on dune, part 1 of many
You know how after you’ve had an extremely overstimulating experience, a concert or a sports event or a wedding or something, you kinda need some time to decompress? There are so many sensory sensations assailing your brain that you just need a second to breathe and reprocess it all.
That’s how I’m feeling now that I’ve finished the Dune series.
I read it all, from Dune to Chapterhouse. I started it toward the tail end of last year and finished Chapterhouse a few days ago. I have a lot of thoughts on the series, its political implications, the plot, some of the extremely questionable bits it had throughout1 but it’s taken me a few days to kind of… come to terms with it.
If you’re reading this, I’ll warn you: I will not be hiding spoilers
on the ending
When I got within about 20 pages of the end of Chapterhouse, I started to have some serious questions. How the hell were they going to wrap all of these storylines up in the next 20 or so pages? The Honored Matres and Benne Gesserit on the same planet? Sheeana has worms and she’s trying to escape? Duncan trying to figure out his feelings for Murbella? The Mother Superior a pseudo-Honored Matre?
I read somewhere that Frank Herbert was not really all that concerned whether the end of Chapterhouse was actually the end of the series. We’ll never know because he died, far before he should have at the age of 65. The end of Chapterhouse very much felt like it was the beginning of a new series of novels, honestly. Sheeana takes off in a space ship and literally catapults herself, Duncan and Teg into a completely unknown area of space. Murbella rules over the joint Benne Gesserit and Honored Matre alliance2 with many of her advisors actively thinking about killing her. Sheeana is possibly seeking to start a new Benne Gesserit that takes it into a completely different direction, while the worms aboard the ship and the ones on Chapterhouse could completely upend the way power is brokered.
There are huge open questions. What the hell is up with the Futars? Who created them? Where are the Handlers? Did they or did they not hunt the Honored Matres, and if they did, why are they so frequently seen as servants of the Honored Matres?
What will Scytale, who I just remembered is on the ship with Teg, Sheeana and Duncan, do with the material in the Nullentropy tube? Will the Tleilaxu be reborn?
Probably most importantly, what drove the Honored Matres back from the Scattering? What was the weapon they used against Teg’s forces that killed without blood?
There are probably tons that I’m missing. The biggest point in all of this is that I don’t feel as though I am angry at the ending. I finished the series, probably 3,000 pages or more, with an overwhelming sense of awe at Frank Herbert’s capabilities. I finished it with deep respect for the work he put into the universe. I finished it with only one overwhelmingly negative feeling: disappointment that I cannot keep reading more Dune books for years to come.
political intrigue
The Benne Gesserit critiques of Bureaucracy in the Honored Matres was really good, and their critique of most political systems that they acted on and within were phenomenal. I found myself head-nodding to most of it.
The political intrigue in Dune in general was fantastic. They really set up the factions well, with different factions having stated and real beliefs and motivations. The worshippers of Sheeana on Rakis were stated as being motivated by fanaticism but the more you saw their characters, the more you saw they were motivated by power more than anything. CHOAM and the Guild were motivated by monopolies and access to spice. The only factions that you really couldn’t quite define by their motivations were the ones with unbelievably longtermist goals: Leto and his Golden Path and the Benne Gesserit.
You could probably attempt to define the motivations of individual Benne Gesserit, but even so, I don’t think it’s easy. Jessica was motivated by her love for Duke Leto, but she still had the longtermist view, even after Paul’s ascent to Kwisatz Haderach. The movies depict Paul and Jessica as being motivated by a lust for power but honestly, I just didn’t see that in the book, and I don’t at all think that motivation for power shown in the movies would be born out in the plot if they ever got to Paul’s journey into and return from the desert. Alia certainly lusted for power, and I think early Leto II, before his ascent to Emperor, did as well, but by the end of his life I think Leto was truly more concerned with his Golden Path for mankind. I think that’s the larger reason he let the Benne Gesserit survive.
the post-Dune overwhelm
Overall, I think I’m still dealing with the overwhelm of the series. Trying to really tie it all into a neat package feels impossible. That said, the series offers a lot of very good insights, and I do want to organize my thoughts on it.
I just think it will take time.
Footnotes
-
anyone who read the series probably knows the two I’m talking about: the first Duncan and Murbella scene, and the scene with Teg. Not going to say more. ↩
-
even the nature of the pairing is hard to explain. I got the feeling that the Honored Matres were being subsumed into the Benne Gesserit. The overwhelming feeling I got from Murbella’s account toward the end, after the death of Odrade, is that the Benne Gesserit would subsume the Honored Matres, and the Honored Matres would mark and help to induce a major reformation of the Benne Gesserit. ↩