Dune by Frank Herbert

Dune by Frank Herbert is the book I most often read when I include Duin, the Dutch translation of the book. I was still a teenager when I read it the first time (in the Dutch translation). I have also wrote about it and the sequels on this website. I was rather rather disappointed after seeing Dune: Part Two and decided to study Dune once again to analyse what it says about Paul becoming the one he became and turning into an evil emperor commanding the Jihad to happen and billions of people getting killed.

Frank Herbert is said to have said:

I wrote the Dune series because I had this idea that charismatic leaders ought to come with a warning label on their forehead: May be dangerous to your health.

And:

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.

I have heard that Frank Herbert complained that readers did not get this message from the book. Maybe it is because what he actually wrote in the book is different from what he thought he wrote. The questions I want to investigate on this page based on the text of the book are:

Are the character portrayed as having a free will to make moral choices or was it their fate to end up where they ended up?
What are the important events that shaped the destiny of Paul and what moral choices did he make?
Could he have made different choices?
Did Paul have a pathological personality?
Was he corruptible?

In the following I will quote from the book under the fair use rules for the purpose of discussing the above question. The page and line numbers based on the edition published by New English Library in 1974, ISBN:0450027279. For the line number blank lines are counted such that each pages contains 48 lines. Although Dune technically does not have chapters, I will use the word chapter for the sections and assign numbers to them if needed.

This is work in progress.

At the start

What does the book say about the talents and the character of Paul at the very start of the book, before anything has happened yet?

Paul is trained the Way of the Bene Gesserit, (Line 39 and 30, page 31.) The training involves both the training of the senses and the muscles. On page 243, Jessica talks about his bindu-nervature (line 26) and prana-musculature (line 27) training. Bindu (Sanskrit: बिंदु) means "point", "drop" or "dot" and is considered the point at which creation begins and may become unity. Prana (Sanskrit: प्राण) means "life force" or "vital principal."
He receive the training to become a mentat. (Lines 30 to 43, page 49.) The training was done without him being aware of it as it is usual with mentat training. It was "done to him" (line 39).
He is a cautious one. (Line line 22, page 12.)
He senses truth. (Line 17 and 21, page 16)
He has an instinct for rightness. (Line 2 page 18.)
He is an independent thinker. To the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam he says: "I am not my mother," and she answers with: "You hate us a little?" (Line 27 and 28, page 16.)
He does have courage. (Line 34 page 14.)
He is sly. (Line 41, page 9.)
He is quick to understand thing and see through the motivations of others. On line 38, page 17 we read that he understands that the purpose of the Bene Gesserit is politics.
He has depth. (Line 2 and 3, page 31.)
He is not rebellious in the sense that he does want to obey orders, but he does seek out the edges of those orders. (Line 35 page 67.)

So far, this does not sound like he has a pathological personality and that he was corruptible. It should be noted that he was "without play or companions his own age," and that could have affected his social skills and empathy.

First dream

The book starts when Paul is just in his bed and he is visited by an old woman, who later is revealed to be the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, while he pretends to be asleep and looks at her through the thin slits of his eyes, He hears her talk about the "Kwisatz Haderach" and the "gom jabbar". When he ponders this and all changes related to going to Dune, Arrakis, he has a predictive dream. He dreams about being in a cathedral like cave where he hears the sound of dripping water (lines 29 to 32, page 10) and also talks with Chani (lines 36 to 39, page 29) telling her about the visit of Mohiam and how she puts 'a stamp of strangeness' on him (lines 43 and 44). In the 34th chapter, he does visit such a cave, and recalls that he has seen it in a dream. (But there is no mentioning of him talking to Chani, so, it might have been about a visit to similar cave or it must be that that part of the dream was not actually predictive.) While being in the cave, Paul is thinking a lot about the coming Jihad and after leaving the cave he 'felt that a vital moment had passed him' (lines 31 and 32, page 304.) I think it is not without reason that Frank Herbert let have Paul this dream so early in the book even before the gom jabbar test and it seems to suggest that it was a fate that Paul could not have escaped from.

Gom jabbar

The test with the gom jabbar is probably the most influential thing done to Paul. He did not undergo the test by his own choice and he was only told about the evening before without any explanation ("meet my gom jabbar" on line 48 of page 9) and was riddled with the idea that he could be something special, the "kwisatz Haderach" (line 43 of that page), without any explanation of what that could be. It was only the next morning, shortly before the test, who the "old woman" (line 3, page 11) was, a "Reverend Mother" (line 34, page 11), "the Emperor's Thruthsayer" (line 36). Although Paul has dreamt of her once (line 35), he did not know who she was. We can conclude that he did not dream about the test, because he only dreamed of here once (line 34, page 11) and that was not about him being tested. He did dream about telling Chani that the Reverend Mother put a stamp of strangeness on him (line 43, page 29).

The test must have been a traumatic experience. (On line 44, page 26, it says "on the day of Paul's ordeal" and on line 16, page 29, Mohiam says to Jessica "He's had long, frightening day".) Before the test, he sensed the fear of his mother. Then the shock of a poisoned needle close to his neck, especially because of the constant fear of poison instilt by the constant checks for poison in food. Than the torture with pain and the sense of being mutulated, the experience of his hand burning, the skin curling back (line 20, page 15), must be very hard, possibly only softened by the fact that it was presented as a test. Yet, it must have been very harsh and freightening in light of his relativily protected and care-free up bringing with people caring about him all the time. It must be that the training he received helped him to pass the test.

The Reverend Mother came to test him because she must have known about the plans of the Emperor, knowing that there was a chance that Paul could escape the control of the Bene Gesserit, if he would not be killed during the attack of the Harkonnen. If the Emperor had not feared the rising populariy of Duke Leto and made the decision to have him killed through the hands of the Harkonnen, things would have been very different. One could also argue that the Reverend Mother Mohiam failed to protect the interest of the Bene Gesserit by not killing Paul when she could, especially when she knew he could become the Kwisatz Haderach. Why did she even hint to Paul how this could happen by telling about the truthsayer drug (end of page 18)?

The test could also be viewed as an initialtion ritual. After the test, the Reverend Mother shared some secret insights into the Bene Gesserit. When a week later recalls some part the talk with Hawat, he experiences deep inhibitions to talk about the ordeal (line 3 and line 23, page 35).

After the test, Paul spends most of the day in the soundproof Meditation Chamber left

Haunted by a terrible purpose

On line 6, page 17 it says that he felt inflicted that he has been inflicted with terrible purpose through the pain and fear of the test with the gom jabbar.
On line 10, page 50 he ponders whether being the mentat is his terrible purpose.

After becoming the Kwisatz Haderach

The chapter ends (on line 34, page 424) with Paul saying:

"The future's becoming as muddled [...] All paths lead into darkness."

Just before this, he has sensed that the Emperor, the Harkonnen, all the Great Houses and many of the poorest Houses have gathered above Dune all waiting to loot them. I presume that includes not just and him and his family but also all Fremen. The quote makes clear that for him the outcome of the coming battle is not clear. He immediately goes on to prevent the Guild from sending everybody down.

Realising his son has been killed

Many people are claiming that the killing of his son, pushed Paul over the edge and made him decide to become the evil Emperor and allowed the Jihad to happen. But I wonder if this is the case. At the moment he heard about it, they already had prepared everything for the battle and were just waiting for the right moment to start. Also immediately after he has heard half a message from the South, he become aware of the fact that his son was killed. It reads (starting at the end of the second line on page 433):

He felt emptied, a shell without emotions. Everything he touched brought death and grief. And it was like a disease that could spread across the universe.

It does not read here that it made him angry and that he wanted to take revenge. He just feels empty, kind of defeated by the circumstances. He feels like he is somehow cursed and that this is beyond his own control. Next he feels the outer memories speak inside himself. Among those memories there is something enjoying the situation and looking forward what it coming. In the sequels we read how Alia is 'taken over' by the other memories of the Baron. So, it could be the Baron or some other ancestor stirring in him. The chapter ends (on line 9, page 433) with a thought by Paul:

How little the universe knows about the nature of real cruelty!

This can be interpreted to refer to the accumulated memories he has acquired through becoming the Kwisatz Haderach, which is much broader than those of the Reverend Mothers, and being the first person to have access to all the cruelties that have happened to humans. Or even the cruelty of having all those memories. It could also being read as a statement about how the universe is going to experience cruelties through the coming Jihad that is going to cause billions of causalities.

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