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Children of Dune
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Themes
The Ecological Consequences of Human Intervention
The Dune Chronicles is often regarded as one of the early examples of cli-fi, or climate fiction. One of the major themes in Children of Dune is the environmental message regarding the delicate ecosystem of the planet. In Dune, Arrakis is a desert planet characterized by its hostile conditions: The native Fremen people must practice innovative and resilient ways to stay alive. This includes stillsuits, which conserve the body’s water, and doorseals, which keep the arid wind out of their dwellings. The Fremen also distill water from the deceased and capture moisture from the air with wind traps, storing their collection of water in communal cisterns. Much of Fremen survival revolves around the sanctity of water, and the harsh desert environment instills the values of communal vigilance, discipline, and austerity in addition to innovation. The dominance of the desert biome earns the planet its local name, Dune. Not only do the Fremen people live deeply connected to the desert, but they also revere the other organisms that are part of its ecosystem, most notably the giant sandstorm. Shai-Hulud is the name given to the sandworm as God in an animistic worship of the creature.
At the end of Dune, Paul’s empire accelerates a terraforming project to transform the desert land into a lush and water-filled landscape. Just as Paul’s leadership as the messiah encounters a reversal from the first to subsequent novels, so too does the optimistic project to terraform Arrakis into a more hospitable planet. At the beginning of Children of Dune, “The Friendly Desert, which once had spread from pole to pole, was reduced to half its former size” (4). The use of the term “friendly” instead of hostile to describe the desert highlights an ideological shift. With a mixture of nostalgia and horror, Stilgar realizes that these hastened changes have taken away the planet’s unique character, and, by extension, has changed the unique identity of the Fremen people.
The novel proposes that human intervention is short-sighted and arrogant. As the planet becomes greener and wetter, the native animals of the planet begin to disappear. Leto is alarmed to discover that the desert is without signs of life. While searching for Jacarutu, he notices that “there were no scavenger birds—no eagles, no vultures, no hawks. Even when other life hid, these remained. Every watering place in this desert held its chain of life. At the end of the chain were the omnipresent scavengers” (352). The missing creatures signal a disturbance in the natural “chain of life” and the interdependence of all parts of the planet’s ecosystem. The sandworms have become an endangered species, with disastrous consequences for spice production and far-reaching impact on the Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild, and the Fremen’s rituals (their distinct blue eyes depict how much spice is in their daily lives). Herbert personifies the desert, which often functions as its own character, to heighten the message of human-caused environmental damage. Leto looks upon the untouched inner desert and surmises, “[t]here’d be plenty of work for the ecological transformation teams. It was as though the planet fought them with a conscious fury out here, the fury increasing as the transformation took in more land” (449). The desert’s fury symbolizes the supremacy of nature over the audacious intrusion of humans.
Although the original terraforming plan entailed keeping parts of the desert for the sandworms, Alia, presumably under the directive of Baron Harkonnen, conspires to kill off the worms on Arrakis completely while conducting experiments to raise the creatures off-world. The goal is to make spice an even rarer commodity and capitalize on the universe’s dependence on the natural resource. Thus, the terraforming project aligns with an imperialist logic of commodification and capitalism that exploits nature for profit. The ecological transformation also purports to bring technological progress to an ancient people, suggesting a condescension that parallels the civilizing mission of colonial enterprises. Stilgar senses the obscenity of the changes when he looks upon the planetology crews’ new housing as a “man-made intrusion into the landscape” that “offended” him and made him want “a circular howling of wind to leap over the dunes and obliterate that place” (169). Just as Stilgar and the Fremen have fought off imperialist invaders, so too does he feel the need to revolt against the terraforming project that threatens the Fremen’s autonomy and way of life.
Leto’s Golden Path is a solution for saving humanity from extinction that unifies humankind with nature. His form as a man-worm symbiote symbolizes the interdependence of all parts of an ecosystem. The Preacher recognizes the significance of Leto’s sandtrout skin and proclaims, “This youth has achieved an inner cooperation which is enormously powerful, that cannot be subverted […] He is the Healer” (552). Rather than exploitation and competition, humankind’s relationship with nature will be one of recovery and restoration.
Political and Religious Corruption
Like the other books in the series, Children of Dune is a narrative woven with endless political intrigue. Duke Leto I’s description from Dune that politics in Arrakis and the Imperium at large are composed of “feints within feints within feints” is quoted twice within the novel (209, 407). The adage is common enough to have various versions, such as “intrigue within intrigue” (210), “trickery within trickery” (309), and “wheels within wheels” (311). Characters cross and double-cross each other, and political and religious facades manipulate the masses into not questioning authority.
Political decisions are mostly motivated by the concepts of competition and revenge. Alia’s adversaries vie to take over her position of control or undermine her monopoly on spice, and no one plays fairly. The most apparent example is Princess Wensicia’s assassination attempt on the Atreides twins, who, to the best of her knowledge, are simply nine-year-old children. Her hatred of the Atreideses is rooted in a desire to avenge the ousting of her father, the former Emperor Shaddam IV, and the fall of House Corrino from power. Likewise, the Baron also despises the Atreides family, and his possession of Alia avenges the Harkonnen’s loss of their governorship over Arrakis and the Baron’s own death at the hands of Alia. Competition and revenge are embedded in the political reality of the Imperium. During one of his mentat calculations, Duncan reviews the truths of the political climate. He confirms that “[a]ll planets were vulnerable to attack from space; ergo: retaliation/revenge facilities were set up off-planet by every House Major” (189). Like revenge, facades are an equally established mode of political behavior. In a conflation of both concepts, Alia must feign the desire to avenge Duncan’s death to the public even though she privately wanted him dead.
Farad’n stands out as one of the few characters who rejects his entitlement to power. He objects to political corruption and detests the “atrocity” and “stupidity” (324) of his mother’s plan. He also highlights the fact that none of the conspirators vying for the seat of power have expressed any real interest in leadership. Wensicia and the Baron do not seem to promote any type of political ideology other than to accumulate power and make their enemies suffer. When Farad’n meets with The Preacher, he is startled that the old man asks him to consider how he wants to rule his people: “You’ve given no thought to the kind of society you might prefer […] You do not consider the hopes of your subjects […] Your eye is upon the power, not upon its subtle uses and its perils” (132). Until his meeting with The Preacher, Farad’n had been taught that ethics and “social goals” were “discredited concepts” (132). His prior exposure to political strategy was to accept that “[a]ssassination remained a fact of royal life” (121). Integrity had never been a part of the political equation.
Religion has the potential to provide moral guidance and spiritual fulfilment but instead is another means to secure political power and justify violence. Wensicia orders Tyekanik to feign religious conversion to convince both Farad’n and the Fremen of their right to usurp the throne. Knowing that their Sardaukar armies are too small to defeat the Fremen, Wensicia opts to win them over by manipulating religion: “We’ll drown them in their Muad’Dib’s religion!” (65). Similarly, Alia uses her religious authority to legitimize her violence. She confirms that she can literally get away with murder when she assures Irulan that the killing of Farad’n will not jeopardize her authority. She proclaims, “Who could dare question our right to decide what is wrong and what is right? […] We mediate between good and evil. I need but proclaim” (393). Only Paul as The Preacher represents a direct and public challenge to religious corruption. He declares to the mass of Muad’Dib’s followers, “Is your religion real when you commit atrocities in its name?” (335). Paul had witnessed the distortion of his leadership from his deification, which was itself a result of the Bene Gesserit scheme that planted the messiah myth in the Fremen culture. Paul knows all too well the pitfalls of religious zeal and the social construction of the “Chosen One.” The corrosive power of religion is its ability to instill obedience and silence questioning.
The Trappings of the Past and Prescience
Throughout the novel, the power to access the past and the ability to foretell the future are both presented as traps that forestall free will. Abomination means something different to different people. For the Bene Gesserit, succumbing to the past is demonic and threatening. Rather than consider the pre-borns’ unique relationship to their genetic memories as an asset and a source of potential wisdom—as they do for adults with this skill—they fear Abomination as a complete loss of agency. Possession of any kind, even from someone desirable and benevolent, is taboo. Leto explains to Jessica, “If any of us becomes Abomination—it could be you within us who creates it! Or my father…or mother! Your Duke! Any one of you could possess us—and the condition would be the same” (139). The Sisterhood are renowned for training their initiates in the powers of self-control, from the prana-bindu regimen to the Litany against Fear. As adults, their ability to survive the spice agony ritual and awake their ancestral memories elevate them to the status of Reverend Mothers. However, they relegate pre-borns as diabolical beings that must be killed, believing that the relinquishing of self-discipline is an obscenity.
For Ghanima, the trap of the past is that it obscures the ability to make judgments in the present. Referencing her habit of seeking counsel from her ancestral multitude, she contends, “Too much knowledge never makes for simple decisions” (19). Ghanima regards her inescapable access to the past as a barrier against intuition and independent thinking. For Stilgar, Abomination is unnatural and breaks the taboo regarding the deceased. He believes “[t]he dead should remain dead. It was correct to find one’s immortality in children, but children had no right to assume too exact a shape from their past” (164). Stilgar believes those who succumb to Abomination warrant death, as they disobey the linearity of time. The Fremen even consider the water of the deceased Abomination as a contamination to be thrown on the sand rather than conserved in the communal cisterns. Access and occupation of the past is a curse.
For Leto, evading the problems of the past and the future requires compromise. As a Kwisatz Haderach, he can control both extremes of an ancient past and an infinite future. Aware that his father succumbed to the burdens of his prescient visions and his sister died struggling to fight the ego-memories of the past, Leto agrees to a concession. He only allows himself partial visions or a “visionless future” (457) and purposefully avoids seeing the threads of his actions and consequences. In this way, he can evade feeling “trapped into a lifetime whose every heartbeat and anguished wail was known” (107). Doing so may place him in unknown danger, but this compromise allows him to exercise his own free-will without the interference and pressure of knowing his actions’ outcome. His antidote to the trappings of prescience is “amor fati” (404)—the love of fate. As for the past, Leto admits that he did not in fact escape Abomination. He explains to Farad’n, “I’m a community dominated by one” (600). He concedes to live side-by-side with his ancestral ego-memories, led by Harum, in a shared relationship with time. Leto states, “We don’t resist. We ride with them” (114). Harum’s past pharaonic model of governance leads Leto to reign as the future God Emperor for nearly 4,000 years. With the past and future coexisting, Leto contends that opposing forces are components of a whole.
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