Children of Dune – Entry #7

Alright … we are at the climactic end.  My husband, interested in how the blogging was going, asked for some insight.  He figured that he read Dune more than any other book but that he had lost patience with Dune Messiah and definitely with Children of Dune which he only read a small portion of.  So we philosophized for a little while, discussing the religious and governmental themes.  He considers himself Buddhist, more than anything else.  I consider myself Jewish more than anything else although I have studied many religions and should probably consider myself a Bu-Jew (combo of Buddhism and Judaism).  He had found it fascinating how Frank Herbert had decided that the ruling religion in Dune would be Buddhislamic (combo of Buddhism and Islam).  I then pointed out that there were also references later on in the story of Jewish influence.  Specifically, the use of Hebrew words which I identify since I was once fluent in Hebrew ... although it is possible they are the same in Arabic.  An example of this comes up on p. 372.  In the first conversation between The Preacher and Gurney Halleck, Paul (The Preacher) says to Gurney “The Lady Jessica ordered you to differentiate between the wolf and the dog, between ze’ev and ke’leb” (Children of Dune, p. 372).  These are transliterations of the Hebrew words for wolf and dog.  There are more references that are clearly Hebrew and Jewish later on.

In this conversation between Gurney and Paul, Gurney comes to see that The Preacher really is Paul Atreides.  The heart of the matter for Paul and for Leto is in this passage.

     “But you’re alive,” Halleck whispered, overcome now by his realization, turning to stare at this man, younger than himself yet so aged by the desert that he appeared to carry twice Halleck’s years.

     “What is that?” Paul demanded. “Alive?”

     Halleck peered around them at the watching Fremen, their faces caught between doubt and awe.

     “My mother never had to learn my lesson.” It was Paul’s voice! “To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading.  There’d be reason enough for the invention of free will!  A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections of his dream-creatures.”

(Children of Dune, p. 374)

And then the inevitable.  The Preacher comes to give once last sermon in the plaza to provoke Alia.  This is one passage in his sermon:

     “I found myself in the Desert of Zan,” The Preacher shouted, in that waste of howling wilderness.  And God commanded me to make that place clean.  For we were provoked in the desert, and grieved in the desert, and we were tempted in that wilderness to forsake our ways.”

(Children of Dune, p. 388)

When I read this, it really made me think of the story in the Torah of the Hebrew people's exodus from Egypt.  The Hebrews wandered in the wilderness of Zin for forty years after the temptation at Mt. Sinai and before entering the land of milk and honey.  The similarities were so striking, I had to include it here.

The final confrontation that involved all the major players including Alia, Leto, Ghanima, and Lady Jessica was really so sad, especially after the shock of Paul being killed in the plaza at the hands of Alia’s priests.  Paul had goaded them to it knowing it was what needed to be done … like Duncan.  In the end, Alia took her own life too.  And Leto reminded Lady Jessica “we told you to pity her” (Children of Dune, p. 394).  So sad.

I’m going to wrap up my entries from Children of Dune with the chapter starters for the final two chapters.

     The assumption that a whole system can be made to work better through an assault on its conscious elements betrays a dangerous ignorance.  This has often been the ignorant approach of those who call themselves scientists and technologists.

-- The Butlerian Jihad

by Harq al-Ada

(Children of Dune, p. 395)

     As with so many other religions, Muad-Dib’s Golden Elixir of Life degenerated into external wizardry.  Its mystical signs became mere symbols for deeper psychological processes, and those processes, of course, ran wild.  What they needed was a living god, and they didn’t have one, a situation which Muad’Dib’s son has corrected.

-- Saying attributed to Lu Tung-pin

(Lu, The Guest of the Cavern)

(Children of Dune, p. 400)