if they can’t marry their beloveds, history knows they were the one who truly knew him best.
It’s a weird place to end your grand saga, literally focusing on that point. (It’s not ended, I know, but at the time this was it.) On the other hand, I think that the story ends this way for a reason: it’s meant to read as a point of happiness is all this carnage. It is how you end the story on an upswing. We’ve been invested in Chani and Paul for about half the book now, and knowing that he will not forsake his Sihaya for a fancy princess is meant to be a nice thought that turns our collective gaze away from the carnage that Paul knows his victory will unleash on the universe. He and Chani will have more children, and she will always be the woman he adores. And it isn’t as though Paul disregards her on a higher level; he wants Chani there to negotiate with Jessica because he knows that she is brilliant and unyielding. But still. This is where we rest our heads, the story completed. It’s kind of a head tilt for me, emotionally. Like an “awwww” followed by a “bzuh?”
Either way, the tale is completed and we know that the universe is irrevocably changed. And the frightening part is that we’re not surely true if it’s for the better. We can end on thoughts of romance, but at the end of the day, Paul Atreides is full of terrible purpose, and he is releasing an endless war across the cosmos. He has finally come to accept this, but the reader clearly should not—Paul’s great power ends certain feuds and old ways, but he will replace it with more violence, more pain. The only thing celebratory here is the end of stagnation, as he puts it. Humanity will move forward, and that move will be brutal and full of suffering. It isn’t surprising that more stories were written because the end of Dune is hardly cut and dry. We have watched Muad’Dib achieve his goals, and the act was dazzling, but we’re meant to remember the cost of that victory.
And we are certainly meant to question it.
Final Thoughts
Well, this has been a wobbly ride, and a very interesting book to go through in a reread format. It does kill some of the momentum, which I feel is inevitable for a book that’s this high on politics, but the closer look was interesting for me.
The next two books will be broken down into slightly bigger chunks, so they’ll go a bit faster, but they’re also shorter. Before we continue in that direction, however, I will be looking at the many screen versions of Dune proper. So next week: David Lynch!
Emmet Asher-Perrin is very interested to see how David Lynch version strikes her after many years of avoiding ever having to watch it again. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
I had completely forgotten Alia got to be such a badass in this book. Hah, I love her.
Paul telling Chani that they’ll have more sons is really cold comfort – I’m not sure if that’s just Herbert being out of touch with parental grief (was it supposed to be a genuinely comforting line?), or meant to be a marker of Muad’Dib’s growing loss of humanity.
The ending is so packed with stuff, I don’t really know what all to say. I too find myself wishing – more than I did at the time – to know more about Irulan and her thoughts on this. She seems a savvy woman; does she mind that she will never get his affection or children? In a way I feel sorry for her; does she ever get a chance to form her own liasons? Or maybe she just doesn’t care.
I agree that it is definitely the kind of story where you wonder if Paul is really ‘the good guy’. I don’t think I ever quite grasped what his jihad was FOR. His prescience seems to drive him to it, but why? And what is the authorial intent.
I definitely took the last line as more of a ‘history will recognize women like Chani/Jessica as the truly important ones’ – especially as the context is directly in response to Paul taking a formal wife – but I agree there are those types of undertones there in that important=wife, which is by definition something in relation to another person.
I had completely forgotten (or, more likely, never even realized) that Feyd had a daughter. Did she ever make any reappearance?
Nice job Emily. I’ve enjoyed this re-read and look forward to more Dune!
4 random thoughts about the ending: 1) Alia calling the Baron “grandfather” as she kills him. In most other stories, this would be a MAJOR reveal, but here it is broached very casually, with no chance for anyone to reflect on it, and quickly cast aside in the escalation of the action. 2 for all the Baron’s mistakes, he was right about a Harkonnen getting the throne! 3 I wonder if Gurney could have taken Feyd. Or Chani- remember he tried to get into Paul’s head by threatening her. 4 Does any of the supplementary material say what happened to Feyd’s daughter?
As “epic” as Dune is, it feels unreal to have it already over.
@1: My understanding of the jihad was that it was how the human race planned to shake off stagnation. Natural Selection writ large, essentially. But I’m not sure Herbert and/or Paul was ever specifically clear about it.
re: Count Fenring and his eunuch-ness – I think it means the Bene Gesserit abandoned any training of him once they realized he couldn’t pass any abilities on to another generation. So he didn’t get the prana bindu training or the Mentat training or the amount of Spice needed to trigger the Kwisatz Haderach abilities. They do, after all, want a continuing family to rule the empire under their influence.
I also have a weird theory, totally not supported by any details in the books –
I’m wondering if the fact of future offspring is necessary to see the future clearly – at least, the future beyond your own personal timeline. Like, if the ability tap into the memories of your personal genetic ancestors is linked to the ability to see the paths of the future – then perhaps you’re tapping into the thoughts of future offspring that haven’t happened yet in your personal timeline? If you’re adrift in time, and you can only move through it by connecting with your genetic lines, then it’s pretty much required that you have some future offspring to connect to, right? So Fenring, without the ability to have children, would also have no access to visions of the far future.
I know the whole, “DNA records thoughts and emotions and everything,” is total bunk, but if you’re going to go with that, then it seems to follow that seeing the future would require having kids, grandkids, ad infinitum to serve as pathways and connections. If you’re the trunk of the family tree, then the past is the roots and the future is the new buds and branches.
So, Alia had no children and couldn’t see clearly no matter how much Spice she took. Leto and Ghanima though, I’m not sure how that works – if the children of a twin would be close enough for Leto to connect to. But all three of them show the ability to talk to both sexes of ancestors, which seems to contradict the whole “only the Kwisatz Haderach can access the man-pain, I mean, man-spaces,” unless the Kwisatz Haderach thing becomes meaningless once the ability proves to just be an Atreides thing.
But all three of them show the ability to talk to both sexes of ancestors, which seems to contradict the whole “only the Kwisatz Haderach can access the man-pain, I mean, man-spaces,” – I got a good chuckle out of this :)
But fwiw I had the same thought about Fenring and the inability to sire children disqualifying him (although not about the requiring offspring to see the future thing).
My original comment isn’t showing up…
@6, the abominations have the same memory abilities as the KH, but since they do not have the years of life with only their own personalities, they are susceptible to possession by an ancestor. Children of Dune goes into greater detail on this and shows how Leto and Ghanima avoid Alia’s fate.
@5, as I remember it, the Jihad was the beginning of the Golden Path that necessitated the oppression of the Old Empire. Paul could not bring himself to completely let go of his humanity, so it fell to either Leto or Ghanima to complete it as the Path needed the Atreides prescient ability.
<catches breath> Wow, those last few chapters did come at a mad rush! While it did make for a nice page-turner, I think Emily was correct in the last post that the final third of this novel is a bit too short, especially in comparison with the earlier sections. Ramping up the pace over the course of a book is generally a good thing, but this seems a bit more frantically uneven than I remember.
—
The part of my brain paying more attention to narrative techniques that to the plot was a bit annoyed by the way the revelations of Alia’s and Fenring’s capabilities were handled. Both were fully set up by events and descriptions earlier in the book…but they seemed to be dropped in because they had been foreshadowed, rather than because they actually added plot-critical information. Yes, Alia’s presence and abilities provided a clever way to tie together a necessary infodump, the Emperor, and the Baron’s death; and yes, Fenring’s what-could-have-been backstory provided a plausible reason for him to defy the Emperor. But it seemed to me that these plot-critical steps could have handled just as well in more mundane ways. I was slightly disappointed to see that these tie-ins to Paul’s KH abilities seemed to come after the story’s outcome was pretty much already determined, and thus they seemed to be more notable as hooks for a possible sequel…
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Unlike a couple decades ago when I read it as a teenager, when Paul’s stunning and overwhelming victory seemed like a great triumph, this time around I really noted how the narrative was forcing the reader to consider whether he actually ended up the Good Guy and whether the result was worth all the horrible costs. But I do think that Paul’s own attitudes over the last few chapters do pull him back from the brink of becoming an anti-hero or villain. His reactions to Jessica’s and Gurney’s discomfort, Stilgar’s worship, or Chani’s grief certainly indicate that he hasn’t fully given in to the temptations of being the Kwisatz Haderach and Lisan al-Gaib, but what’s even more telling is his recognition that events have already moved beyond Paul, the man, to Paul-Muad’dib, the legend; and so, even as he imposes harsh terms on the Emperor, Spacing Guild, and Bene Gesserit, he also seems to be considering how to use that new power to rein in the excesses that were necessary (and inevitable) to get to that point. It gives hope that the Atreides instincts may yet win out (especially for those who choose not to pick up the remaining books).
When I read this as a teen, Paul fighting Feyd made total sense because what else does the hero do but have personal combat while taking over an empire?
And was I the only one to think it was a Bad Thing when Alia said the exact thing Paul had seen himself saying in a potential meeting with the Baron? One that led to a future that sickened him?
While I appreciate Paul’s loyalty to Chani, Irulan gets a raw deal. She’s been raised to be the first Bene Gesserit empress–perhaps the first empress, period–and all that gets taken away.
@9
“His reactions to Jessica’s and Gurney’s discomfort, Stilgar’s worship, or Chani’s grief certainly indicate that he hasn’t fully given in to the temptations of being the Kwisatz Haderach and Lisan al-Gaib, but what’s even more telling is his recognition that events have already moved beyond Paul, the man, to Paul-Muad’dib, the legend; and so, even as he imposes harsh terms on the Emperor, Spacing Guild, and Bene Gesserit, he also seems to be considering how to use that new power to rein in the excesses that were necessary (and inevitable) to get to that point.”
I saw that as very realistic- he didn’t have a choice between good and evil, but rather evil and much greater evil. That happens a lot in real life, although on much, much smaller scales- which distasteful choice can you live with? I thumbed through Dune Messiah in anticipation of the next rounds of re-read and early on you get Paul’s thought on how de-humanizing it is to be a God-figure, and some regretful thought on how many people have died in the jihad (and a speculation about an ancient “Emperor HItler”). We’ll all chew on it soon enough, but I will say that I thought Herbert did a good job of showing that there is a downside to the great destiny.
I always thought the reason for the jihad was to avoid extinction. The later books bear this out. Between Paul’s jihad and Leto’s long reign followed by a diaspora of epic proportions, humanity is flung all over the cosmos and gene pools are mixed. All because humanity has stagnated since the Butlerian Jihad. There are no mentioned colonies or expansions. And, of course, every noble house has planet-destroying nukes plus ancient feuds. Recipe for disaster. Paul has to set aside his Caladan compassion, be a Fremen and ruthlessly do what is necessary. He and his son make it all but impossible for the species to go extinct because by the end, no one knows where every human is. He may not end up a good guy or happy, but he will have saved the species.
Thank you Emily!
I started to read along….Dune being one of my favorite books ever….and I hadn’t read it in decades. Anyway, I plowed through it quickly and enjoyed your rereads immensely. Onward….where I think the waters get much muddier, if I remember correctly.
Herbert was pretty explicit in the first three Dune novels that the Pharaonic model of hero worship is dangerous for the species.
We’re still seeing it today.
The continuity of the species is everything. Males are ephemeral, they come (haha) and go, the story revolves around the women that history will recall as wives.
looking forward to more Dune recaps, how far are you planning on taking this? Hopefully not into the Brian Herbert books, they are an Alia-level abomination!
The Dune Encyclopedia on the other hand is well worth reading, proabably after God Emperor of Dune
Have you ever considered proofreading any of these posts? Just once, to see if you like it? Might be fun, you could start with the sudden appearance of the previously-unheard-of character “Fyed” and go on to all the words that autocorrect got wrong. For giggles.
Also, Paul’s knife has no acid on it, he’s being sarcastic to call out Feyd for using a drug, and Fenring is insistently referred to as a genetic eunuch, suggesting that his actual problem is that he can’t pass down the breeding program traits bred into him.
The Baron started to lose his edge as soon as he had no opponent. See, it’s the concept of the balance of opposites again! Themes recur and recur…
Regarding the ‘genetic eunuch’ thing:
1) It seems he’s inherently sterile. If he lacked testes, Herbert wouldn’t need to specify ‘genetic’, now would he?
2) It’s probably a consequence of the breeding program trying to balance masculinity with femininity.
I have read the Dune books (the original Frank Herbert ones – gave up halfway through the one about House Harkonnen) and, in particular, have reread the first one a whole bunch of times. I’m late to this party, but you’ve inspired me to pick up the next book and read along. Looking forward to the next post!
Many of the people in this room cannot distinguish from loyalty to the Lisan al-Gaib and loyalty to the Atreides family, and they are wildly different things.
Good point, and it’s a fascinating issue for Herbert to bring up in the middle of what is supposed to be hero’s triumph over the final, culminating conflict, when in most stories, the fight tends to become simpler and more streamlined. Here, the final scene is incredibly complicated. It’s interesting, but I agree that it feels rushed here too; there’s so much to manage.
Paul is facing conflict on many fronts all at once in this finale: from the Bene Gesserit to the Imperial Family to the Guild (all of whom are loosely in cahoots with each other but are by no means working from the same playbook), to the Fremen, who want him to unleash a destiny on Arrakis and the universe. Then there are smaller personal conflicts to deal with: Feyd-Rautha, who wants to hash out a political (and implicit personal) vendetta with Paul that Paul has no investment in; the one with Chani over whether she will mean anything to him once he marries Irulan; and the one with his sworn men, who basically want revenge for the death of Leto enacted through Paul’s actions here, while he’s got his eyes on a bigger, more complex prize.
All these people and forces go back and forth on how to primarily conceive Paul – as a cog in an aristocratic system, as breeding stock, as political vindication, as a religious messiah, as a political messiah, as the object of personal hatred or love. And you’re right – some of the people here really have trouble not conflating one or more of these roles for Paul – and why not? Paul deliberately inhabits multiple identities and many names throughout the second half of the book, depending on who he’s talking to and who’s talking about him.
I think one reason Herbert brought so many of these characters together at the end of this book was so that we could see quite forcefully just how confusing it all was to be Paul Atreides at that point. I think you’re right that we’re meant to uneasily wonder if Paul has ended up being a good or bad guy, but I think the even bigger point Herbert might have been making by the end is that when the book wraps up, Paul is too many things to too many people, and inhabiting them all simultaneously – rather Kwisatz Haderach-like, now that I think about it – for anyone to really know who he is at all anymore, perhaps least of all himself.
All this, and Paul is, at most, 25 years old.
@20, Paul is 15 at the beginning of the book, which would make him 17ish during the events the end of the book. Casting in the Lynch movie and the Sci-fi miniseries don’t really show this effectively.
For Irulan, it is cool; she was raised to make a dynastic marriage, which she’s doing. (And she’s making a very advantageous one; the Harvard Lampoon parody lands very hard on this.) The Emperor isn’t cool because he expected her to marry a vassal (extending his reach) or perhaps inheritor, but not his overlord. (This is all the antique view, of course; the whole idea of dynastic marriage has become much less favored today, and not before time.)
I don’t see the ending as all that abrupt, even compared with Tolkien, for two reasons: Tolkien was working from a different tradition of storytelling (as witness the return to pastoralism, where in Dune nobody’s going to put the pieces back where they started), and in LotR many more named characters survive and need to be wrapped up — Dune isn’t quite Hamlet‘s corpse-strewn ending, but we have 3 bodies in the final scene (not to mention the irrelevancy of the Emperor) and several more before.
Any chance of doing a post about Irulan’s writings, as talked about earlier, Emily? She obviously spanned the gamut from philosophical treatises to children’s books, and it would be fascinating to go back and piece them together, now that we have hit the end of the narrative of the book.
Did anyone else realize that Jessica’s words of comfort to Chani at the end also serve as a subtle punchline to a joke you didn’t realize has been running for the entire book?
“See that princess standing there, so haughty and confident. They say she has pretensions of a literary nature. Let us hope she finds solace in such things; she’ll have little else.”
When I realized that the chapter quotes from Irulan’s evidently extensive bibliography, all focused on Paul essentially, proved Jessica’s point, I admit I laughed somewhat maniacally for about a minute. Reflecting, I do feel some sympathy for the position she’s put in because it’s not necessarily something that she asked for. [Full disclosure I haven’t read the rest of the series so my only source of Dune-universe knowledge is from having re-read Dune so many times.]
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I actually enjoy reading authors who are subtle with some of the information they reveal to the reader. I think it means they respect their audiences’ intelligence and it also makes it more fun to re-read. That’s just my opinion. A couple of my favorite Tor authors who use some subtlety to a satisfying degree are Robert Jordan and L.E. Modesitt Jr. with his Recluce series. You have to notice the small things and dig for it sometimes though, but that’s the joy of it :) at least for me.
@1, yes promising Chani other sons is so the wrong thing to say, but men are conditioned both in the RW and the Duneverse to want to ‘fix’ things for their womenfolk. Paul can’t bring little Leto back to life all he can do to ‘fix’ Chani’s grief is give her another son. He means well.
Poor Irulan indeed. She doesn’t yet know what a raw deal she is getting. She too wants to ‘fix’ things for somebody she loves. She can’t be Shaddam’s son but she can give him a grandson and Paul strikes her as a fine prospect for that son’s father. She doesn’t foresee any problems with getting a baby and anything else she wants from Paul. Poor princess.
At this point Paul isn’t thinking about her at all as anything but a necessary pawn. He won’t always be so cold. He comes to regret the position he’s put Irulan in, though he doesn’t see any safe way to change it, and he tries not to make her any more miserable than he must.
Some of the summary and the comments almost hit on one of the primary points that Paul represents. We are meant to sympathize with the underdog. We are meant to see the young Paul’s triumph as David’s triumph over Goliath. However, look at what Paul does to win and the coming jihad his victory brings? He runs raids, is decentralized, and fights with a bigger government over a single resource using ideology. Paul is meant to make us understand the motives of the Islamist (and think when this book was written…now that’s prescience) while warning us what the consequences will be. We should both want to relieve the oppression that lead to Paul’s coup d’etat, but be uncomfortable with the methods and results. Paul becomes an anti-hero alive and well in real life today.
There are several reasons for the final melee between Paul and Feyd. Just as Aliya is a gom jabbar, so is Paul as are all those who have seen through the Water of Life. He kills the animal Feyd. Also, the defeat of House Harkonnen must be complete, just as the Baron wanted to fully erase the House Atreides. Finally, “No man recognizes leadership without the challenge of combat.” Feyd represented the Emperor. Even if Paul doesn’t agree with this “tradition” he knows he must adhere to it to secure his coup. There are always those that will see the marriage as a fraud (even coerced) and rebel against the new emperor. The challenge of combat will reduce those numbers.