Now that the cast is coming together, Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming adaptation of Dune is getting more attention than ever. And with that attention an interesting question has started cropping up with more frequency, one that bears further examination: Is Dune a “white savior” narrative?
It’s important to note that this is not a new question. Dune has been around for over half a century, and with every adaptation or popular revival, fans and critics take the time to interrogate how it plays into (or rebels against) certain story tropes and popular concepts, the white savior complex being central among them. While there are no blunt answers to that question—in part because Dune rests on a foundation of intense and layered worldbuilding—it is still an important one to engage and reengage with for one simple reason: All works of art, especially ones that we hold in high esteem, should be so carefully considered. Not because we need to tear them down or, conversely, enshrine them, but because we should all want to be more knowledgeable and thoughtful about how the stories we love contribute to our world, and the ways in which they choose to reflect it.
So what happens when we put Dune under this methodical scrutiny? If we peel back the layers, like the Mentats of Herbert’s story, what do we find?
Hollywood has a penchant for the white savior trope, and it forms the basis for plenty of big-earning, award-winning films. Looking back on blockbusters like The Last of the Mohicans, Avatar, and The Last Samurai, the list piles up for movies in which a white person can alleviate the suffering of people of color—sometimes disguised as blue aliens for the purpose of sci-fi trappings—by being specially “chosen” somehow to aid in their struggles. Sometimes this story is more personal, between only two or three characters, often rather dubiously labeled as “based on a true story” (The Blind Side, The Help, Dangerous Minds, The Soloist, and recent Academy Award Best Picture-winner Green Book are all a far cry from the true events that inspired them). It’s the same song, regardless—a white person is capable of doing what others cannot, from overcoming racial taboos and inherited prejudices up to and including “saving” an entire race of people from certain doom.
At face value, it’s easy to slot Dune into this category: a pale-skinned protagonist comes to a planet of desert people known as Fremen. These Fremen are known to the rest the rest of the galaxy as a mysterious, barbaric, and highly superstitious people, whose ability to survive on the brutal world of Arrakis provides a source of endless puzzlement for outsiders. The Fremen themselves are a futuristic amalgam of various POC cultures according to Herbert, primarily the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana, the San people, and Bedouins. (Pointedly, all of these cultures have been and continue to be affected by imperialism, colonialism, and slavery, and the Fremen are no different—having suffered horrifically at the hands of the Harkonnens even well before our “heroes” arrive.) Once the protagonist begins to live among the Fremen, he quickly establishes himself as their de facto leader and savior, teaching them how to fight more efficiently and building them into an unstoppable army. This army then throws off the tyranny of the galaxy’s Emperor, cementing the protagonist’s role as their literal messiah.
That sounds pretty cut and dried, no?
But at the heart of this question—Is Dune a white savior narrative?—are many more questions, because Dune is a complicated story that encompasses and connects various concepts, touching on environmentalism, imperialism, history, war, and the superhero complex. The fictional universe of Dune is carefully constructed to examine these issues of power, who benefits from having it, and how they use it. Of course, that doesn’t mean the story is unassailable in its construction or execution, which brings us to the first clarifying question: What qualifies as a white savior narrative? How do we measure that story, or identify it? Many people would define this trope differently, which is reasonable, but you cannot examine how Dune might contribute to a specific narrative without parsing out the ways in which it does and does not fit.
This is the strongest argument against the assertion that Dune is a white savior story: Paul Atreides is not a savior. What he achieves isn’t great or even good—which is vital to the story that Frank Herbert meant to tell.
There are many factors contributing to Paul Atreides’s transformation into Muad’Dib and the Kwisatz Haderach, but from the beginning, Paul thinks of the role he is meant to play as his “terrible purpose.” He thinks that because he knows if he avenges his father, if he becomes the Kwisatz Haderach and sees the flow of time, if he becomes the Mahdi of the Fremen and leads them, the upcoming war will not stop on Arrakis. It will extend and completely reshape the known universe. His actions precipitate a war that that lasts for twelve years, killing millions of people, and that’s only just the beginning.
Can it be argued that Paul Atreides helps the people of Arrakis? Taking the long view of history, the answer would be a resounding no—and the long view of history is precisely what the Dune series works so hard to convey. (The first three books all take place over a relatively condensed period, but the last three books of the initial Dune series jump forward thousands of years at a time.) While Paul does help the Fremen achieve the dream of making Arrakis a green and vibrant world, they become entirely subservient to his cause and their way of life is fundamentally altered. Eventually, the Fremen practically disappear, and a new Imperial army takes their place for Paul’s son, Leto II, the God Emperor. Leto’s journey puts the universe on what he calls the “Golden Path,” the only possible future where humanity does not go extinct. It takes this plan millennia to come to fruition, and though Leto succeeds, it doesn’t stop humans from scheming and murdering and hurting one another; it merely ensures the future of the species.
One could make an argument that the Atreides family is responsible for the saving of all human life due to the Golden Path and its execution. But in terms of Paul’s position on Arrakis, his effect on the Fremen population there, and the amount of death, war, and terror required to bring about humanity’s “salvation,” the Atreides are monstrous people. There is no way around that conclusion—and that’s because the story is designed to critique humanity’s propensity toward saviors. Here’s a quote from Frank Herbert himself on that point:
I am showing you the superhero syndrome and your own participation in it.
And another:
Dune was aimed at this whole idea of the infallible leader because my view of history says that mistakes made by a leader (or made in a leader’s name) are amplified by the numbers who follow without question.
At the center of Dune is a warning to be mistrustful of messiahs, supermen, and leaders who have the ability to sway masses. This is part of the reason why David Lynch’s Dune film missed the mark; the instant that Paul Atreides becomes a veritable god, the whole message of the story is lost. The ending of Frank Herbert’s Dune is not a heroic triumph—it is a giant question mark pointed at the reader or viewer. It is an uncomfortable conclusion that only invites more questions, which is a key part of its lasting appeal.
And yet…
There is a sizable hole in the construction of this book that can outweigh all other interpretations and firmly situate Dune among white savior tropes: Paul Atreides is depicted as a white man, and his followers are largely depicted as brown people.
There are ways to nitpick this idea, and people do—Paul’s father, Leto Atreides might not be white, and is described in the book as having “olive” toned skin. We get a sense of traditions from the past, as Leto’s father was killed in a bull fight, dressed in a matador cape, but it’s unclear if this is tied to their heritage in any sense. The upcoming film has cast Cuban-Guatemalan actor Oscar Isaac in the role of Duke Leto, but previous portrayals featured white men with European ancestry: U.S. actor William Hurt and German actor Jürgen Prochnow. (The Fremen characters are also often played by white actors, but that’s a more simple case of Hollywood whitewashing.) While the name Atreides is Greek, Dune takes place tens of thousands of years in the future, so there’s really no telling what ancestry the Atreides line might have, or even what “whiteness” means to humanity anymore. There’s a lot of similar melding elsewhere in the story; the ruler of this universe is known as the “Padishah Emperor” (Padishah is a Persian word that essentially translates to “great king”), but the family name of the Emperor’s house is Corrino, taken from the fictional Battle of Corrin. Emperor Shaddam has red hair, and his daughter Irulan is described as blond-haired, green-eyed, and possessing “patrician beauty,” a mishmash of words and descriptions that deliberately avoid categorization.
None of these factors detract from the fact that we are reading/watching this story in present day, when whiteness is a key component of identity and privilege. It also doesn’t negate the fact that Paul is always depicted as a white young man, and has only been played by white actors: first by Kyle MacLachlan, then by Alec Newman, and soon by Timothy Chalamet. There are many reasons for casting Paul this way, chief among them being that he is partly based on a real-life figure—T.E. Lawrence, better known to the public as “Lawrence of Arabia.” But regardless of that influence, Frank Herbert’s worldbuilding demands a closer look in order to contextualize a narrative in which a white person becomes the messiah of an entire population of people of color—after all, T.E. Lawrence was never heralded as any sort of holy figure by the people he worked alongside during the Arab Revolt.
The decision to have Paul become the Mahdi of the Fremen people is not a breezy or inconsequential plot point, and Herbert makes it clear that his arrival has been seeded by the Bene Gesserit, the shadowy matriarchal organization to which his mother, Jessica, belongs. In order to keep their operatives safe throughout the universe, the Bene Gesserit planted legends and mythologies that applied to their cohort, making it easy for them to manipulate local legends to their advantage in order to remain secure and powerful. While this handily serves to support Dune’s thematic indictment of the damage created by prophecy and religious zealotry, it still positions the Fremen as a people who easily fall prey to superstition and false idols. The entire Fremen culture (though meticulously constructed and full of excellent characters) falls into various “noble savage” stereotypes due to the narrative’s juxtaposition of their militant austerity with their susceptibility to being used by powerful people who understand their mythology well enough to exploit it. What’s more, Herbert reserves many of the non-Western philosophies that he finds particularly attractive—he was a convert to Zen Buddhism, and the Bene Gesserit are attuned to the Eastern concepts of “prana” and “bindu” as part of their physical training—for mastery by white characters like Lady Jessica.
While Fremen culture has Arab influences in its language and elsewhere, the book focuses primarily on the ferocity of their people and the discipline they require in order to be able to survive the brutal desert of Arrakis, as well as their relationship to the all-important sandworms. This speaks to Herbert’s ecological interests in writing Dune far more than his desire to imagine what an Arab-descended society or culture might look like in the far future. Even the impetus toward terraforming Arrakis into a green world is one brought about through imperialist input; Dr. Liet Kynes (father to Paul’s companion Chani) promoted the idea in his time as leader of the Fremen, after his own father, an Imperial ecologist, figured out how to change the planet. The Fremen don’t have either the ability or inclination to transform their world with their own knowledge—both are brought to them from a colonizing source.
Dune’s worldbuilding is complex, but that doesn’t make it beyond reproach. Personal bias is a difficult thing to avoid, and how you construct a universe from scratch says a lot about how you personally view the world. Author and editor Mimi Mondal breaks this concept down beautifully in her recent article about the inherently political nature of worldbuilding:
In a world where all fundamental laws can be rewritten, it is also illuminating which of them aren’t. The author’s priorities are more openly on display when a culture of non-humans is still patriarchal, there are no queer people in a far-future society, or in an alternate universe the heroes and saviours are still white. Is the villain in the story a repulsively depicted fat person? Is a disabled or disfigured character the monster? Are darker-skinned, non-Western characters either absent or irrelevant, or worse, portrayed with condescension? It’s not sufficient to say that these stereotypes still exist in the real world. In a speculative world, where it is possible to rewrite them, leaving them unchanged is also political.
The world of Dune was built that way through a myriad of choices, and choices are not neutral exercises. They require biases, thoughtfulness, and intent. They are often built from a single perspective, and perspectives are never absolute. And so, in analyzing Dune, it is impossible not to wonder about the perspective of its creator and why he built his fictional universe the way he did.
Many fans cite the fact that Frank Herbert wrote Dune over fifty years ago as an explanation for some of its more dated attitudes toward race, gender, queerness, and other aspects of identity. But the universe that Herbert created was arguably already quite dated when he wrote Dune. There’s an old-world throwback sheen to the story, as it’s built on feudal systems and warring family houses and political marriages and ruling men with concubines. The Bene Gesserit essentially sell their (all-female) trainees to powerful figures to further their own goals, and their sexuality is a huge component of their power. The odious Baron Harkonnen is obese and the only visibly queer character in the book (a fact that I’ve already addressed at length as it pertains to the upcoming film). Paul Atreides is the product of a Bene Gesserit breeding program that was created to bring about the Kwisatz Haderach—he’s literally a eugenics experiment that works.
And in this eugenics experiment, the “perfect” human turns out to be a white man—and he was always going to be a man, according to their program—who proceeds to wield his awesome power by creating a personal army made up of people of color. People, that is, who believe that he is their messiah due to legends planted on their world ages ago by the very same group who sought to create this superbeing. And Paul succeeds in his goals and is crowned Emperor of the known universe. Is that a white savior narrative? Maybe not in the traditional sense, but it has many of the same discomfiting hallmarks that we see replicated again and again in so many familiar stories. Hopefully, we’re getting better at recognizing and questioning these patterns, and the assumptions and agendas propagated through them. It gives us a greater understanding of fiction’s power, and makes for an enlightening journey.
Dune is a great work of science fiction with many pointed lessons that we can still apply to the world we live in—that’s the mark of a excellent book. But we can enjoy the world that Frank Herbert created and still understand the places where it falls down. It makes us better fans and better readers, and allows us to more fully appreciate the stories we love.
Emmet Asher-Perrin maintains that it would have been awesome if Paul had been a non-binary character, since the story is so adamant that he possesses important male and female attributes. You can bug him on Twitter, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
I can’t really comment on the article because I can’t get past this quote. In what way is The Last of the Mohicans and The Last Samurai white savior movies? Hawkeye is just a participant in The Last of the Mohicans. He is not a Mohican and the title does not pertain to him. He doesn’t even kill the main bad guy. That was done (and one of my top movie scenes of all time) by the actual last Mohican! Hawkeye doesn’t save the Mohican clan. He doesn’t stop the war. He’s just participates in this specific storyline that the movie covers. The Last Samurai is, again, not a title that pertains to the white character. It’s actually plural, and is about the actual Japanese samurai. He doesn’t save the samurai. He’s just a participant in their story. You could make an argument, I suppose, that Cruise’s impassioned speech to the Emperor at the end is somewhat of a savior moment. But I don’t view it that way. I think that actions of the actual samurai is what inspires the ending.
Sorry, didn’t meant to get off topic, but those two movies are two of my all time favorites and I don’t think they fit into this white savior trope.
All excellent points. This is probably the best take away quote: “Personal bias is a difficult thing to avoid, and how you construct a universe from scratch says a lot about how you personally view the world.”
Dune reveals more about Herbert’s constraints as a sci-fi author than whatever vision he was trying to get across.
On the plus side, I’ve found the books disappointing in the traditional narrative sense because there’s no heroes or “winning” side. The movie circumvented this by returning to a straightforward story line with a clear good guy and was guilty of the white savior (though EVERYONE in the 80’s movie was white. So, so white).
In the books, humanity screws up time and again, and it seems like survival of the species is the only “win.” Humans becoming overly reliant on drugs–to the point that if they lose their supply of Spice, whole populations will die from withdrawal–and Paul’s over reliance on prescience ties him to a destructive future, limiting human capacity for growth and adaptability ultimately leading to their own downfall.
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As a side point, the way Duncan Idaho is described in the books– black curly hair, “dark complexion” and broad nose– suggests he might be seen as Black according to our current ethnic categorisation (he does have green eyes but so do some Black people).
For me, the tipping point that makes Dune explicitly colonial is the Kynes family, Imperial Planetologists & secret leaders of the Fremen. Pardot Kynes is a white man that goes among the savages to tell them how their planet should be and immediately gets embraced as a prophet. His half-Fremen son Liet is the one that House Atreides needs to win over to get ‘the natives’ on side while we never even get his mother’s name, nor will we get that of his wife, Chani’s mother. The Fremen family & tribe he is born into doesn’t matter, it’s only the Imperial education & inherited title of his white father that counts.
None of that is necessary, nor does it meaningfully inform our understanding of the Fremen, and it denies them any agency in the development of their planet. Apparently, though all the naibs dream of terraforming Arrakis, they are too ignorant until the educated white man shows up to talk them through it.
I feel you missed the mark there. The story clearly shows that it’s a sham, they go in planning to use the Fremen to exact revenge. Nor do they save them. They use them, almost to destruction, for their own ends. None of that is an accident, it is a planned fact. The “savior” knows exactly what the outcome of his actions will be and chooses to destroy a people anyways.
I feel Paul is more of an anti-Christ than a savior. Good story though.
These Fremen are known to the rest the rest of. the galaxy as a mysterious, barbaric, and highly superstitious people, whose ability to survive on the brutal world of Arrakis provides a source of endless puzzlement for outsiders.
This quote just goes to show how a reader would fall into the same mistake that the Imperium made, in underestimating the sophistication and abilities of the Fremen. Herbert, through Lady Jessica recognizes the potential, and possible exploitation of the Fremen, if only for basic necessity, survival. Paul, at first recognizes the Fremen as a tool to gain, regain power, thus furthering the exploitative theme as it pertains to Arrakis and the native populace. Even the Bene Gesserit, through the Missionaria Protectiva demonstrate the exploitative theme of the first book. This is not a “bug, but the feature” of the story.
I agree, the choice to write the story this way demonstrates “biases, thoughtfulness, and intent”, but in an effort to reflect society’s actual biases. To cast the upcoming movie, or rewrite the story to make everyone happy is a futile exercise because this story not about what we want society to look like, but to reflect what our world and society actually looks like, to include all the terrible parts about it.
One of my personal, maybe not original or unique theories regarding the KH having to be a male, is the fact that the males have both x and y chromosomes, which allows the KH to look into the ancestral genetic memory of both male and female.
@8
This exactly. The entire savior narrative is a deliberate plant, its a scam. Jessica uses it to manipulate the Fremen but gets in WAY over her head. Its fun to be reductionist and turn this into a gender or ethnic studies class with a bunch of oppression narrative, but it misses the point that its a deliberately engineered societal construct not “magic” and that its cynical deployment is the entire story.
Herbert may have been considerably more woke than you think.
This is good, and I agree with it.
I’m hoping the movies don’t shy away from the moral ambiguity of Paul’s victory at the end of the book, from his horror at what victory would unleash. It’ll be very, very easy to make Paul too likeable or heroic, losing the thread in the process.
Paul Atreides is depicted as a white man, and his followers are largely depicted as brown people.
But is this actually true? How are the Fremen described in the books, in terms of appearance?
This is kind of an important question, and I’m concerned that you decided to completely skate over it, because “white guy turns up, liberates a load of other white guys” is not really a white-saviour narrative.
As you point out, they’re generally played by white actors. (And they’re depicted in a lot of other artwork as white too.)
They have blue eyes, but that’s explained in the books as a spice side-effect.
Importantly, Paul looks similar enough to them to be taken for a Fremen, except that he doesn’t initially have the blue eyes.
They’re described as having deeply tanned or leathery skin – which is unsurprising given that they live an outdoor life in the desert, but implies that they’re at least not what we would call “black”. You wouldn’t say that a Dinka farmer, for example, was “deeply tanned”.
They’re mainly black-haired and black-bearded, and Stilgar’s skin is at least light enough to see veins through (he has a “heavily-veined hand” though “heavily-veined” might just mean that the veins are prominent).
Liet-Kynes, who has a Fremen mother, has “sandy hair”, and an unnamed Fremen that Thufir Hawat meets has “sandy hair and beard” as well.
Harrah has black hair and “light olive skin” (compare the “dark olive” of Duke Leto).
We’re definitely primed to think Fremen=Arabs because they’re desert people, and the story is based on TE Lawrence, but is that actually backed up by the text? Is there actually anything in the text that says that Paul’s white, and the Fremen aren’t?
Living in the DC area I know several Arabs and Persians(and people from all over the world for that matter) and all of them are “white”, at least to the extent that any Mediterranean people are white. Whiteness as a skin tone anyway. Culturally they may be “non-White” to the extent they are non-European. Heck, a hundred years ago Italians and Irish weren’t “white”.
Complicating this is that I am writing as an American, of American culture. A mid-50’s American who grew up in Northern Virginia when NoVa was still definitely Southern. Heck, Loving v. Virginia was decided after I was born.
Race, as a societal concept, is tricky and constantly changing.
14. ajay
Part of the reason they are thought to be Arab is the language they use. Words like ‘umma’ to designate a prophet (where I get part of my handle) and ‘naib’ to designate a leader have Arabic origins.
And in this eugenics experiment, the “perfect” human turns out to be a white man—and he was always going to be a man, according to their program—who proceeds to wield his awesome power by creating a personal army made up of people of color.
Paul was not supposed to be…Paul. Paul was supposed to be a female that would marry into House Harkonnen ending the feud between the two houses. If anything this further drives home the idea that we should not make saviors of men as Hebert wanted to.
@1Austin:”I can’t really comment on the article because I can’t get past this quote. In what way is The Last of the Mohicans and The Last Samurai white savior movies? Hawkeye is just a participant in The Last of the Mohicans. He is not a Mohican and the title does not pertain to him. He doesn’t even kill the main bad guy. That was done (and one of my top movie scenes of all time) by the actual last Mohican! Hawkeye doesn’t save the Mohican clan. He doesn’t stop the war. He’s just participates in this specific storyline that the movie covers.”
Completely agree about LAST OF THE MOHICANS. How anyone could view that film as a “White Savior” narrative is beyond me.
Dune defies the White Savior idea because Paul and the Fremen are barbaric scum. They sterilize entire planets together. Herbert was partially inspired by the charismatic jfk telling us we should go to Vietnam. People are saved in done, but far more people are destroyed by those same “savior’s”. It’s the evil of all people, no matter what their color or class.
I’ve just been looking at the text. As Ajay says it is nowhere said that Freman are dark skinned. Given this is the far future it’s probable that so called races no longer exist and every cultural group includes all shades of color. It is possible that blonds and redheads are comparitively rare and regarded as especially attractive leading the BG to select for fair skinned ‘breeders’. These in turn would pass that trait on to their children. Paul is stated to resemble his father therefore he presumably is olive skinned. Alia is probably darker skinned than the mother she otherwise resembles with Auburn hair and green eyes.
I don’t really recall much mention of skin color at all in Dune, aside from a few vague descriptions of some select characters.
I suppose you could argue that the people of Caladan were more similar, culturally, to classic Europeans and the people of Arakis more to a sort of middle eastern/native American hybrid, but actual skin color is not a big sticking point at any point in the whole story.
If anything, it’s more of a tale of those with power dominating/using those with less power. In and of itself, that’s not necessarily a white vs non-white thing (though it has often worked out that way here on Earth) since it happens inter-racially all the time as well.
I think Paul has to be a white man for the story to work for us as readers, certainly it did 50 years ago. We have to question our assumptions at what a savior looks and acts like, so Paul has to be a stereotypical savior to help us get the initial buy in so Herbert can then attack the idea of a savior as a good thing.
On the other hand making the main villain an obese gay man was not necessary and pretty gross.
OP:
Is this true? I was under the impression that ancestral memories of Archimedes and Agamemnon both reside in Leto II.
It’s interesting to me that there were no Bene Gesserit Fremen, and I think it’s within the worldbuilding conceit of Herbert that there could have been.
More to the point, the external interloper in an existing culture serves a number of story elements, and it would be more difficult to account for a innovative perspective from someone raised within that culture. The problematic point for me is that the trope biases towards the interloper being white and European, instead of swarthy and tribal.
Herbert’s appreciation of zen was directly transferred to the Fremen, who are descended from the ZenSunni wanderers, presumably Sunni people that adopted zen philosophies.
@26: You’re right. There are a couple explicit references, even before we get to the post-Frank novels of dubious canon, that the Atreides are descended from Atreus, and thus Greek.
Anyway, I think this article is a really useful approach to a loaded question. Whether the Fremen are described as dark skinned or not, they’re clearly coded as broadly Arabic; and Paul Fremens better than any Fremen. Whether he’s ultimately a savior is also important to keep in mind, but this is one of the biggest white savior tells in fiction. The point here is not to decide, in black and white terms, whether a work is “problematic”, damnable, or ought to be kicked out of the canon; rather, it’s just a reminder that we should be aware that we don’t read secondary worlds in secondary worlds, but in our own, and that the author writes them here as well. Cultural context matters, and is worth considering.
Yeah… maybe y’all should listen to some actual Indigenous peoples’ takes on Dune? Seems like their perspectives are missing from this entire post and comment thread. The podcast “Métis in Space” did a review of the film in their 3rd season, and they definitely pegged it as a white saviour narrative so listen tf up.
A writer in 1965 writes a book about a white savior of brown people? Does anyone consider this a newsworthy revelation? I would also submit that the idea that world building reveals a writer’s hidden, unexamined biases is not really too surprising.
If we look at the larger Dune cycle (the original six books written by Frank Herbert), we see a theme emerge that is muted in the first Dune novel: that of the emergence of feminine power. Like all great writing, Herbert’s work is layered, and susceptible to many interpretations. There are no clear heroes or villains (except maybe Baron Harkonnen). What fascinates me is the way that the Bene Gesserit becomes the predominant focus and theme. This flawed sisterhood appears as a backdrop in the first novel, but emerges into a major focus when we get to Heretics and Chapterhouse. Their drive to expand their power through eugenics and strategic breeding leads to major contradictions that end up working against them in the end. Looking back from the later novels I realized that the rise of House Atreides was an ultimately failed attempt to overthrow the Bene Gesserit as behind the scenes power brokers. Members of the house Atreides end up, in the later novels as pawns of the Bene Gesserit. The best example of this is Duncan Idaho, who is cloned again and again as a bargaining chip to make the Bene Gesserit economically subservient to the Tleilaxu.
Ultimately, then, the “white savior” of the first novel is degraded into a worm (God Emperor of Dune) and then into a plaything and a tool by Heretics. this arc is more interesting than the white savior narrative (which I agree is there on the surface in the first novel).
Avatar was a blue savior narrative not white. The lead character, or “savior” figure gives up not only his membership in the white race but in the human species as well. There is no white savior in Avatar.
Just to address the last point (which doesn’t involve the white savior narrative but rather the gender issue of Paul being male) – who cares that the Kwisatz Haderach is a man? The whole point is that there is an entire society of literal superwomen who do not admit men. They are portrayed as having an ability men don’t have, by training themselves (there is a subtext there that men are somehow “less human” than women in the gom jabbar test, FWIW), and that there is a corollary ability that men might be able to achieve that women couldn’t. Far from being a sexist point, this just seems like a science fiction-y way of acknowledging the obvious and inoffensive fact that men and women aren’t identical, and in a very general sense, each gender has certain strengths and weaknesses that don’t apply to the other.
Nitpick: billions, not millions.
“Statistics: at a conservative estimate, I’ve killed sixty-one billion, sterilized ninety planets, completely demoralized five hundred others. I’ve wiped out the followers of forty religions which had existed since -“
– Dune Messiah, Paul talking about the war fought in his name over the 12 years between books.
“There’s an old-world throwback sheen to the story, as it’s built on feudal systems and warring family houses and political marriages and ruling men with concubines.”
Don’t think that’s enough of a condemnation by itself. This hasn’t stopped Game of Thrones from gaining massive popularity. In general, I’d agree that, especially in fantasy, we focus too much on kings, queens, and noble houses. But current SF is also doing it. Even one of my favorite writers, Max Gladstone, is throwing an Empress into his first SF novel. It’s even more questionable when these works emerge from authors belonging to a democratic society. What is it in human nature that we can’t let go of worshipping royals?
The point was “the sleeper must awaken.” It doesn’t have as much to do with race or color but that being in a familiar place and community we all sleep but when put in an unfamiliar environment we are forced to wake up. So, too, a community gets into a routine, no matter how natural, they sleep, as well. The stranger comes into the camp and they are awakened, be it fascination or suspicion. Both the stranger awakens and the community awakens to his newness and techniques. Color and race are not the theme, although, knowing the Arabic and Middle Eastern cultures there is an abundance of Arabic in the book and film, even the title Dune is similar to the Arabic word for Earth, ‘Dun-ah.’
@42/Sunspear: “But current SF is also doing it.”
Not only current SF. For example, I remember an old Edmond Hamilton novel called The Star Kings. Feudal Future is so common that it has its own TV tropes page.
“It’s even more questionable when these works emerge from authors belonging to a democratic society.”
Yes! This has been bugging me for a long time. Why do so few SF writers portray the future of democracy? It’s weird.
@29 – “and Paul Fremens better than any Fremen. “
Which is purely because he’s constantly reading about 10 seconds into the future. Not because he’s a white guy – which I’m not even sure he is.
Dune can’t be a white savior story. There are no saviors in Dune. One of the main intentional messages of the story is a warning about so called saviors.
@45, I not only remember the Star Kings .I own it. The 20th century protagonist is disappointed to learn the distant future is monarchical. It’s explained to him the form of government is actual representative democracy, the Kings and Emperor are focuses of loyalty to unite diverse populations. This doesn’t mean there isn’t also a lot of courtly intrigue. The prince our hero is impersonating is scheduled to make a political marriage with the Princess ruler of a strategic star kingdom. What he doesn’t know is the prince is already married morganatically to a beautiful court lady. Awkward.
The issue is more one related to class than race. Paul Atreides is part of an aristocracy and has the means to exploit his position. Race has no bearing regarding his results. The Fremen were saving him while he had the means to move them due to his training and social construct.
32. yupyupyup
Haven’t heard it, but if they review the 80s film, its irrelevant. As this article says, the portrayal of Paul as a savior is perhaps the worst mistake that movie makes. And at any rate, it only covers the first Dune book, which is the setup. Judging the saga, and Herbert, on the first Dune alone is like judging a joke before you’ve heard the punchline.
And if we’re pulling random experts from the web, Check out the channel “Ideas of Ice and Fire” on Youtube for a streamer who is a POC and has read the entirety of Dune, the extended universe, and various reference works and who covers that universe very thoroughly.
Yes, Frank Herbert was a white male and wrote from a white male perspective, but calling it a White Savior trope is laughable. Not because of the “White” part, but because of the “Savior” and “Trope” parts. It is simply way, waaay too complex and unconventional to be reduced to those terms – 80s Hollywood simplification notwithstanding.
You could interpret in all those ways above or you could interpret it as a white man that adopts the culture of the POC (as you call them) and in the end follows their customs to his death when he leaves it all behind, disgusted with what he has done (yes, he doesn’t die in the desert).
Or you could say its a writer’s right to create characters and heroes that are most like themselves and their culture since that is their primary point of reference and most likely their audience. Is a white writer guilty of perpetrating racism because their hero character is white? That’s ridiculous. It’s the intent that matters. I’ll leave that to the reader.
Re: stories that do not contain more modern views of color or sexuality: it’s the artists’ prerogative. Their work should not be forced to fit a mold to satisfy the court of public opinion. That’s a perverse form of censorship.
Artist intent is important.
It’s a great story. It tackles the dynamic of power and weakness between humans in all aspects. The dominant theme is about belief- politics and religion used to control masses of people. The fremen are not criticized for believing the bene gesserit missionary protectiva any more than anybody else. The tool of using myth, legend, and prophecy is being exposed by Herbert as the strategy of the powerful overthe weak- and that ultimately much of what we are conditioned to believe may made up.
Did the author of this article read the entire series? Did any of the people commenting read the books?
Epic spoiler alert.
Things aren’t what they seem. Yes, Frank Herbert was writing a story in the 60’s from his experiences as a straight, white, Christian male, but he was pointing out the fallacies of his culture. From the beginning, Paul is destined to fail. Paul isn’t the hero of this series. He is the martyr. The real heroes of the series are a result of the blending of cultures.
Perhaps what helps Dune stay relevant is that, since Herbert was intentionally deconstructing and subverting aspects of the genre, the power-and-privilege dynamics most reflective of the author’s biases are presented as problematic, so the contemporary reader does not have to fight the narrative with regards to elements offending modern sensibilities. Of course, this is also what makes it impenetrable to many, and difficult to adapt to screen media which seem to favor clear good guys.
One way to downplay any tendency towards the savior narrative might be to emphasize Paul’s prescient visions of the death and destruction his ‘victory’ will bring, but on screen that might actually backfire since it could emphasize his ‘burden’. Perhaps more effective would be to play up some of the moments where key players like Stilgar and Jessica are aware of the disaster they are perpetrating but continue to contribute to it. I’m definitely curious as to how the filmmakers will handle it.
So it’s an anti-savior white savior novel.
“Part of the reason they are thought to be Arab is the language they use”
The language they use is English, the same as Paul and Jessica speak, with the occasional Arabic word thrown in. Doesn’t make them Arabic any more than talking about pyjamas and bungalows makes you Indian or talking about memorandums and indices makes you an ancient Roman.
The other language they speak is Chakobsa, which exists; it’s a hunting language from the northern Caucasus. If you go by language, the Fremen are literally Caucasian!
Even if Leto II carries ancestral memories from Agamemnon and Archimedes, that is absolutely no guarantee that he doesn’t carry the genes of Shaka Zulu, Genghis Khan, Sun Tsu or Crazy Horse, to name but a few of a cast of literally billions. In fact, one of the very few great warriors we can guarantee that he has no direct part of genetically speaking is Joan of Arc because she died childless!
I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’.
Thank you for this great article! (And i can’t belive how many people are nitpicking things in the commmentd that you actually adressed :/) this is a complex and fascinating question, and it totally made me want to revisit the books (now that I am no longer thirteen without any capacity for analysis haha) a book can be both great, complex, and problematic in some ways!
@32 can’t wait to listen to that, thank you!!
That was half a really good article ;) Unlike the majority, it explains that no, the Atreides are not ‘heroes’ and are instead monsters – which is the primary point of the series. Maybe I’m just jacked up on codeine but it was jarring to see this-
‘At the center of Dune is a warning to be mistrustful of messiahs, supermen, and leaders who have the ability to sway masses. This is part of the reason why David Lynch’s Dune film missed the mark; the instant that Paul Atreides becomes a veritable god, the whole message of the story is lost. The ending of Frank Herbert’s Dune is not a heroic triumph—it is a giant question mark pointed at the reader or viewer. It is an uncomfortable conclusion that only invites more questions, which is a key part of its lasting appeal.
And yet…
There is a sizable hole in the construction of this book that can outweigh all other interpretations and firmly situate Dune among white savior tropes: Paul Atreides is depicted as a white man, and his followers are largely depicted as brown people.’
The author just spent half the article explaining that no, Paul isn’t a hero/good guy/saviour and then just drops back to the issue with a white person being a ‘messiah’ simply because of skin colour and the ‘M’ word while ignoring the context she just set up – that he isn’t a ‘messiah’ at all. The whole colonial messiah thing is in the novel precisely so he can INVERT it – as the audience of his time accepted it as the default, normalised position so he sets it up for the big fall. Again, if you didn’t read past the first book, you could be forgiven for not knowing this because it’s a very long con.
It’s not a secret that Herbert wasn’t just deconstructing the superhero on the personal level, he was dealing with elite structures across the board – which also meant deconstructing colonialism. Even the *nicest* white people are shown to be selfish, destructive, patronising assholes. And the others are a lot worse. The only characters who walk out of the entire series with any level of cleanliness and sympathy attached are Fremen characters themselves and *maybe* Duncan Idaho, with his ‘dark, round face’. Herbert’s sympathies are very, very clearly with the non-white ‘uncivilised’ folks in his universe – and his regular positing that ‘uncivilised’ (at least in opposition to corrupt elite structures) is actually the morally and ecologically superior position.
Sure, Herbert didn’t pick this apart to the exacting and blatantly obvious level required by contemporary progressive journalists. That probably would have had him put on an FBI watch list at the time he wrote the novels. But he most certainly didn’t write a series that was sympathetic to elite power structures, including those based on skin colour. I’d argue if more people actually did understand the point of his books, he’d have had a harder time getting them printed in that time period.
His romanticisation of non-whites is the real issue in terms of race, as the article acknowledges towards the end. The fact he privileges them the way he does is possibly the only way you’d score some points, assuming you’re willing to push the ‘admiration = patronisation’ narrative. But it’s pretty lazy and trite to throw the term ‘noble savage’ around like it’s an Anthropology 101 class, as his treatment of the Fremen is a lot more nuanced than that. The author of this article seems unaware of the origins of the Fremen and makes the ironically colonialist supposition that the external Imperial influences are all about ‘civilising’ them – while the Fremen were actually escaped slaves who consciously rejected the Imperium.
Yes, the Fremen were ‘conned’ by BG propaganda, as the author notes as if it’s some kind of racial point. She seems to miss that everybody else in the setting is also ‘conned’ by similar narratives, repeatedly, and often with considerably less grounds.
tl;dr Race is one of the least troubling aspects of the Dune novels, so long as you realise it’s a series and get the central themes. It was essential for the audience of his time period to see a white saviour narrative INVERTED for him to get his point across – it wouldn’t have worked if he hadn’t kicked tropes they were all used to. The issues people have when reading race in Dune tend to have a lot more to do with their own preconceptions – both progressive and conservative – than his narrative construction.
Mainly because he didn’t write characters well enough to carry a self contained depth of identity that could be troubling in and of themselves, so readers are forced to make their own projections and therefore skew based on their personal views.
Oh yes I did.
I can’t comment on Avatar or Last Samurai, not having seen them, but Last of the Mohicans definitely focuses on Hawkeye as the hero. He’s better at fighting and surviving than his Mohican brother, and both the last Mohican and the white characters require him to either save them or bring the story to a successful conclusion. If you step out of the movie into the novel(s), Hawkeye is even more definitely a white savior.
what I liked best about Dune, other than the stress on environmental issues and the array of interesting female characters, was Paul’s ambivalence about his actions. The house of Atreus was deservedly cursed, after all, and my best memory of the book was of Paul haunted by the vision of the jihad ravening on. First time I’d seen the word jihad, too, come to that.
Alan Wayne Lambert@61:
The fact that there may be other bloodlines in addition to ancient Greece within the Atreides line is undoubtedly true — and completely irrelevant to why I brought it up. I cited the part of the OP my comment was in reference to. My one and only point was that we do know there is a direct lineage to ancient Greece in the Atreides bloodline. The OP said we couldn’t know if they were truly descendants of Ancient Greece, and I pointed out that, yes, we can indeed know.
dave@66:
One might argue that they are monsters of necessity, and that its the necessity of monsters that is the central argument of the series. Leto II chose to follow the Golden Path because it was necessary to the survival of free will, and therefore of the human race. Ultimately, Paul Mau’dib didn’t have the courage to follow this path. He took half measures, and this was his ultimate failure.
Whatever happened to the Dune re-read? Sure seems there is enough interest for it to continue…
Good article, but consider the subtext and the 2nd and 3rd, and even 4th books when talking about Dune.
Paul Muad’Dib isn’t a savior, he’s a disaster. Which is sort of the point of the whole exercise.
Well, that and awakening the sleeper.
Well-written article in and of itself. I agree that Paul did not ultimately bring good things to the Fremen. I struggle with the whole concept of the “white savior: though. While I do not doubt that it exists I think we are missing a bigger point. A larger theme is the the “outsider” concept. One comes in from an outside culture. They bring in their own culture to the tribe (so to speak) and in doing so there is transformation. The protagonist is able to transcend his original culture and his current tribe only by combining both. He brings the tribe along with him as he transforms. In doing so he changes his tribe as well. He is catalyzed and acts as one at the same time. Sci-fi and fantasy is basically compelled to embrace this theme over and over. It sits at the heart of the genre itself.
Does it become tedious and pitiful when the outsider is only from a specific culture/background? Yes. Absolutely. But the problem most of the time is laziness, not a tribal agenda.
To
Personally, I am not sure I see Dune as a “white savior” story, simply because Paul does not save the Freman from anything. They are already a superior fighting force, primed to explode off Arakis into a galaxy wide Jihad. Paul and Jessica’s arrival may have triggered the Jihad, but Paul’s actions on Arakis are in the end mainly aimed at minimizing the bloodshed of a war he does not have the power to totally stop.
@24 “On the other hand making the main villain an obese gay man was not necessary and pretty gross.”
I never thought of the Barron as evil because he was fat or gay. In my mind, his weight was just an outward demonstration of his life of excess, and his “appetite” for more and more (food, sex, power, or whatever). As far as the gay issue, he was not evil because he was gay, I thought he was evil because he was a pedophile and a rapist.
@27 “It’s interesting to me that there were no Bene Gesserit Fremen, and I think it’s within the worldbuilding conceit of Herbert that there could have been.”
I think the presence of actual BG among the Fremen would have prevented the story as Herbert envisioned it. Things proceed as they do because the Freman incorporated the BG “missionaria protectiva”(sp?) planted prophesies into their basic social gestalt in ways the BG never envisioned.. If actual BG had been present among the Freman, guiding them directly, I would think things would have proceeded very differently.
When read by itself, maybe Dune is a “white savior” story, but in the greater context, the series goes on to show the FAILURES of this kind of hero. In the whole series, Paul could be seen as attempting the white savior role, but he fails almost at the cost of humanity itself (shown in Dune Messiah, and the books that follow). In the end, we have a monster that for millennia strictly controls the population (NOW we’re talking colonization), only to prove to be a catalyst to propel humanity AWAY from the white saviors and colonizers.
I think it is reasonably clear that Herbert invoked the white saviour narrative deliberately, in order to interrogate it (and/or subvert it). I think it is also true that some of his choices are more consciously considered than others.
For instance, on the one hand I do not think it is accidental that almost none of the physical descriptions in the novel mention skin colour at all. To my recollection, the only exceptions are Leto and Duncan Idaho, both of whom are described as PoC (but, nonetheless, privileged colonials). One could read the silence as default-to-white, or one could read it to suggest that Herbert wanted to de-racialize the issues of privilege and colonization.
On the other hand, just being silent on skin colour is a pretty thin veneer. If that was all there was to it, we would have Avatar. But Dune asks better questions than whether painting the white guy blue changes anything. Herbert specifically wants the reader to question the consequences of assuming that the privileged colonial outsider is a “hero”.
On the gripping hand, even if we assume that Herbert’s intention was to interrogate and subvert the trope, I agree that it is both fair and useful to ask whether he succeeded or failed at escaping its underlying assumptions. I don’t know whether he was even aware that he had embedded an entirely separate colonial (whether white or not) saviour narrative into the story in Pardot Kynes. If so, it is not obvious why this was necessary.
In any cases, adaptions get to (and must) make choices. There is plenty of room in the text to make a racially-diverse Dune film (though it would be harder to de-colonize it).
Green Book has several documentary sources that support its story in its entirety, so your side note is simply untrue.
But back to Dune. The problem with critiques like this is that they usually end up collaborating in stripping the subjects of their agency. Paul certainly exploited the Fremen’s belief system to implement his deranged plan, but he had no hand in shaping it in the first place. The Fremen were enthusiastic participants in the ensuing jihad and reaped considerable rewards in the short and medium term, even though the weight of their malfeasance eventually catches up with them.
The real question here is whether we choose to view the Fremen as passive instruments of Paul’s insanity or as positive actors in their own right who must bear responsibility for their actions. It is tempting to slip into the first position, especially since Herbert depicts their culture in a highly monolithic manner, apart from a few rebels and outlaws. That would certainly be a valid criticism of Herbert’s writing. But the Fremen as depicted in the books are just as guilty of exploiting Paul and his lunatic scheme as Paul is of exploiting the gaping lacunae in the Fremen’s moral code.
I didn’t get all the way through the comments, so apologies if these comments were made by others elsewhere.
Here’s the thing about Dune – in the context that Dune was written, it should be about both a white-savior complex as well as white/western imperialism. Dune was intended by Herbert to contain many metaphors, including relations between the sexes, the impact of imperialism (because that’s not just a white thing nor a western thing – it’s happened in many places with many peoples), and the impact of environmental damage. This last piece is one of the most relevant to today, since even though white savior complex and imperialism are societal ills, none of those matter if we screw up the planet enough to cause our own extinction.
My second (and last) point is that the reality is that ‘race’ is a construct. It’s not a scientific term, it’s a sociological one. The current “races” are the result of biological evolution to match the parts of the world that various peoples rose up in. But the trend in “race” is toward mulatto – a mixture of the various “races” to the point where we (meaning humanity) will eventually settle into a huge melting pot of pleasantly brown people with a melange (no pun intended) of facial and body features that will pop up at random, and generically curly hair – also on a continuum. Single “race” people will become the exception rather than the norm, a feature of exclusionary societies. There are a few sci-fi series that cover this, I’m thinking explicitly of “The Expanse” where both features and languages become a mix.
@66. dave: “Mainly because he didn’t write characters well enough to carry a self contained depth of identity that could be troubling in and of themselves.”
This is open to some debate. Yes, the characters, especially Paul, say overly portentous things, but many of them are self-aware. This is chiefly conveyed by a structure rarely commented on: there’s a description of something, like an event; then there’s some dialogue between characters stating a position or outlook; then Herbert switches to italics to convey internal monologue. Readers having direct access to their thoughts makes them richer beings than we tend to credit.
For one example of this, check out the scene of the banquet celebrating the Atreides’ arrival on Arrakis. There’s description setting the scene, then some dialogue that tends to be diplomatic and leaves things unsaid, then we get individual characters’ thoughts on the evening, including pointing out how wasteful with water the nobles are and how obscene it appears to the Fremen staff.
Absolutely, Paul and his offspring aren’t heroes or saviors. They’re sociopaths with messianic complexes. I think you do the Lynch movie and injustice, though. The Atreides siblings are pretty barking nuts. Alia is downright sadistic with the Baron and her dance of joy at his death is terrifying. When Paul comes to the throne room he’s got this distant look on his face like everyone around him is an insect. Finally, Alia’s closing narration: “Where there was war, he brought peace” seems heavily ironic under the circs.
@106/Sunspear:
Ooh, good catch! Often, what exacerbates the pain of problematical tropes is the way in which an author so cluelessly plays them straight. That’s a difficult charge to sustain against a novel where so many of the key characters are genre savvy frequently enough to have recognizable convention, using both rhetorical structure and typeface (!), drawing attention to it.
I’ve read these books a few times and I always interpreted the duniverse as being mostly post racial. Things like the Orange Catholic Bible and the Zensunni create a sense that a lot things have been mashed up and smeared together in the future. Combine that with the BG running a species wide breeding program, I assumed race was rather ambiguous/unimportant. I feel that with a careful read, this series is much more subversive that it generally gets credit for being.
It’s interesting that the comments have reached number107, but there are only 63 comments counted. Are the others still pending moderator approval, or did they not meet the site requirements?
anyhoo, like most tropes, it’s completely subjective. Is it simply a (White) outsider coming in and outdoing the non-White people at whatever the non-white people are good at, and being proclaimed their leader? (Tick)
is it the new leader leading them to triumph over their oppressors? (Tick)
Is it installing the formly-oppressed non-White people as the new ruling class, bringing them and their offspring fortune and comfort? (Tick)
Is it the way the new concepts and skills the saviour figure brings into the non-white society result in a transformation of that society, ultimately threatening to end in the erasure of the non-White culture? (Tick)
When the trope is identified in a story, it often depicts the the non-white culture as not being as resilient as the (usually explicitly white) culture, resulting in the non-white culture being erased in favour of the (unchanged) white culture replacing it amongst the non-white people. Unless, of course, the White people (not the non-White) make the effort to ensure it’s preserved, like some delicate flower bred in a hot-house, that would be unable to survive in the wild.
The interesting thing about the books is that (unlike most times this trope is invoked) it seems to acknowledge this as a bad thing. YMMV on how well it succeeds. Often when the trope is invoked the protagonist is depicted as a sociopath and the erasure of the culture (or the “civilisation” of the non-White people), just as in Dune, so I’m a bit surprised so many commenters seem to use this to exempt it from the trope. For me, where Dune is the exception is that this is usually this is all depicted as a Good Thing.
Two other things that occur to me:
first: in one of the Deathworld sequels, Harry Harrison writes about the protagonist being hired to end the threat from some barbarian raiders. The expectation is that he’ll conquer the raiders. He quickly works out this won’t permanently end the threat, as the raiding culture is so deeply embedded that it would just result in a resurgence in the next generation, with added vitriol from revenge motivations. Instead he encourages and aids the raiders into becoming conquerors. The leader of the raiders is unusually self-aware, and suspects a trick, but only after they’ve succeeded does he realise the protagonist knew, now the raiders have been installed as the new ruling caste, that the raiders culture will be erased by the raiders indulging and being absorbed in the “decadent” culture they’ve conquered. The threat of the raiders is ended. Kind of turns the whole white saviour trope on its head.
The second thing is how in Dune the outsiders have so little control over events. The BG mayhave infected/inverted the Freman culture with their memes, but they can’t control how these get transformed and result in a galaxy-wide jihad. Paul himself feels trapped by events. Throughout the novel he’s trying (and failing) to find a way to stop events. Take the final dual with Feyd-Rautha; he has a whole internal monologue just before about how if he loses, the Freman will interpret that as him deliberately martyring himself, and therefore purge the Galaxy in his martyred name. If he wins, the Freman will interpret this as a sign of their manifest destiny, and therefore purge the galaxy in his victorious name. He feels like he has no control. The white saviour trope has the protagonist having agency. Paul feels like he has none.
The fundamental element is that this ‘savior’ The Lisn al-gaib (if I remember correctly) was an emergency device planted in various cultures and races throughout the galaxy by the Bene Gesserit in order to save sisters in distress. The way it was worded allowed these sisters to control their situation and have the potential to use the saving race to their own ends.
What we have to remember is that according to the dates within the book it is over 10,000 years on and the entire universe has already suffered one set of dark ages. The perception that the Fremen equate to ‘POC’ are an attempt to reconcile our situation with that of the future. All the citizens of that time have had technology and resources, the Bene Gesserit breeding program has been going on for millennia and humankind has warped itself into different roles, mentats, Navigators, Bene Gesserit all are Humankind warped and changed.
As such no-one in the book, could really be considered to be equivalent to anyone in our time. Baron Harkonnan as a warped individual who’s personal tastes reflect in his body, he is bulbous and fat because he can be, he eats to exercise control, he lives young men who he then kills as control and uses technology to move his mass around. He is portrayed as the ultimate user who doesn’t care how he looks as long as he gets what he wants.
Paul Atrides is as much a victim as the Fremen, he’s been designed for millennia, the ultimate expression of eugenics and planned breeding his story is a tragedy.
What befalls both the Fremen and humanity through the expression of the Bene Gesserits breeding regime Is even more appalling, even though it leads to the eventual saving of the human race via the Golden Path.
This story is not that of a ‘White Savior’ it is that of a dogmatic religion intent on controlling everyone, not concerned with individuals or even races, using religions against their followers in order to save member of that religion, who have a multigenerational plan to bring about the ultimate human, which they believe they will control, and what happens when that person arrives and doesn’t follow their script!
#87 The fact that there were no Bene Gesserit among the Fremen was implicit within the spice. There had been Bene Gesserit who had planted their escape clause, but they remained becoming real Reverend Mothers through the spice. What is interesting is that means that every Reverend Mother among the Fremen knew everything the initial Bene Gesserit did when they came. So whilst the exact elements of the Kwitsatz Haderack plan were not know, the overall goal was, Paul’s ingestion of the spice wine was vital to the Bene Gesserit plan, his control by his mother and the Fremen subverted the BG plan, and because of that the Fremen ascendance was guaranteed, as was its fall, how much those Reverend Mothers knew or could see changes the culpability of the Fremen in what happened
vinsentient @75
I think she ran head-on into God Emperor, which is a very difficult book. I have a 1st edition hardcover which I’ve read through twice, both times a slog. Andthe ending feels very rushed, yet also extremely slow.
117. wiredog
You dont deserve that book!
LOL
the salient part about L of Arabia is that he saw himself as a failure and paid someone to flog him daily. His fatal motorcycle accident occurred right after he had been flogged.
Thanks for an insightful article (and comments section) – when I read Dune in high school, I am pretty sure some of the main point (especially what appears to be a deconstruction of the white savior narrative) went right over my head. In college I did read the sequels (up through Chapterhouse, I believe) but I slogged through them a bit.
@115 re: The Baron’s appearance
Spoilerish: It is explained in the prequel trilogy it is not by choice (however symbolic it may seem). The Baron was once immensely muscular and handsome and very proud of his appearance. He despises the change and has gone to great lengths trying to undo it.
@131. Meat: I forget the exact details, but isn’t the Baron poisoned or given some kind of genetic mutation by the same Mother that tests Paul before the family leaves Caladan? He either tries to rape her or she does this during the rape.
@132 Yes, those are the mega version of the spoiler.
They Sisters blackmail him into impregnating her (repellant to him as a gay man) to try and get the next stage of the Kwisatz Haderach program. After the offspring is not what they wanted, Mohiam goes back and pressures him again. He agrees, but drugs and rapes her. She in turn infects him with a disease during the act that causes his body to degenerate.
He chases them to their headquarters and even confronts Mohiam demanding a cure, but there is none.
It’s debatable that Paul is a “successful” euginics breeding project. After all he is the Messianic Leader of his adopted people and he can’t stop a war he can forsee will pointlessly slaughter millions. That doesn’t sound superhuman to me. A little courage and integrity could have made a difference.
Given Paul is raised in an aristocratic warrior culture, I think it would be logical for him to have had homoerotic relationships. You could dipict him having a crush on Duncan Idaho ( and Duncan being sweetly gallant about it) with few real changes to the narrative. But it would massively normalize queerness in the story.
@136. Thomas: Chalamet and Momoa gazing longingly at each other? Think you’re imagining a whole other movie there.
They could interpolate queer relationships in the all-male or all-female societies, but probably only the Face Dancers would qualify as queer in the original books.
This was very well written and researched! Thank you for doing this. Most of the discussions about Dune as a white savior story miss the entire Bene Gesserit scheming aspect; I was really happy when you went there. :D
However, you have one factual error: None of the Atriedes are the Kwisatz Haderach. That belongs to the final ghola of Duncan Idaho.
Wait, what? Maybe I haven’t read far enough into the series (I think I stopped at God Emperor) but it wasn’t Paul, Alia or Leto?!? Is that ever stated definitively?