A Review of Dune

Here lies a toppled god,

His fall was not a small one,

We did but build his pedestal

A narrow, and a tall one

(poem from Dune Messiah, tho. Didn’t write its review yet.)

There are numerous literary works incorporating Greek, Norse, Egyptian mythologies. You might be well acquainted with Norse mythology, mostly because of the popularity of Thor and Loki. Lord of the Rings legend is also heavily influenced by Norse mythology. Well, Dune doesn’t incorporate any of those. Dune is the only grand fiction that is inspired by Islamic mythology.

But wait, Islam has mythology? Well, no. Mythology is defined with “made up stuff,” to put it plainly. Islam is true, so there’s no place for mythology. But, there are some Arab folktale notions that have engulfed the Muslim population in such a way that people naturally associate those tales with Islam. So there you go, Islamic mythology. Even though it’s not “Islamic” per se.

The most pertinent idea that Dune takes is the notion of Mahdi. The cornerstone of Dune is the idea of Mahdi. It also uses some other Arabic terms such as lisal al-ghaib, naib, Hajj and jihad. Seeing all these Arabic and Islamic stuff, one might start to think the book has a great deal of Islamic elements, so it’s gotta portray Islam in a positive light, right? Yeah…….no. Dune proposes a thesis that is pretty anti-Mahdi, at the end.

The book starts off with Paul Atreides. A prince, a charming prince. A happy family with a father, pregnant mother, and Paul. The father is a king, a duke, to be precise. You’ll see the prince learning how to fight physically, the politics of speech, even some seemingly supernatural elements. Seeing him growing up to become some majestic king is wonderful. The writing style is totally on point. You’d simply fall in love with character of Paul.

Unfortunately the house physician betrays them and the king gets killed. The prince and his mother flee under lethal threat. There was a huge opportunity to include a plot twist here, every reader ever surely thinks of this: why didn’t author Frank Herbert include the plot twist? Why did he directly tell us who the betrayer was? He did this, because the twist was in the teaching of the book, the philosophy of the book, and in front of that grand twist, a striking but common element like the “plot twist” doesn’t look so mesmerizing, does it?

Paul and his mother Jessica find the Fremen, a slightly evolved kind of humans in the desert of the planet of Arrakis. Paul slowly earns their trust. He shows what a brilliant person he is. The development of Paul here is absolutely peak.

But then something happens. Time jumps. Suddenly Paul is the leader of the fremen, he is married and also has a child.

Up until this point I was eagerly waiting for the point where Paul reaches the zenith and people accept him as the Mahdi. But all of this is skipped.

At this point I was like, ‘what? is there some pages missing in this book??’

But no, it was just like this. After a while, Paul’s child dies. To the readers shock, Paul doesn’t feel anything. That boy we’ve been seeing all this time, who was growing up to become this charismatic leader, the ultimate guide, was no longer there when he actually became the leader. Power never remains innocent.

Frank Herbert’s goal was to show us that no matter what potential someone shows, no matter how good and pure they may seem, when they achieve power, it corrupts them. So the people in the streets who are waiting for a charismatic leader, are waiting in folly. Their just waiting for one tyrant to take over another tyrant. So there’s no Mahdi? The pure guide? Frank Herbert says that’s not possible. The time jump was partly for this reason as well: subverting the shallow wishes of the readers, breaking their hearts to show them the reality.

So the book wasn’t some fictional story about a boy who had everything, lost everything, then regained everything by sheer skill and commitment. It’s about the readers, it’s about accepting a cold fact. That’s the twist. I understood this some time after finishing reading the book to be honest. Didn’t immediately catch it.

Frank Herbert is warning us. We tend to put our hopes and dreams into any charismatic individual or leader. We cherish their rise to power, wait for them to triumph, maybe even push it ourselves, with all our strength. Yet all that effort is ultimately focused on a solitary flawed human.

Apart, I have to say that Frank Herbert is an absolute genius. A complete mastermind. The way he told the stories of these “slightly evolved” humans such as the fremen, mentat, and bene Gesserit, is phenomenal. The world building, the desperation created by the lack of water — man these are simply majestic! The idea of the creation of mentats as “human computers,” which were indispensable for any kingdom, in 1965 is astonishing. Using the controversial idea of eugenics and incorporating that idea into the bene gesserit evolution — I mean damn such a cool idea! Studying the many medieval Arabic chronicles and using those to create the fremen, taking the discovery of oil and turning it into the spice Melange — erudite, very erudite. Loved this slight thing so much that WATER is the single most essential element for us humans, yet we never seem to be grateful for that. This book, teaches us to be grateful. The writing style is so good that you’ll feel the desperation and may even start thanking Allah that we’re not living in such desperate environs. Nevertheless, after genetically evolving so much, even after pushing human perfection for more than a thousand years, the human remains inherently flawed and gets corrupted. Dune is by far one of the best literary works ever written, not a shadow of doubt.