Nataliya's Reviews > Dune

“I have seen a friend become a worshiper, he thought.”

I don’t think I actually *enjoyed* this book. But I certainly respected the hell out of it. For a bit I thought I had it all figured out, pegged it as your bog-standard Chosen One story, and then it went where I didn’t think it’d go and neatly subverted my expectations. It tackled stuff that is uncomfortable and therefore is generally handwaved over in the usual SF epics. And for that I seriously respected this dense complex tome.

We people tend to love the idea of a charismatic all-powerful leader who inspires faithful following and true fervor, that cult-like blind devotion. We give those leaders tremendous power to lead and decide and determine fates. So many stories rooted in the weight of our species collective history glorify this; so many countries still apparently yearn for powerful visionary leaders that others proclaim to be dictators. So many religions go to wars over the legacy left by a popular charismatic leader centuries ago, interpreting those legacies as the engine for the action, destruction, obedience.

Hero worship. Messianic worship. Prophecies and tyrannies. Desire for a Savior to rescue you from the evil. Good intentions paving the road to hell. It all leads to terrifying places which we may be powerless to stop.

“A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob.”

This is a novel of a reluctant Messiah, the journey of a man becoming the Chosen One — but unlike the traditional story of a charismatic savior, this is a darker picture of the dangers of messianism and hero worship, of allowing blind devotion replace common sense. The book ends in an ambiguous place, and I presume the sequels may develop the theme or run away from it and make this a more traditional hero journey. But I certainly hope not. Because the dark implications of messianism say more about human nature than the happier stories based on the same idea, but with more idealism. We love our ideas of ideal benevolent rulers who can set things right, don’t we? Or the martyr figures inspiring “righteous” battles? Messiahs and figureheads seem to fulfill the deep-seated cultural longing for an inspirational leader, don’t they? Friends become followers and worshippers, and the metaphorical slope becomes quite slippery.

“The Fremen have a simple, practical religion," he said.
"Nothing about religion is simple," she warned.
But Paul, seeing the clouded future that still hung over them, found himself swayed by anger. He could only say: "Religion unifies our forces. It's our mystique."
"You deliberately cultivate this air, this bravura," she charged. "You never cease indoctrinating."
"Thus you yourself taught me," he said.”

Yes, in Dune Frank Herbert hints at the dangers present in such ideas. What seems like your traditional hero’s journey turns out darker and more sinister. But it’s not the rise of an antihero either. It’s subtler than that, without actually being all that subtle.

“No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero," his father said.

Paul Atreides, in his own words, is “something unexpected.” A son of a planetary Duke (because an interstellar post-technology future is actually feudal) and a highly trained Bene-Gesserit concubine of the Duke (view spoiler)[(basically a member of the order/Sisterhood of superpowered highly trained mind ninjas with strong political worlds-changing ambitions and generations-long breeding experiments aimed at creation of a controllable superhero) (hide spoiler)], Paul fits very well the idea of a Messiah of the tribal resilient society of Fremen people of the harsh desert planet Arrakis, neatly fulfilling their religious prophecies (view spoiler)[(that may have been stealthily planted before by the above-mentioned supernatural ninja order) (hide spoiler)] and possessing genetic superpowers himself, augmented by rigorous training and catalyzed by the ingestion of a magical wonder-drug known as spice.

“He found that he no longer could hate the Bene Gesserit or the Emperor or even the Harkonnens. They were all caught up in the need of their race to renew its scattered inheritance, to cross and mingle and infuse their bloodlines in a great new pooling of genes. And the race knew only one sure way for this—the ancient way, the tried and certain way that rolled over everything in its path: jihad.”

But Paul through his prescient powers can see what his mythologized destiny leads to. A galactic scale slaughter led by fanatics in his name. And there is not a way to escape it, once your life fits the mysticism of their faith (even if the faith and prophecies were stealthily prereplanted for sort of a similar purpose). Religious fanatics are destined to wage a brutal war that the Messiah is unable to stop.

“When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual.”

With great power comes great responsibility, and all that jazz. But is any of it actually worth it? Wouldn’t the world be better without the burden of Heroes? Are you destined to become exactly what you’re trying to avoid?

All this is gently hinted at, laid out in the framework of the appealing Hero’s journey. It seems that should you desire, you can still easily choose to read it as a typical hero’s/antihero’s story, just less idealistic than it could be. But that would be Star Wars and not Dune.

“He was warrior and mystic, ogre and saint, the fox and the innocent, chivalrous, ruthless, less than a god, more than a man. There is no measuring Muad'Dib's motives by ordinary standards. In the moment of his triumph, he saw the death prepared for him, yet he accepted the treachery. Can you say he did this out of a sense of justice? Whose justice, then? Remember, we speak now of the Muad'Dib who ordered battle drums made from 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.”

And you also can’t help but be mesmerized by a harsh desiccated planet where life is focused on survival, where not even water but mere moisture is the most coveted and rarest thing, where hopes for a better, wetter, greener future quietly flourish, tied into messianic ideas but grounded in science. The place of nightmares, written vividly and skillfully, making me want to gulp down a gallon of drink just because I can, making me appreciate that my reality doesn’t hinge on surviving on my reclaimed bodily fluids.

The world is harsh, unforgiving, brutal, hostile. The characters - well, mostly Paul, but to an extent his mother Jessica as well - are cold, calculating, composed and often very unsympathetic. Paul’s father values lives over property. Paul’s actions, on the other hand, lead to eyebrow-raising among his father’s old lieutenants who note the difference in priorities:

“Nothing money won't repair, I presume," Paul said.
"Except for the lives, m'Lord," Gurney said, and there was a tone of reproach in his voice as though to say: "When did an Atreides worry first about things when people were at stake?”

It’s dense and complex, full of politics, short on actual science fiction but full of ruminations on human nature — and it leaves me feeling that all of this is a beginning of another cycle of violence, just with a new figurehead at the mast. As Terry Pratchett said, “But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions.” A new Hero or a new Messiah comes, and begets another cycle or struggle and violence, to be reset anew by a new figurehead sometimes in the future. All while sandworms quietly slither under the sand.
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Oh yeah, there are sandworms, too.
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4 stars out of respect for Herbert’s subversive story that made me think. I’m content with the story ending here, with ambiguity and dread for what’s to come.