Dune

#media/book#fiction#science-fiction

Notes

Litany against Fear

Instinct for rightness

“If wishes were fishes, we’d all cast nets” Halleck says.

• p59 while musing about how early people have to grow up and how little time there is for play.

Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a great sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.

• on the greatness of man
• 

Mastery of weaving a story of suspense and developing characters and worldbuilding. So many layers of tnemes to take away from the book, ranging from ecology to drugs to politics to religion, etc.

• close parallel drawn between hallucinigens and religion
• politics always being about money and calculation
• how power corrupts and how it saps the humanity from someone. mistakes are magnified when they happen in someone who has power
• how efficiency is often coupled with the loss of individuality and checks
  • fanatics are most efficient but do you really want fanatics at your side?
    • Paul feels lonely when he realizes some of his closest advisers/friends are becoming worshippers (Stilgar and Gurney)
• How power is all-consuming and addictive even if you say you don’t want it
  • Paul constantly talks about stopping the jihad he sees in his future as an excuse to continue to seek power and develop the fanaticism of his followers

Jessica and Paul’s relationship is really interesting because starts as a very close and intimate mother-son relationship and evolves into something where they feel so distant from each other and oppose / despise each other at points.

• At one point, paul despises his mother for training him to be the way he is

really good at emphasizing how much signs and symbols matter in politics. Nervousness around Duke Leto’s death is what it indicates to all other members of the Great House’s and how that might act as a catalyst for