Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dune Messiah, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Power
Religion
Guilt and Longing
Fate and Choice
Summary
Analysis
Paul, sweaty from practicing dueling with Hayt, looks out the window and tries to picture Chani at the clinic. She took ill that morning, and now he is waiting for the medics to call. He is also waiting to hear from the Bene Gesserit. Behind Paul, Hayt puts the swords back on a rack. Paul ruminates on how the secret he had kept from Chani saved her life. He wonders if he should feel guilty to preferring her to an heir, and for making her choice for her.
Paul claims that the secret he kept from Chani—presumably that Irulan had been feeding her birth control—saved her life. However, considering that Paul has the power of prescience, it is hard to believe that anything Paul does will alter fate. Paul is in the horrible position of trying but inevitably failing to save a person’s life.
Themes
Chani enters, a murderous expression on her face. Paul embraces her. Chani says that Irulan was giving her a contraceptive that is now complicating her pregnancy and threatening to kill her. Paul consoles her, thinking privately that Irulan has in fact prolonged Chani’s life. Furious, Chani asks if Paul understands that killing Irulan would be unwise. Paul feels that his prescience has chained him to a future that is slowly killing him. Chani demands to know what Paul has seen. Paul asks her to simply obey him. He reflects that Chani’s feistiness hasn’t changed since leaving the desert.
Before now, it seemed that the threat to Chani’s life came from the Guild. At one point, the Reverend Mother even instructed Irulan to kill Chani. Now, however, it seems that the real threat to Chani’s life is the pregnancy itself. Because of this, Paul had found himself allowing the schemes of the Guild to persist. In other words, Paul’s determination to have his heir with Chani conflicts his desire to save her life.
Themes
Chani says that she does not like that Paul duels with Hayt. Paul says that Hayt is not dangerous, and Chani asks if Paul has foreseen Hayt’s innocence. Paul says that Hayt is more than the Tleilaxu had intended: he is Duncan Idaho. When Chani is skeptical, Paul asks Hayt how Paul will die. Hayt responds that Paul will die from money and power. Chani is furious to hear Hayt speak to Paul this way and says that it is sad that a ghola cannot be restored to its original being. Hayt says that nothing can be converted and that there is no going back; everyone carries their past with them.
The Tleilaxu built the ghola believing that it could never be fully restored to its original being—that it would be the product of their creation. In Hayt’s explanation of being, he does not deny that this is true; he says that there is no going back. However, he also adds that he carries his past with him. In this middle ground view, Hayt contains the being of a real man inside an artificially alive body.
Themes
Paul asks Hayt about his past. Chani notices that this question disturbs Hayt and wonders why Paul probes him. When Chani asks, Hayt says that no ghola has ever been restored to his former being but that he longs for it to happen to him. Hayt says that his flesh is not his original flesh because it has been reborn, and that his shape comes from the imprint of original cells. Chani suggests that the cells might not have been Duncan’s, but Paul says no others would hold Duncan’s shape so well. Hayt cautions Paul’s certainty, saying there are things he does as a ghola that he would not do as a man.
Hayt’s most human-like quality is not his identification with Duncan Idaho but rather his self-awareness. Although he is both a ghola and a man—he can act both humanly and like a robot fashioned by enemies—he is aware of this fact, aware that he is capable of the inhuman. This awareness, acting beyond his division of identity, reveals that he is a human being—he can recognize wrong and right in his own behavior.
Themes
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Chani stares at Hayt, entranced. Paul goes to the balcony and opens the curtains. He probed Hayt so that Chani could see the “man” in the ghola’s flesh. Now, she longer fears Hayt and even admires him. Chani asks if Duncan Idaho would have forgiven Irulan. She asks why Paul isn’t angry at Irulan and says that she does not understand him in this moment. Without intending to, Paul steps away. Chani says that she won’t ask what Paul has seen and that she will give him his heir. She says that she is afraid of how fast the fetus is growing. Privately, Paul thinks that the fetus is growing too quickly.
Paul has not told Chani that he has seen that she will die. Presumably, he kept this foresight from her because he wanted to protect her from the pain of seeing a fate that one is powerless to alter. Paul detests the clarity of his own vision because it makes him feel chained to a life that he cannot control. Because he himself wishes for blindness, he gives Chani the gift of blindness, allowing her to enjoy the present, unaware of her fate.
Themes
