Also known as the Spacing Guild. The Guild controls interstellar travel because its Guild Navigators are the only beings with the ability to “fold space.” This monopoly allows the Guild great political and financial leverage. In Dune’s later scenes the Guild Navigators are revealed to gain their powerful abilities by ingesting spice, which mutates them mentally and physically.
Guild Quotes in Dune
The Dune quotes below are all either spoken by Guild or refer to Guild. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 2, Part 4
Quotes
Let him sweat a little, the Baron thought. One must always keep the tools of statecraft sharp and ready. Power and fear—sharp and ready.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 3, Part 11
Quotes
The Guild Navigators, gifted with limited prescience, had made the fatal decision: they’d chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward into stagnation.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“If I hear any more nonsense from either of you,” Paul said, “I’ll give the order that’ll destroy all spice production on Arrakis … forever.”
[…]
“Do it!” Paul barked. “The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it. You’ve agreed I have that power. We are not here to discuss or negotiate or compromise. You will obey my orders or suffer the immediate consequences!”
“He means it,” the shorter Guildsman said. And Paul saw the fear grip them.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Dune LitChart as a printable PDF.
Guild Term Timeline in Dune
The timeline below shows where the term Guild appears in Dune. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Book 1, Part 16
As the group begins eating, Jessica overhears a conversation between Kynes and a Guild representative related to the earlier events of a sandworm destroying a spice crawler. She chillingly...
(full context)
...the dinner abruptly. Paul takes his father’s place as host and once more outwits the Guild banker after the man insults Paul’s youth. Tuek finds this enormously amusing, but the banker...
(full context)
Book 1, Part 22
Paul uses advanced reasoning to grasp that the Fremen are paying the Guild to program their surveillance satellites to ignore Fremen activities on Arrakis. There are unknown depths...
(full context)
...directions. Paul grasps onto the idea that this foresight must be key talent that the Guild navigators rely on to undertake interstellar travel.
(full context)
Book 2, Part 1
...hands of House Harkonnen. The Emperor blames many parties for the Duke’s death—Baron Harkonnen, the Guild, the Bene Gesserit order, even the Emperor’s own wife and daughter. Irulan attributes her father’s...
(full context)
Book 2, Part 5
...will be attracted to the sound of the ship landing. A sandworm “bigger than a Guild spaceship” quickly appears and devours the ornithopter. Paul and Jessica are awed by its size,...
(full context)
Book 2, Part 10
...into daylight hours because they are trying to gather enough spice to give to the Guild. Jessica wants to know why they are paying spice to the organization that controls interstellar...
(full context)
Book 2, Part 15
...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...
(full context)
Book 3, Part 8
...into the space directly above Arrakis. He has seen that there is a fleet of Guild ships above Arrakis that holds a truthsayer, five legions of Sardaukar, Baron Harkonnen, Thufir Hawat,...
(full context)
...are waiting for when they could attack Arrakis at any time. Paul reveals that the Guild are threatening to strand any of the group that lands on Arrakis. The Guild are...
(full context)
...to destroy all of the spice, destroying the means of space travel and destroying the Guild navigators who are addicted and wholly dependent on the drug.
(full context)
The Guild have used their own lesser powers of foresight to realize Paul’s threat; they know he...
(full context)
Book 3, Part 9
...sit on high rock at the Arrakeen Shield Wall, surveilling the enemy encampment. Despite the Guild’s threat, Emperor Shaddam IV has landed on Arrakis along with Baron Harkonnen and five legions...
(full context)
Halleck and Stilgar worry about the Guild and Great Houses that are still poised in a fleet above Arrakis. However, Paul knows...
(full context)
Book 3, Part 10
...his Bene Gesserit truthsayer, who is Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam. Also present are two Guild members and the Princess Irulan. The Baron has not met the Princess before but knows...
(full context)
Book 3, Part 11
Halleck notes that the Guild have also been in contact making demands. Jessica is shocked by Paul’s casual dismissal of...
(full context)
...tries to talk down to Paul, blaming him for the warfare and threatening that the Guild and Great Houses are poised to fight for the Emperor.
(full context)
Paul curtly dismisses the Emperor’s posturing as foolish and turns his attention to the two Guildsmen in the group. The Guild refuses Paul’s authority before the young Duke reminds them that...
(full context)
Appendix I
...problems and unexpected outcomes in the experimental environments that the Fremen cultivated, and bribed the Guild to prevent satellites from viewing certain areas of Arrakis in order for Fremen activity to...
(full context)
Appendix II
...aftermath of the violent crusade, religious leaders came together to discuss their beliefs. The agnostic Guild, beginning to gain influence through its growth toward a monopoly over space travel, attended such...
(full context)
...plus the fear that nothing would come of it all.” Only the stability of the Guild, the Bene Gesserit, and the Landsraad prevented total lawlessness.
(full context)
Appendix III
...any other; that the Fremen hailed him as their own prophesized messiah; and that the Guild had visions of issues pertaining to Paul and his Fremen. The report concludes that the...
(full context)
