"You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There's an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind."
The Reverend Mother uses a grisly analogy to explain the difference in how animals and humans respond to pain, and how ultimately that pain can be controlled and channeled to fuel feats of greatness. This quote also puts emphasis on the duty of being human. Where an animal chews off its leg, a human endures pain for the chance "he might...remove a threat to his kind." A human thinks of their race where an animal thinks only of its immediate circumstance.
Whether the rest of the book supports this as true is up for debate; it is certainly a fine example of the Bene Gesserit belief that some bloodlines deserve to be preserved over others, and that patience and cunning are key to the preservation of their kind.
Mapes lowered the knife. “My Lady, when one has lived with prophecy for so long, the moment of revelation is a shock.”
Jessica thought about the prophecy—the Shari-a and all the panoplia propheticus, a Bene Gesserit of the Missionaria Protectiva dropped here long centuries ago—long dead, no doubt, but her purpose accomplished: the protective legends implanted in these people against the day of a Bene Gesserit’s need.
Well, that day had come.
This meeting with the Shadout Mapes occurs early in Jessica's time on Arrakis, before the fall of House Atreides. The quote demonstrates that the Missionaria Protectiva is what allows Jessica and Paul to meet their "need," gaining power by controlling a powerful population. The "protective legend" of the Lisan al-Gaib is designed to protect the Bene Gesserit, not the interests of the Fremen. This ties into the theme of fate, as the Shadout Mapes is moved by the "moment of revelation" of the prophecy her Fremen culture has believed in for centuries—but for Jessica, this moving moment is a bunch of jargon just "dropped here" by a dead woman on the off chance it might benefit the sisterhood.
Memories rolled in his mind like the toothless mutterings of old women. He remembered open water and waves—days of grass instead of sand—dazed summers that had whipped past him like windstorm leaves.
Feeling old and troubled, Duke Leto remembers his home planet, Caladan. These memories are "like the toothless mutterings of old women" to him. This simile is used twice in the novel, both times by Duke Leto, perhaps evoked by some childhood memory or bothersome image to which the reader isn't privy.
The memories themselves present an idyllic image of Caladan, with waves and grass and comfort that has time passing quickly in "dazed summers." Here on Arrakis, the Duke can't afford to be dazed; every moment must be carefully controlled, so the Duke remembering time passing quickly emphasizes just how slowly time moves for him now.
Fear coursed through Paul. He felt suddenly alone and naked standing in dull yellow light within this ring of people. Prescience had fed his knowledge with countless experiences, hinted at the strongest currents of the future and the strings of decision that guided them, but this was the real-now. This was death hanging on an infinite number of minuscule mischances.
Anything could tip the future here, he realized. Someone coughing in the troop of watchers, a distraction. A variation in a glowglobe’s brilliance, a deceptive shadow.
I’m afraid, Paul told himself.
This quote shows Paul's process of dealing with fear, not just of death in his fight with Jamis, but of tipping the future along the currents of time he's foreseen. As this quote shows, the first step toward conquering his fear is simply telling himself he's afraid. After that, he can recite the litany and move past his fear, becoming stronger.
The vocabulary here tends toward hyperbole, with "countless," "infinite," and "brilliance." This contrasts with the mundane mischances that might affect the future: a cough or a light flickering could tip the outcome of the universe, and that's the fear that Paul has to conquer before killing Jamis and becoming a Fremen.
Paul felt Chani’s hand on his arm, heard a faint dripping sound in the chill air, felt an utter stillness come over the Fremen in the cathedral presence of water.
Herbert illustrates the Fremen admiration of water, as well as the desert's strangeness compared to Paul's previous experiences. One rhetorical device used in this description is in the word "cathedral." Herbert borrows a trick from poetry, and he uses a common noun as an adjective before the actual thing it describes. Sentence structure requires the reader to unpack ideas in a particular order, and here we read "Fremen in the cathedral" before realizing that "cathedral" is actually an adjective; the image of the cathedral is implanted, but that image actually describes the presence, not the surroundings. They're still in a strange dark cave, not a cathedral, but the presence of water makes the space a cathedral for the Fremen—and the sentence order communicates that sense to the reader.
And Paul, walking behind Chani, felt that a vital moment had passed him, that he had missed an essential decision and was now caught up in his own myth. He knew he had seen this place before, experienced it in a fragment of prescient dream on faraway Caladan, but details of the place were being filled in now that he had not seen. He felt a new sense of wonder at the limits of his gift. It was as though he rode within the wave of time, sometimes in its trough, sometimes on a crest—and all around him the other waves lifted and fell, revealing and then hiding what they bore on their surface.
Through it all, the wild jihad still loomed ahead of him, the violence and the slaughter. It was like a promontory above the surf.
This quote can be examined in the context of many questions Dune poses: Is Paul foretold by myth, or is "myth" just a combination of preparation, circumstance, and fanaticism? Can Paul actually see the future? What is the relationship between fate and free will?
The metaphor of the "wave of time" reminds the reader that Paul thinks in terms of water, not sand. Though dunes have similar troughs and crests and the surface of Arrakis also changes frequently, Paul's mind returns to waves and surfs for his comparisons. A promontory is a point of land that sticks out above a large body of water, so the looming jihad is ahead of Paul and above Paul in his own mind, existing regardless of the waves' movement.
In that instant, Paul saw how Stilgar had been transformed from the Fremen naib to a creature of the Lisan al-Gaib, a receptacle for awe and obedience. It was a lessening of the man, and Paul felt the ghost-wind of the jihad in it.
I have seen a friend become a worshiper, he thought.
…Muad’Dib from whom all blessings flow, he thought, and it was the bitterest thought of his life.
After victory in the final battle against the Emperor and House Harkonnen, Stilgar and other Fremen gather around Paul. Paul notices "a friend become a worshiper": Stilgar now worships Paul, and he therefore becomes a creature, not a naib/leader or even a full man. His humanity is lessened, and he's a receptacle for Paul's myth now. This is the "bitterest thought" of Paul's life: as he becomes Muad'Dib, fanaticism lessens the humans around him, leading ultimately to the jihad, leaving Paul with "a rush of loneliness."
“It’s a rule of ecology,” Kynes said, “that the young Master appears to understand quite well. The struggle between life elements is the struggle for the free energy of a system. Blood’s an efficient energy source.”
The banker put down his fork, spoke in an angry voice: “It’s said that the Fremen scum drink the blood of their dead.”
Kynes shook his head, spoke in a lecturing tone: “Not the blood, sir. But all of a man’s water, ultimately, belongs to his people—to his tribe.”
In the dining hall at the governor's mansion on Arrakis, Dr. Kynes explains many tenets of ecology, including the Law of the Minimum. Here, he explains that different parts of a system struggle for the system's available energy. For example, while muad'dib compete for food, hunting birds also compete to kill muad'dib and use their energy for fuel. On a larger scale, this ecological rule can be seen at the dinner table: power flows from the Duke, Dr. Kynes, and others, and as the conversation shifts, the availability of energy and attention determines who feels safe and who feels threatened.
This conversation also shows common conceptions of the Fremen: they're scum, they're cannibals, they're so scarcely seen that their reputation is built on rumors. Kynes doesn't contradict this, despite being the leader of the Fremen, and being half-Fremen himself. In fact, the grammatical structure seems to indicate that Kynes is masking himself. The parallel structure in the dialogue tags might communicate that Kynes is putting on a disguise in front of these people, acting like them, talking like them, pretending to not be part of "the Fremen scum."
Quite suddenly, the Baron’s mind could conceive of nothing more beautiful than that utter emptiness of black. Unless it were white on the black. Plated white on the black. Porcelain white.
But there was still the feeling of doubt.
After destroying House Atreides and killing Dr. Yueh, before talking to Duke Leto, the Baron is struck "quite suddenly" with an image. Bene Gesserit teaching talks of something similar, the adab, the demanding memory that comes of its own accord. Instead of a memory, the Baron is struck by an abstract image divided into four grammatical fragments: black; white on black; plated white on black; porcelain white. The image shifts quickly from empty black to porcelain white, cold and easily shattered.
Herbert was a student of psychology, particularly Jung's ideas of the unconscious, and the Baron's dreamlike, adab-like images here could certainly be read through a psychological lens. A desire for destruction? A desire for protection, in the plated white? A desire to be concealed? Herbert intentionally leaves such images open to the reader's interpretation.
One thought remained to him. Leto saw it in formless light on rays of black: The day the flesh shapes and the flesh the day shapes. The thought struck him with a sense of fullness he knew he could never explain.
This quote, only a few pages after the quote above, provides an obvious parallel: In his dying moment, Leto's one thought is seen "in formless light on rays of black." Why Herbert creates this connection between the Baron and the Duke isn't completely clear. Perhaps Duke Leto is currently experiencing what the Baron conceived of as the most beautiful thing (that thing, in this interpretation, would be death). Perhaps their similar imagery is meant to draw a line connecting the thought processes of the Baron and the Duke, who, while different, are both participants in the large-scale class and resource war of life in the Landsraad.
Like the imagery's meaning, the meaning of the Duke's thought is unclear. "The flesh the day shapes" could be a reference to the novel's preoccupation with what environments produce strong organisms: like Salusa Secundus makes the Sardaukar and Arrakis makes the Fremen, the day (the environment) shapes flesh (the organism). The other side, "the day the flesh shapes," would then possibly be along the lines of Liet-Kynes's goal of terraforming Arrakis and creating paradise—flesh (the organism) shapes the day (the environment). In a different interpretation, this could be the Duke realizing the interconnectivity of cause and effect in day-to-day life, as an individual one moment perceives themself changed by events, and at the next moment perceives themself changing events: sometimes the catalyst, sometimes the bystander, and always somehow both at once, creating that sense of "fullness."
The Duke can never explain it, and Herbert doesn't seem inclined to spell it out. This is one of many examples of the layers of Dune, on rhetorical, symbolic, and plot levels.
