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 Atreides (Muad’Dib) sits on his bed and takes off his desert boots. He has just come from a long, tiring walk through the streets of Dune. He listens to pedestrians outside and envies their normal lives. As he takes off his stillsuit, he reflects that Dune is a paradox now: the fate of power is to be under siege. The smell of the sand from his stillsuit reminds him of old desert dangers. His current walks are mostly to remind himself of his old wild nature. It is possible that an old enemy could recognize him through his stillsuit, but it is unlikely.
This scene introduces Paul as a character who is both unsatisfied and unstable in his position of power. Although he is the Emperor of the universe, he wishes he were a normal person. He is forced to walk around Dune in a stillsuit, feeling like a stranger. What’s more, as soon as he gained power, he had to face the threat of losing it. In these ways, power estranges and endangers whoever holds it.
Themes
Chani—Paul’s lover—comes in with a coffee tray, moving with a “fragile power” that reminds Paul of when they met. Chani checks the coffee—brewing in a pot that Paul won when he killed the owner—and lays out cups. Paul looks in the mirror and notes his appearance—a mixture of Fremen, Atreides, and melange addiction. He remembers something his grandfather said about rulers needing to selflessly love their subjects, and he worries that he hasn’t lived up to his family name. Chani orders Paul into bed.
The detail of how Paul obtained the coffee pot reveals that all that Paul has (and the power he possesses) are spoils: they came from vanquishing others. Moreover, apart from his ancestry, Paul struggles with melange addiction as though this were part of his genetics. In this way, Paul’s power is not innate: it rests on the deaths of others and on his addiction to a drug.
Themes
From bed, Paul looks around the room, which is surprisingly simple for an Emperor’s lodging. Chani pours the coffee and asks if Paul is hungry. Noticing his anger, she sits down and massages his legs. Bluntly, she asks to discuss Princess Irulan’s wish for a baby. Paul looks at Chani—who usually asks practical rather than personal questions—and wonders why she’s asking a personal question now.
The matter of Paul’s future heir to his throne is central to Dune Messiah’s conflict. Paul forged an alliance with the Bene Gesserit by marrying Irulan, but he is romantically connected to Chani—a Fremen woman whose child would take Paul’s destiny completely out of Bene Gesserit hands.
Themes
Sitting back wearily, Paul asks Chani if he should send Irulan away. Chani dissents, saying that Irulan is Paul’s only contact with his enemies and that the enemies would no longer seek Irulan’s confidence if she got pregnant. Paul assures Chani that he swore an oath not to sleep with Irulan, but Chani insists that Paul must have an heir. Paul closes his eyes and falls into a happy memory of Chani, but the vision tries to escape his mind. His prophetic vision recognizes a destroyed future, and he urges his mind to disengage.
Chani points out that Paul’s decision not to have a baby with Irulan is the sole cause of his enemies’ attack on him. Paul’s love and loyalty to Chani overrides a practical decision—having a baby with his political wife—that would ensure his invincibility and power. In this, Paul’s human qualities of love and loyalty weaken his power.
Themes
Get the entire Dune Messiah LitChart as a printable PDF.
Paul opens his eyes and meets Chani’s decided expression. When he maintains that Chani will give him the only heir he wants, she asks if he has foreseen this. When Paul silently reflects how the effort to see the complex future will only show him grief, Chani deduces that he has not seen it. Chani says that an Atreides should not be left to chance, and Paul thinks of Lady Jessica’s similar concern for lineage.
Paul’s decision to be loyal to Chani is all the more human because it requires him to ignore the future that he has the power to see. Although Paul hints that the future brings him nothing but grief, he still believes that Chani will bear his heir—a stubbornly irrational belief that reveals his human nature.
Themes
Paul deduces that Chani overheard his meeting with Irulan earlier that day. He flashes back to his conversation with Irulan: Irulan’s room stank of melange. Paul asks Irulan mockingly about her visit to the Bene Gesserit. He senses her anger and fear and wonders why he hadn’t been able to predict her mood. Irulan talks about the weather, but when Paul demands her real purpose, she bursts out that she wants a baby. Paul refuses.
The fact that Paul had not been able to predict Irulan’s mood shows how Edric’s prescience does indeed conceal the Guild’s activity from Paul’s prescience. Paul observes rather than questions this failure of prescience, an action which suggests that he actually prefers moments when he can’t see the future.
Themes
Irulan argues that she is Paul’s wife, and that her father was a great man. Paul disagrees that Irulan’s father was great and says that Irulan plays a political role; Paul won the right to control the dynasty’s destiny, and Fate did not choose Irulan to bear his heir. Paul says that Irulan may take a lover, but he will kill her if she has a baby. Irulan storms out.
Paul attempted to handle the alliance with Irulan’s ancestry politically to ensure his own power. However, he underestimated the emotional needs that she would have. This shows how political decisions often oppress a society’s emotional needs.
Themes
Chani asks what Paul has decided, bringing him out of his memory. Paul says he will not give Irulan a child. Getting angry, he says that Irulan is full of wicked plots. Chani lies down beside Paul and says that Irulan’s persistence indicates that Paul’s enemies have decided how to fight him. Filled with sudden prophetic fear, Paul says he would give anything to end the Jihad—his religious sway over the entire universe. He knows that even if he died, his godhead name would still rule; he had been chosen. Chani says that Paul can un-choose, and Paul says he will in time.
Although enemies are plotting against Paul, they are not the true enemy of his happiness; in fact, Paul would willingly give up his power if he could. Instead, Paul’s enemy is the Jihad that he began that he now cannot end. Paul’s foresight is also his enemy because it shows him a future that he wishes he could alter. In this way, Paul’s biggest enemy is internal turmoil rather than anything external.
Themes
Chani says they could return to Sietch Tabr (the Fremen homeland), where the Fremen are waiting for their Muad’Dib. Paul longs for the sandy vistas of Sietch, but says he belongs to a vision. He wonders if he should pay the price for ending the Jihad and reflects that he never wanted to be a god. Paul assures Chani that they will return to Sietch but wonders privately if the agony of millions is worth the life of one. He wants to escape his trap, renounce his religion, and be free, but he knows these are empty words. Chani jokes that the huge worm she saw by the city wall the other day was calling the Muad’Dib home. Paul remembers when he had his first prophetic vision. After that, his life was no longer his.
All the citizens of the Imperium now rely on Paul not only for political reasons, but also as a god—a being who gives their lives purpose and meaning. This means that Paul’s life is no longer his own. Instead, his decisions affect the entire universe. If Paul decided to do what he wanted, it would be a selfish action that would destabilize millions of people. This predicament reveals that religion—which falsely attached Paul’s citizens to him as a god—creates more potential harm than good.
Themes
Paul worries that, instead of telling the future, the oracle made the future, and that he’d fallen into a trap by succumbing to it; he wonders if having power makes a person vulnerable to other powers. Worried that Paul is angry, Chani says that she only started this conversation because she desperately wants a child. Paul caresses her, then he goes to the balcony overlooking his moonlit planet. He thinks of the people who hate him for changing the old ways and reflects how the universe’s resistance increases the more power he gets. He returns to bed and lies down in Chani’s arms, assuring her that she hasn’t upset him.
Paul feels that power is a paradox—the more power he gains, the more dangers he faces—and this feeling contributes to his growing dislike of his powers of prescience. Paul originally began the Jihad because he had seen it with his prescience. Now, he regrets this decision, and feels that the oracle he followed was deceiving him. This distrust carries forward to the present, when Paul increasingly attempts to repress his visions of his future.
Themes
