Summary
Chapter 11
Jessica wakes up just before nightfall and finds that Jamis demands “the amtal rule”—he doesn’t think Jessica’s part in the prophecy is legitimate, and she must have a champion fight in her defense. Her only option is Paul, who must kill Jamis in one-on-one combat. Jessica isn’t allowed to talk. Paul is clearly the better fighter, but he is hesitant about killing Jamis, offering him the chance to yield instead, which isn’t the Fremen way. Paul kills Jamis, and afterward Jessica is cruel to him, trying to dissuade him from learning to enjoy combat/killing. Stilgar names Paul “Usul,” the base of the pillar, for his private name among Sietch Tabr; for his openly used name, Paul chooses “Muad’Dib” after the small desert mice of Arrakis. As Paul-Muad’Dib is accepted into Sietch Tabr, he feels he’s in an abyss of time—but he can still sense the coming jihad under the Atreides banner. He knows he can’t let that happen.
Chapter 12
As the Fremen take the water from Jamis’s body, Jessica, Paul, and Chani talk about water (Jamis’s water technically belongs to Paul now). The Fremen split Jamis’s belongings among his friends in a funeral ritual, and Paul realizes he’s supposed to participate. He takes Jamis’s baliset, and when he sheds tears, the Fremen are amazed and honored, touching his cheeks. Chani prays and bestows Jamis’s water upon Paul. When he asks Chani to hold the watercounters for him, Paul accidentally starts a courtship ritual with her. Stilgar shows Jessica and Paul an enormous cache of water, one of many, collected from a windtrap; he explains in a sort of prayer-like ritual that the Fremen will change the surface of Arrakis to make the planet a water-rich paradise.
As they prepare to cross the desert, Chani and other Fremen encourage Paul to play the baliset. Jessica is disturbed that he sings a love song to Chani and knows she must warn him that Fremen won’t make a proper wife for a duke. Paul’s awareness is dominated by a single thought: His mother is his enemy; in bearing him and training him, she brought the jihad.
Chapter 13
On his 17th birthday, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen kills his 100th slave-gladiator, observed by members of the Imperial Court, Count and Lady Fenring (a Bene Gesserit—the one who left Jessica a secret warning about the assassination attempt on Paul). The Count and the Baron discuss how the Emperor feels about the Baron’s activity on Arrakis—the Emperor isn’t happy, and both men threaten each other in roundabout ways, but the Baron secretly hopes the Emperor will accuse him of something so that he can move against the Emperor next. The Baron is shaken when the Count implies the Emperor might not approve of Feyd as the Baron’s heir.
They watch Feyd fight. There are unique things about the fight: one, Feyd has secretly poisoned his black blade instead of the traditional white one; two, the slave-gladiator isn’t drugged but does have a secret word ("Scum") that will cause him to freeze—this is part of a plot to make it look like an assassination attempt on Feyd, which he’ll heroically overcome. However, the slave is one of the men from Duke Leto’s forces, and he puts up a great fight, then stabs himself when he realizes he’s been poisoned. The Baron is furious, thinking this was a real attack. Feyd allows the slave-gladiator to be buried intact and holding a knife, a great honor that the crowd considers a classy move. The Baron orders a party; the Count and Lady Fenring talk privately about how the Lady will seduce Feyd tonight, continuing his bloodline on the Reverend Mother's orders even though she finds it distasteful.
Chapter 14
Paul and the rest of the Fremen make their almost-silent way across the desert to Sietch Tabr. They learn that Liet-Kynes, Chani’s father, is dead because of the Harkonnens, and Paul is angry. He meets Harah, Jamis’s woman, who is now his responsibility since he killed Jamis. She becomes his servant, and Paul assumes responsibility for her two sons. Harah shows him the sietch, including dew collectors that allow the Fremen to grow plants on Arrakis. They will leave this sietch soon to protect Fremen secrets from the Sardaukar. Paul finds the biggest difference about life here is the absolute absence of poison snoopers, even though he can smell common poisons. In his new home, he finds two young boys with knives.
Chapter 15
The two boys are Paul’s new charges, Jamis’s sons. Over 20,000 Fremen gather to watch the Ceremony of the Seed, where Jessica becomes the new Reverend Mother. Chani is consecrated in the Sayyadina, and she gives Jessica the Water of Life, Kan, a powerful drug. Jessica perceives time as frozen, and she explores a psychokinetic connection with her body as a “mote-self.” She sees the “cellular core, a pit of blackness…where we cannot look” that only the Kwisatz Haderach can access. She’s able to see the atomic particles inside herself and alter the drug’s composition so it isn’t lethal. The old Reverend Mother touches her, and Jessica sees and experiences the Reverend Mother’s life as she dies—and her unborn daughter, still in the womb, sees it as well. She sees a long corridor of past Reverend Mothers, seeing into the past of the Fremen, descended from Sunni ancestors: On other planets, they were harvested to become slave/soldiers on Bela Tegeuse and Salusa Secundus; they were denied the Hajj. She sees that the Water of Life comes from a dying sandworm that has been drowned. The other Fremen drink the Water of Life, which has now been purified by Jessica and acts as a sort of hallucinogen. Paul drinks, and Chani leads him away, where they talk about the future. She has a vision of their child in her arms; Paul sees time. He asks Chani to stay with him, and she says “Always.”
ANALYSIS
In this last section at the end of Book 2, both Paul and his Harkonnen parallel, Feyd-Rautha, kill men in one-on-one combat. Paul kills Jamis perhaps too fairly, shaming him by giving him the option to yield. Feyd kills the slave-gladiator cruelly, using mind tricks and poison. Both young men kill for a goal: Paul aims to secure his and Jessica's security with the Fremen; Feyd aims to replace key members of House Harkonnen so that he's set up for a later assassination attempt on his uncle, the Baron. The reactions to their fights are parallel as well. While Paul is chastised by Jessica, since she doesn't want him to grow to enjoy killing, Feyd is celebrated by House Harkonnen. After their fights, Paul develops a romantic connection to Chani that will result in a child (which Jessica also doesn't like), and Feyd is seduced by Lady Margot Fenring, who will bear a daughter to preserve his bloodline.
Chapter 12 ends with Paul turning against his mother, with only one thought dominating his awareness: "She is bringing the jihad. She bore me; she trained me. She is my enemy." This thought seems to come out of nowhere, since he was just performing a love song for an audience of Fremen; it would maybe fit better in the previous chapter, when he's just killed Jamis and encounters an abyss of time. One could certainly produce a psychoanalytic reading of these thoughts (for example, Freudian interpretations of child/parent relationships), or maybe it's a displaced death wish, displacing the sentiment "I wish I was never born" into rage at Jessica. The most plot-relevant thing to note is that Paul realizes Jessica is his mother, but she's also a sister of the Bene Gesserit—she bore him (not "raised," "carried," or "loved," but "bore" like a burden) and trained him in line with Bene Gesserit goals, which aren't his goals. Right now, Paul connects the Bene Gesserit way to the jihad he's desperate to prevent.
