DUNE BOOK CLUB :: Week 07!
The second to last week! Exciting! Let's splash in. Oh, and if you are just tuning in, you can click on the "Dune Book Club" tag at the bottom to see all the Dune posts by themselves and catch up. And please, feel free to join the conversation!
OH THOSE HARKONNENS!
You know, I spend all this time reading and thinking about all the symbolic and thematic stuff going on with Paul and his mom and his dead dad and sandworms and blah-blah-blah, but it has killed me for anything to do with the Harkonnens. As Paul moves toward his big chrysalis-emergence, the Harkonnens just seem to get more stupid, cackling and rubbing their hands together at each other.
The addition of Thufir Hawat doesn't help at all--if anything, having him present in their scenes just emphasizes their utter ineffectuality as antagonists. I'm beginning to think that this is the main weakness of the novel--you really know from page 1 that gross old pederast Baron Harkonnen is not going to win, am I right? He's set up as the bad guy, floating around on his tippie-toes because he's too obese to support his own weight; meanwhile Paul has a cadre of brilliant trainers turning him into Kung Fu Jesus. I mean really.
Speaking of Hawat, it's strange how he is built up as a potential instrument in the climax of the book, which idea (spoiler alert) sort of fizzles in the end. I can never decide if this is just a little misdirection on Herbert's part, or one of several plot points that got away from him over time. Much of the book's finish seems sudden and not at all depending on the events before it, but I am undecided in this. I like being surpised in books, so it doesn't bother me overmuch--but I like to be surprised on purpose, not by accident.
THEY DENIED US THE HAJJ!
One thing Frank Herbert does well, possibly best, in Dune is to wrap the Fremen in a deep tribal mystique. They are at once mysterious and simple--without devolving into long expositional descriptions of their ways, we are given enough information to construct our OWN mystique for them. I suspect that, more than any other single element, this sense of mystique is what binds the novel together and makes the whole larger than the sum of its parts.
One of the ways Herbert handles this is to tap into EXISTING "real world" tribal traditions, most obviously Islamic and Bedouin cultures. As you probably know, the hajj is a religious pilgrimage a devotee makes once in their lifetimes. As mentioned in a past post, Herbert liberally uses Middle-Eastern lexicons to give the Fremen verisimilitude. In later books there seems to be more Hebrew culture sort of retrofitted onto things, not always gracefully. Especially in the last two books, where Herbert was, frankly, not at the top of his powers--or maybe more correctly was too big for an editor to rein in some of his narrative excesses. But again, those are other books.
TODAY I AM A SANDRIDER
This penultimate section of our reading is one of my favorites, it's packed with little tidbits. I love to see all the little seeds Herbert planted in the earlier chapters bearing fruit now; it's like watching children grow up.
But the scene where Paul mounts and rides the sandworm is my favorite scene in the book, and for my money the beginning of the climax of the book. This is the end of Paul Atreides the man and the beginning of Muad'Dib, the legend. For me everything changes when Paul plants his maker hooks and rides up the side of the sandworm, the symbolic and elemental heart of Dune. When he stands on the back of the worm, with Stilgar and the Fremen arranged along it with their robes flapping, he is not only a leader of men but a leader of Fremen.
And look at the other characters after this point: everyone changes. Jessica settles into her role as Reverend Mother, remote, chilly, with her own spies and agents among the Fremen already. Stilgar becomes a satellite of Paul's, somewhat emasculated by his own semi-religious devotion to the former boy. Even Gurney Halleck, rediscovered by this newly powerful Muad'Dib, is a more silent version of the old raconteur, reverent but suspicious of the change in his old master.
But Paul's change to me is the most important, and in some ways the most subtle. Gurney Halleck points it out best when they are reunited after some bloodshed, and Paul wishes aloud they could have saved the vehicles. "Your father would have been more concerned for the men he couldn't save."
And of course the final change is to come in the next and final piece of the book for us!
YOUR RUGS ARE VERY DIRTY IN HERE.
This is one of my favorite passages in the book, emblematic as it is of the strange subtextual dialogue that Herbert does so well. It resonates with the change in Jessica, with the change in Paul, and with the coming end to the existing order of the Fremen:
"Your rugs are very dirty in here," Harah said. She swept her glance around the floor, avoiding Jessica's eyes. "So many people tramping through here all the time. You really should have them cleaned more often."
Okay! One more week to go. For next week, read to the end of the book! I might do an epilogue post the week after, dealing with the appendix and an overview of everything.
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