21
Aug
Dune Messiah
I’ve now finished Dune Messiah, the shortest of the Dune books. (If you don’t want to read more Dune rambling, stop now)
The first time I read Dune Messiah I was in jr. high (I think) and it was the hardest of the Dune books to get through. The 250 pages were some of the hardest to slog through I had encountered. Now that I’ve re-read it I know why. It’s all politics and philosophy and very little story, yet it’s an essential story to tell. Paul has learned there is no way out of the future he helped to bring about. He hates the slaughter that is done in his name, but if he dies he know it will get worse. At he same time, people of power who can’t abide his power are plotting his demise.
Paul knows the end is coming but it isn’t until he loses his eyes that he really branches out into the prescience and can see what is coming. It was interesting that everyone was ok with his seeing the future, but using his power to see creeped everyone out.
It took me awhile to get why the fremen jihadists call themselves the Children of the Moon. Muad’Dib, the desert mouse is also represented by a pattern on the first moon, making Paul the moon.
A huge vortex in the future leaves Paul and his sister blind to the future, but Paul’s son is born and has full knowledge. I think rather than uncertainties causing the vortex as in the past, it is Paul’s son. It’s discussed elsewhere that the prescient can’t see one another, there is a time vortex around them. That also goes with the notion that the prescient can not only watch, but influence the future. Alia does it in Dune when she leaves a message for Paul in the future. Paul does it to some extent in Dune Messiah when he grabs the streams and holds them so no one else can change them. Also in Dune, Paul mentions he is a seed for what is to come and that he is not really the Kwisatz Haderach. His son, at birth, has all of the memories of his paternal line, which Paul didn’t have access to and I believe created such a large vortex that it overwhelms Paul and Alia.