300 days of reading. 8 books. More than 4 thousand pages. And I’m here to write something about what Dune meant to me.
It was a life changing experience. I feel like one of those people who had climbed the Mt. Everest or ran a marathon, or had finished a doctorate program.
I have witnessed many changes in the way I think, read and consume content in general.
Today, I have a different opinion about Literature compared to before I started this literary saga. Science fiction has a different meaning to me. And I have raised the bar a little higher for anything presented to me in written form.
With all that said, I would like to share some thoughts about Dune and what it meant to me.
⚠️ spoiler zone. proceed at your own risk ⚠️
Paul Atreides
All points here are obviously just my opinion. So please consider virtual preambles like “I think…” or “In my opinion…” to most sentences hereafter.
Dune is all about change. Transformations in one’s life. Phases and how characters evolve themselves living through them.
Paul Atreides was just a boy living his comfort aristocratic life in Caladan until the bad news about his inevitable move to Arrakis arrived.
His life transitioned from a water abundant world into Dune, a desert planet.
Out there in Arrakis, young Paul experienced the worst in life: violence, betrayal, the death of his father and his mother, pregnant, having to become a concubine to a tribal leader so they could survive in the desert.
He started a new life living in a tribe he considered savage.
He eventually became the leader of this tribe. Not only a military leader but a spiritual leader as well.
He challenged and defeated the strongest force known in the Universe, the Guild, the most brutal armies and leaders.
Then he started his own jihad to expand his domain throughout the galaxy using force and blood shed.
A few lines back he was just a well rested boy in Caladan. What happened?
The jihad eventually backfired on Paul and he saw himself under pressure with threats to his life coming from all over the Universe.
Then this “clone” which is not a clone, but a ghola of one of his all time best friends is given to him as a gift, Duncan Idaho. The problem was: this Duncan has been brought back to life as part of a conspiracy to kill Paul. So the used-to-be-best-friend Duncan has been transformed into his worse enemy by design with the clear objective to him. Paul was so evolved as person that he accepted the ghola, the risk of being killed at any moment and lives with it.
Things went very bad and Paul loses his sight after a murder attempt, which wasn’t a real problem because his prescience was so evolved at that point that Paul could walk around and interact with people as he had good eyes. Just another incredible transformation.
His twins were borne. Paul decides to let his prescience fade away, turning him effective blind.
All blind man were useless as warriors in Dune, so they must go to the desert and be eaten by the giant worms. Paul took that path.
A few lines back Paul was the “king of the universe” all powerful messiah commander of an on-going jihad. Now is a weaken man drifting through the desert to be eaten by a monster.
At this point everybody thought Paul was dead, as nobody could survive in the desert.
Yet another transformation. He kept himself alive for many years in the desert, but nobody recognized him anymore, not even people who lived close to him. He had suffered a physical transformation, especially to his face. He looked different and had a different name “The Preacher”. Paul Atreides, by all means, was dead.
Many years have passed after Paul turned himself into the Preacher.
I think — yes, I just think — Paul wouldn’t give up life before coming to terms with his son, Leto II.
He knew he needed to meet his son. So it happened.
Leto II Atreides, the God-Emperor of Dune
In my opinion — yes, of course — Letto II is the most impressive, complex, elaborated, out of this world jaw dropping mind boggling character of the entire Dune chronicles.
No wonder the 4th book of the series “The God-Emperor of Dune” was named after him.
He was the true Kwisatz Haderach. No doubt. (to me, at least)
I’m not going to list all his unbelievable powers because it would make this post 3 times longer. Instead, let me just pull back my original idea about Dune being all about transformation.
So Leto II, still as a little boy — on the right in the image below, which I believe describes the character very well with a Fremen stillsuit worn underneath a green military Atreides uniform. The girl on the left is his twin sister Ghanima, Ghani — knows that the humanity is doomed to extinction at an Universal level — not only in planet Arakis, hey! In the entire Universe — so he decides to do something about it.
His incredible knowledge and foresight told him he needed to be around for many thousands of years ahead in order to be a leader that would protect humanity from its terrible fate.
People at those times could extend life to around 300 years via spice consumption, but getting to millennia levels, it was quite a stretch. But Leto II knew exactly what needed to do.
He knew sandworms could live many thousands of years — dozens of thousands, I think, to reach full size of +400 meters long — so he decided to turn himself into one of them! Transformations.
His days as an ordinary human boy were counted.
So he let the sandtrout consume his body, a process that would normally kill a person, but not him. Again, I’ll not go into details because it would stretch this text too long.
So Leto II starts his metamorphosis.
3500 years later — oh my goodness — Leto reappears as 5% man, 95% sandworm.
His physical and metal capabilities were at a whole new level, which was necessary to the fulfillment of his “Golden Path”, the path to humanity salvation.
Once things seemed to be aligned with his plan, Leto II decided to let himself be killed in a certain way that would favor the spread of his soul/memory through a new generation of sandworms to be brought to life in Dune.
Leto II was survived through the form of Shaitan, a sandworm which has a special form of attachment with a fremen girl called Sheeana.
That closes the cycle of amazing transformations originated in Paul Atreides back in Caladan and ended in Rakis, around 5000 years later, with Sandworms carrying “little drops of spirit” of Leto II within themselves.
Knowledge. Tradition. Choice. Bravery. Perseverance. Vision. All that needed of one willing to carry on the brutal transformations of life.
All images here are findable in either Pinterest or Google Image search. You can get to the authors of each one of them with a little bit of digging.