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 work “A Manual of Muad’Dib” is a poetic fragment of text that reveals the way that the Muad’Dib’s ideas “gush” from his hips and his eyes “devour.” The text also calls him “an Island of Selfdom.”
The poem suggests that Paul’s personal power is extensive, intoxicating, and irresistible. His immortalization in history books and literary works demonstrates the broad reach of his rule and legacy.
Themes
Jessica finds herself in a huge cavern where she estimates there are more than five thousand Fremen gathered. She stands with Stilgar in front of this audience, waiting on Paul to arrive. She thinks about the test that she is about to take, knowing it is risky because it could affect her unborn child. She knows, however, that it is her only choice if she wants to secure her safety within the Fremen society. More Fremen enter the cavern until there are more than ten thousand gathered.
Jessica has weighed her options for survival among the Fremen and is taking a calculated risk to her unborn child in undertaking the trial to become a Fremen Reverend Mother. The numbers of Fremen arriving for the ceremony are staggering and emphasize Baron Harkonnen’s foolish claims that they pose no threat on Arrakis.
Themes
Paul arrives to the scene, escorted by two young boys who keep their hands on their knives as though protecting their new guardian. Chani also approaches the front of the cavern, wearing green to mourn her father, her face a mask of grief. Behind Chani are four women who carry a fifth woman in a litter.
As is his pattern, Paul has managed to ally himself with individuals who could have just as easily become his enemies—in this case, Harah’s sons.
Themes
Stilgar tells the gathered assembly that their Reverend Mother is too elderly to survive their upcoming move in order to avoid their enemies who are sweeping the desert for Fremen cells. However, the sietch may have a new Reverend Mother if Jessica can successfully “pass within” to become a powerful religious leader.
Fremen culture is extremely practical, and the Reverend Mother accepts her approaching death, helping her tribe to obtain a new spiritual mother.
Themes
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The ceremony is one of great ritual. Chani offers Jessica a drink from one of two sacks of liquid, stating that she passes Jessica the Water of Life. This is a life-altering substance that can “open the universe” to Jessica. After drinking the liquid, Jessica uses her Bene Gesserit talents to analyze its chemical makeup and learns that the liquid is a poisonous drug. It extends her consciousness and slows down time, allowing Jessica to look within her with greater awareness than any normal human being. However, the poisonous substance is also leeching her life away. By considering its molecular makeup, she is able to alter the liquid’s chemical properties to render the poison harmless.
Jessica’s Bene Gesserit training gives her the ability to make molecular changes to her own body and to liquid and food substances—a skill that protects Bene Gesserit sisters from poison assassinations as well as enabling them to transform to Reverend Mother status.
Themes
Jessica has successfully neutralized the Water of Life and must now prove it to the Fremen. Chani takes a drop of the liquid from Jessica’s lips and adds it to the rest of the Water of Life. The altered drop acts as a catalyst that converts it all into a harmless liquid.
Like many aspects of Fremen culture, the Reverend Mother trial has religious undertones in that it is extremely ritualized and centers around water, which is sacred to the desert-dwelling Fremen.
Themes
Jessica becomes aware that her conscious being is merging with that of the Fremen’s previous Reverend Mother. The elderly woman is passing on her life experiences in memory to Jessica. She also warns Jessica that this transformation is affecting Jessica’s unborn child: every way that Jessica is now changing will be shared by her daughter. As the new Reverend Mother, Jessica now has access to all previous Reverend Mothers’ ancestral memories, even going back beyond the Bene Gesserit order, and so will her daughter. Jessica can tell that her unborn child is in agony and is able to calm the being through her motherly love.
Jessica can access a new level of collective consciousness to gain the wisdom and knowledge of all previous Reverend Mothers. Never before has a child been able to do the same, and no doubt Jessica’s daughter will be a powerful figure in her own right.
Themes
Jessica realizes that the creatures that Fremen call “makers” are the sandworms of Arrakis, and that the Water of Life must be the liquid exhalation that a sandworm makes as it dies. The newly altered Water of Life, no longer poisonous, is passed around the gathered Fremen to share. Paul takes a sip and falls back into the state of higher cognitive awareness. It seems that the drug alters everyone’s minds; both Paul and Chani sees visions of a future in which they have a child together. Paul also foresees a violent war between his Fremen forces and those of the Padishah Emperor, the Harkonnens, the Guild, and the Bene Gesserit. He is once again conflicted by his visions of the Fremen religious war that will devastate the Imperium. Chani and Paul leave the cavern together.
Paul and Jessica are now fully integrated into Fremen society. Paul knows he will find personal happiness with Chani but is still haunted by the knowledge of the extreme future violence that will take place in his name. It seems that no matter what Paul does in the present, he can’t escape his destiny.
Themes
