Frank Herbert’s great insight into human agency—Muad’Dib the tool?
Frank Herbert is undoubtedly one of the most fantastical writers of humanity in a framework of entertainment.
I wanted to create this post to discuss and interpret if Paul being elevated to the Lisan al Gaib (a title and prophecy planed by The Missionaria Protectiva) and his assentation to Emperor—as well his rule there after was part of his own agency or simply how he was manipulated.
Agency and the vigor is takes is such a powerful subject, and Frank’s writing gives it profound importance.
I would say his greatest achievement is obviously giving life to the God Emperor. And I would argue his conversations with Chani about him being a figurehead is very much the truth. His years as the prophet I see as his most true actions, but his time in Jacurutu clearly brought a schism to the person he was before.
There are many arguments for either side but I would gladly welcome any and all of your thoughts.
As I understood it, Paul’s initial role in the story during Dune and Dune: Messiah was one of being coopted by all the great forces playing out around him. It’s a very sneaky framing—Herbert makes him seem like one of the Great Men of History, but as he futilely realizes towards the end of the first Dune novel, his life or death during the final fight in the throne room would not have changed anything. Had he died, he would’ve been the martyr who sacrificed himself to free Arrakis from the Harkonnens, and the Jihad would be carried out in his name. Since he lived, the same thing happened (save for the martyring).
Dune 1 and Dune: Messiah are a deconstruction of the hero and his “agency” in a world that is governed not by individual choices but by sociology. Religion, the Bene Gesserit, Herbert’s views on genetics, the Landsraad and the wars of the Great Houses. All of these factors drove the story into being what it was. The superhuman power of prescience allows one to see possible futures, but there are still only very few things that are possible. Despite Paul’s superhuman capabilities as the pinnacle of the human species, he was still subject to the forces of history. Other timelines involved him maintaining the status quo by dying before becoming Muad’Dib, and some other highly ignoble ways of preventing the Jihad, but none of them gave him the revenge he wanted—and he could not find a way to exact revenge on the Harkonnens without unleashing Holy War on the universe.
And so he did.
By Children of Dune, Herbert changes his mind a little. Paul himself was unable to forge the course of history, because he was still so very human. The peak of the human species was still subject to our limitations. Leto II, on the other hand, is the only member of any truly alien species in the Dune series, because he merged with the worms. Doing so allowed him to break free from the chains that bound the rest of us. At this point, Paul was also retconned into having seen the Golden Path but simply lacking the strength to pursue it (which I was also fine with tbh given the previous statements on Dune 1 and Messiah—Paul’s character trait of lacking the will to undertake truly horrific decisions is not a retcon, but the existence of the Golden Path is). Leto II was willing to unleash the forces of Jihad at his own command, and reshaped the world as God Emperor.
And yet, the God Emperor was not really free either. Just like Paul after the Stone Burner, he saw a vision, assumed it to be the only way, and fully gave into it, and from then on outward simply walked the path laid out for him by himself. Ironically, his choice to eradicate the very concept of prescience freed every other future Kwisatz Haderach from the burden he and Paul carried: a false total understanding. I can’t remember where this happens, but Herbert likened prescience as collapsing the wavefunction of the future a la the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, but cautioned that doing so also meant eradicating other possible futures that were as of yet unseen (truly Herbert was the GOAT this shit ruled). Prescience was the very thing Paul warned against:
But it seems that all the great prescience-users fell victim to the trap. One could argue that Leto II did this on purpose, forcing humans into 3,500 years of stagnation in order to teach them “a lesson their bones would remember.”
And yet, Leto’s peace never seemed quite right to me. This comment is long enough, though, so I’ll leave it here.
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Also, I forget what happens after God Emperor. I have barely any recollection what goes on in Heretics and Chapterhouse and have very little desire to read them again. I have never read Brian Herbert’s sequel books and never plan to.