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Foreshadowing
Explanation and Analysis—Unbelieving Moon:
Book 1, Part 13 illustrates a moment of calm before the onslaught of Harkonnen savagery, during which Duke Leto reflects on the night landscape of Arrakis. Both foreshadowing and personification are at play in this passage:
A predawn hush had come over the desert basin. He looked up. Straight overhead, the stars were a sequin shawl flung over blue-black. Low on the southern horizon, the night’s second moon peered through a thin dust haze —an unbelieving moon that looked at him with a cynical light. As the Duke watched, the moon dipped beneath the Shield Wall cliffs, frosting them, and in the sudden intensity of darkness, he experienced a chill. He shivered.
The narrator uses this passage to personify the moon, which looks at Duke Leto with a "cynical light" that reflects the Duke's own insecurities and anxieties about his present circumstances. The moon then disappears, leaving the Duke in darkness—a means of foreshadowing his death through imagery. While the duke is not blessed with the strange cognitive powers his lover and son share, he still maintains a good instinct for danger. In this passage, Duke Leto senses danger on the horizon, anticipating dark days ahead for himself and for his family.
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