Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dune, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Power and Violence
Free Will and Fate
Environment and Human Culture
Human Cognitive Advances
Summary
Analysis
The epigraph from Princess Irulan’s text “Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib” relates a parable known as “the attitude of the knife”—cutting off what is incomplete in order to make it complete.
“The attitude of the knife” is brutal yet efficient, foreshadowing Muad’Dib’s own ruthlessly effective leadership style.
Themes
The narrative cuts back in time briefly. Dr. Yueh has implanted a false tooth in the paralyzed and unconscious Duke Leto’s mouth. Meanwhile, Harkonnen forces are attacking the Atreides household. A Sardaukar soldier disguised as a Harkonnen troop finds Yueh and searches for Duke Leto’s signet ring. Yueh has removed it and intends to give it to Paul; to allay the Sardaukar’s suspicions, Yueh lies that Leto sometimes sent the ring with messengers to confirm the authority of their communications.
The violence is widespread in the city of Arrakeen. The narrator continues to paint Yueh in two lights—he sends Leto to his death yet tries desperately to enact a plan to help Paul and Jessica escape the Harkonnens.
Themes
