I’ve heard it said about certain books, that they are like chess games with the reader and I suspect that is why time is spent to describe the Baron’s globe as being on a kind of grid; like a chessboard. The way everyone in this book thinks and acts appears to me so tied to the chess game of power that I find myself estranged from them since I would never know if they were talking to me on or off the chess board.
Kines, the planetologist I think was very possibly hoodwinked into his allegiance with the Atreides through a kind of act about how the spice workers are in danger because something went wrong, and now here is the Duke Leto to demonstrate his morally upstanding character to a man I think the Duke must have valued very much to put so much in jeopardy to get him on his side. And yet I guess I don’t know what all really the Duke risked if he indeed set up a situation just to trick a man over to his side. It isn’t just that we’re not given the details on how wealthy the Atriedes are, but one of the characters, maybe Thufir or Gurney, remind Paul that his father’s house isn’t as big and wealthy as the other houses, even though the Atriedes have “family atomics”. I don’t know, it’s hard to sense out what it would be like to grow up in a family as simultaneously wealthy as it is poor in the grand scheme of things, as Paul’s may be. Or they’re it’s some kinda lie about themselves, I really don’t know other than that thought disorients my thinking.
But it is this strangeness and the books rich complexity that really kept my attention moving forward. The plans within plans, that maybe have no end of concealment; the way those plans are revealed. I was rather stunned when I think it was the Barron telling I think Feyd-Rautha that everything which had come before was like a secret training for his upcoming role, which I think was what they told Paul when they told him he was being trained to be a mentat? It leaves me at a point where I’m uncertain if there was any Christ character in the story. I recall Paul asking Gurney rhetorically if he had lost his ability to distinguish between Atreides and Harkonnen, even though they’re the same thing, not only because they’re actually related, but because I think they’re all just human beings.
Which brings me to the strangeness of Bene Gesserit thought which seems to think some people are not human. And yet, their test of who is and isn’t human seems to be a branding on Paul, kinda like how they brand cattle. I suppose what this means is that Bene Gesserit thought is infected by the race consciousness Paul comes into an awareness of. All of it I guess heading towards a Jihad in the Atriedes’ name.
Anyways, there’s a lot more to be said about Dune for sure. I don’t think I’m done reading it, especially how the final paragraph caught me so off guard, as if that which fueled this whole narrative was somehow wrapped in who’s married and who’s a concubine. But I guess I’ll have to think about next time. I don’t think I have the attention span to read Dune again right away.
-Danny