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
Alia stands in front of the temple built for her, observing the throng of religious pilgrims pitifully miming her and Muad’Dib. Some pilgrims sell tarot cards, and Alia wonders who is bringing this prophetic device to Dune. The pilgrims straggle home. The Fremen pilgrims despise the foreign pilgrims, and there have been occasional murders. The hot wind makes Alia miss the desert. Ever since the ghola arrived, she has longed for her past. Before Paul was the Muad’Dib, there was time to enjoy life; there was no need to strain to see the murky future with prescience.
Like Paul, Alia is miserable in her position of power and venerability. She feels guilty that her power has made others homeless and longing, turning them into pilgrims who seek gods—Alia and Paul—who are not actually gods. She also feels intense longing for the past, when everything was simple, and she had no responsibilities. In this way, power is destructive because causes the powerful person to revert to their past instead of instilling them with excitement for the present or the future.
Themes
Alia enters the temple and goes upstairs, avoiding attendants and Qizarate. Once inside her private room, she dismisses the guards Stilgar hired to protect her. She takes off her robe and prepares for a bath. Alia senses that the figure she has seen in her future is nearby; prescience has shown her this figure, but not who it is. Alia descends into the bath. She feels lust—a feeling she knows from the orgies she attended on sietch—toward the mysterious figure.
Based on the Guild’s tentative plans, the figure in Alia’s prescience could be Hayt or Paul. In an attempt to “purify” Paul’s bloodline, the Guild considers mating Paul and Alia. They also intend Hayt to attract Alia, presumably to make Paul trust Hayt. Alia likely cannot see the figure because the Guild conceals it from her prescience with Edric’s prescience.
Themes
Suddenly, Alia climbs out of the bath and walks naked into her training room. The room is filled with the Bene Gesserit’s instruments for physical and mental training. The Bene Gesserit creed is inscribed on the wall, stating that learning had been tainted by instinct.
Although the inscription on the wall suggests that lust taints one’s training, Alia’s lust leads her to the Bene Gesserit training room as if it is part of the Bene Gesserit plan—something that will lead her to accomplish what they envision.
Themes
Alia walks over to her sword, deciding to clear her mind with activity. Unsheathing the sword, she taps the target, which comes alive and starts resisting and eluding her sword point. Blades lunge at her from the target, and Alia dodges the one real sword. The target moves faster each time Alia beats it, displaying more lights as its speed increases. Alia’s naked skin breaks into a sweat. The target flashes eight lights. Alia has never challenged the target at the eighth speed, and she is aware that its real blade could kill her. She moves up through speed nine, ten, and eleven, her feeling of exaltation increasing.
Alia’s training regimen resembles sexual activity. She breaks into a sweat and moves through the levels of the training program as if toward a sexual climax. Having been created by the Bene Gesserit, the training program reveals either that lust is used toward the end of training one’s agility with the sword, or that the Guild’s wants to turn Alia into a sexual being prematurely to accomplish their plot against Paul.
Themes
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A knife flashes past Alia, striking the target’s off button. Alia whirls around in anger. Paul stands in the doorway, looking upset. Alia thinks of covering her nakedness but finds the scene amusing. Paul rebukes Alia’s recklessness and privately notes how womanly she looks. Stilgar enters and also chastises Alia’s behavior with the target. Alia asks why the target has so many lights if they aren’t to use them. Paul says that his trainer once caught him on light ten and punished him. Noting Paul’s humiliation at her nudity, Alia storms into her bedroom and puts on her robe. She brushes her hair, feeling a “post-sex” sadness.
This scene draws attention to the alternative plan the Guild has concocted for producing their desired heir to Paul’s throne: crossbreeding Alia and Paul. Here, Paul finds himself confronted with his own sister’s nakedness and with her budding sexuality. As a young girl coming of age, Alia is vulnerable to the Guild’s plan to use her as a beguiling tool: either to beguile her brother to produce a “pure” heir to his throne, or to beguile Hayt to secure Paul’s trust for him.
Themes
Following Alia, Paul explains that Irulan sent him to Alia with knowledge about the enemy. Stilgar stops Paul before he can explain. When Paul asks Stilgar what is wrong, Stilgar asks if Paul is blind. Paul turns back to Alia, feeling suddenly uneasy. Stilgar bursts out that Alia must be married soon. Alia whirls away, her face hot with anger. She sneers at Stilgar, and Stilgar maintains that he speaks out of love for Paul and Alia. Paul reflects on the lasciviousness Alia displayed in fighting the target naked and agrees that they should find Alia a mate.
Paul and Stilgar are clearly worried that Alia—in her vulnerable state of budding sexuality—will make a choice of mate that will remove the Atreides’ destiny from Paul’s hands. Paul seems to sense that one of these scenarios involves Alia’s state being exploited by the Guild to tempt him and likely wants to marry Alia to someone of his choosing to prevent this happening.
Themes
When Alia asks, Paul says that Irulan believes the Guild is trying to capture a sandworm—melange carriers—in hopes of starting a melange culture on another planet. Paul says he is troubled that he can’t see this other planet, and Alia says the Guild has obviously hidden it with a Steersman. Alia worries about what the Guild has seen that she and Paul have not and thinks of the tarot cards she saw earlier.
Since prescience is not only a natural power but can be gained through melange, the war for power between the Guild and Paul centers around melange. Because the power of prescience is tied to an object and because no one prescience can override another, prescience results in a power war.
Themes
Stilgar suggests that the Imperium protect itself with increased patrols. Feeling that Stilgar is thinking with a new narrowness, Alia says that they can’t prevent anything forever. Alia says that the Guild will need more than one sandworm. Stilgar remembers that sandworms can only live off Dune sand plankton. Stilgar asks why Paul can’t see what the Guild is planning, starting to feel that Alia and Paul’s prescience brings them power, but also weaknesses. Alia says that power is limited: the mountains she and Paul can see conceal the distances. Stilgar agrees that there are dangers that lie behind the mountains.
Alia’s image of the mountains that conceal distances is metaphor for the paradox of Paul’s power. Paul’s prescience, which reveals the future that lies in the distance, conceals the actual distance to the future. It is not simply that Paul’s power is incomplete; instead, Paul’s power is flawed because it is too powerful. In this way, power itself is an inherently flawed thing, and this suggests that no person can possess absolute power.
Themes
