I’m seeing a lot of things upon this rereading that are resonating differently than on earlier readings, due mainly to considering them more closely as part of the Book Club.
Chief among these is the way Herbert embeds things in his characters dialogue. Less in an expositional way, although he does that sometimes too in the early parts of the book, occasionally to dulling effect; Herbert often uses dialogue as a stand-in for other ideas in the story, sometimes combat, and sometimes as an analog for larger thematic ideas.
The one I’m thinking of in particular is the conversation between Thufir Hawat and the leader of the Fremen band he finds himself sheltering with, after the Atreides forces are decimated and driven from Arrakeen. Half the conversation or more is spent with Hawat struggling to divine what the conversation is about, with violence always just beneath the surface. And remember that Hawat is an educated man, a man whose counsel and devious mind are much sought after–but thrown into the idiomatic swamp of the Fremen’s questions about what to do with his wounded, he’s utterly lost, struggling to stay afloat at best.
above, by Evan Dahm
And of course, so are most of the characters, who just a few chapters ago were enjoying their fancy dinner party, throwing their conversational jabs and ripostes back and forth across the table. In the conversation between Thufir Hawat and his Fremen rescuer, we see the Fremen as less an esoteric tribe and more a FORCE, just as much as the planet they’ve adapted to live on is a force. Imagine the idea of removing all the water from a comrade’s body SO YOU COULD DRINK IT; but also imagine that this is the shape of your new world, and the first of many such surprises.
Ditto Paul and Jessica, trying to outrun sandworms and dig themselves out from sandstorms, also encountering for the first time the planet as such. This is the point in the story, in the many times I have exhorted people I know to read Dune, where if you don’t like it yet you never will–from this point forward, the status quo is destroyed for every character. This for me makes the somewhat duller opening chapters less egregious in retrospect, because while the story starts slow, the characters are also drawn so clearly that, when everything changes we really feel the drama; we’ve gotten use to who these people are. On the other side of this change we can’t be sure what will happen. Witness the way Herbert writes that whole careful conversation between Hawat and the Fremen, only to kill practically everybody a few pages later.
above, by Warren Craghead
But the best thing about this part of the book is the clash of cultures and legends when Paul and Jessica finally encounter Stilgar and the Fremen of Sietch Tabr. Remember that, for all Herbert’s other explanations, he never really goes into real depth regarding the Bene Gesserit and what they are able to do. We know at this point about Voice, but I remember reading this the first time and being all “Whoa!” when Jessica is kung fu-ing people left and right. The interactions between her and the Fremen legends of the Lisan al Gaib are my favorite Jessica scenes in the book, seeing her restless intellect weighing options in crisis, making choices based on severely limited information.
As opposed to her son, making choices with his strange, cloudy prescience; Jessica is doing a similar thing except with far less information. But also a much reduced scope–Jessica’s decisions are involved in moments, while Paul seems to fear momentum more than anything else. Such a good spot in the story, and the next one’s even better!
Speaking of which: for next week read to the end of Part Two (“Muad’dib”). I think after that we’ll have two more weeks worth of reading, in around 75-100 page a week chunks.
Rabban loves his squeezins!
Hey, just wanted to say that a friend of mine sent me the link to the book club a week ago, and I've been scrambling to re-read and catch up. Really happy I finally got there, you guys have an awesome set-up.
So, about religion and its manipulation. Yeah, I could go on forever about that, it's probably my favorite theme and recurring event in the entire series, and I especially love when people try to use a religious system to their benefit, and it comes back to haunt them. Really, the manipulation of any system (as has been discussed) without total awareness of all the consequences or possibilities continually comes back at people. Paul's line where he says "I'm not what they expected, and I've come before my time" – awesome. But here in this section, Jessica is still very much in control – she knows what beliefs the Fremen are expecting, knows how to play to them. She uses her foreknowledge of Sietch Tabr's name to make herself seem prescient, mystical. She knows to use the fact of Paul's passing the Gom Jabbar to heighten the awe in which the Fremen, especially Stilgar, hold him. But even Paul says to Kynes, "Superstitions have strange roots, and even stranger branchings." I agree with the points that have been made so far about all the seemingly mystical elements of the story being explainable by science and reason, but I also think that the most interesting parts of this story are where reason and mysticism collide, mix, and challenge each other.
One last little thing I wanted to talk about, and it really is a little part of the book, is where Paul and Jessica are traveling across the dessert, and as the sun sets and casts dark shadows behind dunes, Jessica reflects on her fear of the dark as being a "blind remembering" of ancient times when human ancestors were hunted by predators. The whole concept of genetic memory is one that really got my head spinning, especially later on, but this one instance, which can be much more easily related to in reality, I thought was really great insight and imagination on Herbert's part.
Okay, I lied, one last thing: when Jessica instructs Paul to come into the tent for more Bene Gesserit training, and as Paul walks in he thinks "Whatever has happened to me, I've been party to it." I think it reveals how Herbert is unwilling to attribute events to one single cause. Yes, Paul is the product of an absurdly long line of Bene Gesserit breeding programs, but his greatness also comes from his training and upbringing. If you look at Feyd, who is closely related to Paul and as such closely attached to that same program, he's inattentive, and only grasps things when instructed by the Baron – almost the opposite of Paul. I just like that Herbert refuses to take sides on the Nature vs. Nurture debate.
Oh man Third, you are sending me with these sweet points. Especially the "blind remembering" bit, again Herbert pits his heroes against their environment. I think Dune is unique in that it's a man-versus-man AND man-versus-environment story, and probably a couple of others besides.
Awesome (I use that word a lot – and it always applies) summary of story in these drawings here! Cool, how different the moods in the drawings are and yet how they speak of one thing.
It's kind of weird to explain but: The focus the black puts on the hand in your drawing is making his words much more creepy. Awesome glove.
All these points are great. I heard Greg Rucka speak once about writing and one of the main points he made was that you need to be willing to "sacrifice your baby." Herbert is more than willing to do this in order to add weight to his story.
As you point out Dustin, he took such care with the conversation between Thufir and the Fremen in the cave, really developed this relationship between them in a few pages as well as showcasing the might of the Fremen as we watch them take out that Sardaukar force. And then – snik – he slips the knife between our ribs, killing that Fremen and throwing Hawat into the hands of the Harkonnens. Accentuating that feeling of danger you mentioned whenever the Fremen are involved. You don't see it coming and it hammers home the danger and hardships found in the desert.
This point also goes to the deaths we experience in this section: Duke Leto, Dr. Yueh, Mapes, Kynes, and Idaho. To this point, Herbert has worked to make these interesting characters (the least developed being Duncan Idaho as he's been working as a liaison with the Fremen) and in the space of relatively few pages, he dispatches them.
It's pretty bold, and ratchets up the tension, because if these main characters can be killed off, why can't others? (Why wouldn't Jessica be killed when they're found by Stilgar?) This, along with the major change in status quo, throws off any feeling of comfort one might get in feeling a familiarity with the characters and the situations put forth by Herbert. Nothing can be assumed from this point on. The question of, "what'll happen next," is more acute.
I'm impressed with Herbert's characterizations on this reading, how well-formed they are. I'm thinking specifically of when Jessica and Paul come to land in the desert and the spice heightens Paul's awareness almost exponentially. He passes his mother in ability at that moment, and it would be easy to leave it at that. Most times when that transformation of a character occurs in a book like this, it's a definite passing from one reality/consciousness to a new higher one. But for Herbert it's not that simple. Paul is still only fifteen, and when the dune shifts and buries his mother he panics. It takes him a moment to recover himself and work to finding his mother, and in the process lose the Fremkit. After the incident his mother tells him that he still needs training, despite his new understanding of the world.
Rather than making Paul this uber-mensch, he is keeping him grounded in reality, allowing the audience to still relate with him despite his transformation. In a world where it seems that people constantly want to make things black or white, Herbert retains what makes people interesting, those vague interstitial spaces where the answer is never absolute.
chris
Again my recent live has taken a turn for the sucktacular so I can't blab on about this week's stuff as much as I'd like but I'll just thrown in some random thoughts.
Again, great art guys. I was hoping teh Dharbin would draw Rabban at some point.
As I blabbed about during one of the earlier weeks, this is not really a sci-fi adventure book or rather it seems to me that Herbert is avoiding the trappings of those kind of books but… holy crap when he turns the action on it is pretty sweet. Fast, violent and over quickly. How bout Paul jumping up and taking out a dude with one kick while hid hands are bound up? And Jessica! Look out! Good stuff.
Earth born people that might be mentats. President Obama and baseball star Alex Rodriguez. Both have purple lips and unique speech patterns.
I'm sorry to weigh in so late…
DH, dead on with that bit where Hawat is trying to figure out the Fremen talking to him. It was like an anthropologist trying to talk to some unknown tribe. I imagine it's what time travel would be like. We see it again with Jessica trying to stay at least a half-step ahead of the Fremen cultural references. For all her badass voice and kung fu, this is what really saves them, at least for now.
I'll also admit to being shocked when Hawat's buddy get whacked so quickly after Herbert built him all up. Herbert is a Fremen with words.
And we finally see the sandworm in all its might. I'm a little scared to draw it.
I also like how Jessica is still thinking of how Paul can use the Fremen but in the end I think they end up using Paul and her. Or they use each other to become something else. Paul uses them by buying into what they want too, going native like Kynes – I think… We'll see I guess. ( I just had a horrible flash of a connection with Dances With Wolves. THIS IS BETTER!)
There's something going on about self-reliance too. Paul and Jessica are free in a way for a while – free from the old world and not yet sunk into their new one. The suits are emblematic of that freedom and self-reliance and, hell, their new pals are "Fremen" – Free-Men. I guess what's next is what are they free FOR?
Hm… Warren, I wonder if Jessica and Paul–especially Paul–are free at all? I feel like one of the recurring themes in the book is Paul's attempted avoidance of his "terrible purpose"; he is forever trying to avoid this idea he has of a jihad of Fremen warriors streaming off-planet if he makes a single misstep. I admit that I'm including thinking of Herbert's later books in the series to bolster this idea–while Dune Messiah is a pretty bad book mostly, the one after it, Children of Dune, really starts to flesh out this idea of… well, not destiny exactly, but maybe "terrible purpose" is a good term for it as well.
If you consider Dune (as I do) to be a book about systems, Paul's character essentially takes control of a system, even several systems, within the story. But part of the point seems to be that by controlling that system, the system in turn controls him, and so on.
Good point host. They're free but only inside a system.
Last night I remembered that at least twice Jessica has mentioned being able to control people but that they would be more useful if uncontrolled (Leto and Stilgar). So by free maybe I mean not under control of another person – of course they're all locked into levels and levels of other systems – none of us are free from needing water!
They're certainly more free that the Baron who is not only a slave to his appetites but finds his course getting narrower and narrower the more he tries to act on what he thought was his freedom.
Maybe freedom is mastering oneself? I'm getting corny. DUNE IS COOL!
The more I think about it, this idea of freedom inside/outside an overarching system is pretty interesting. Warren, you should definitely push through the later books, because Children of Dune is almost all about this–in essence, it's a kind of a "what if someone with prescience decided to control humanity's direction for thousands of years?" The idea of controlling and being controlled by these ideas of destiny or whatever are fundamanental to the story, in the same way that ecology/the law of the minimum are fundamental to Dune.
I'm writing from my phone while getting a kid to sleep which perfectly illustrates this point – that the law of the minimum applies to everything. For me to make comics I need certain things – ideas, skillz, space to work and time. The one I have the least of determines what gets done. For me it's time that is my Fremen water ( which is a great complemt to this book club that I spend some of it here).
I think someone in an earlier post might have made this post, but here it is again. I heart DUNE!
I've read ahead more – forget what I said about freedom. They were only free during that thumper crossing. They aren't free with the Fremen at all.
on freedom and systems:
everything is part of a system, yet there is a difference between being free and being controlled. entities that are controlled are taken out of the system's equilibrium – and thus no longer able to fully utilize their connection to the system's "genetic memory and reflexes".
I have an additional image in my mind which comes from dancing, but could probably be related to martial arts as well. When you do a move where you give up your own balance (like leaning on something) you become controlled by this merging of axes. It can enable new things, yes. But you are no longer free to feel and react the flow of the universe around and near you.
different words: giving up your freedom through becoming controlled creates a new system within the old system – but it is artificial and maybe only temporary. this could unleash hidden energy, but it becomes volatile as well because it is far from equilibrium.