Chapter 50


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Freakzilla
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Chapter 50

Post by Freakzilla »

You think power may be the most unstable of all human achievements? Then what of
the apparent exceptions to this inherent instability? Some families endure. Very
powerful religious bureaucracies have been known to endure. Consider the
relationship between faith and power. Are they mutually exclusive when each
depends upon the other? The Bene Gesserit have been reasonably secure within the
loyal walls of faith for thousands of years. But where has their power gone?

-The Stolen Journals

Leto, Moneo, Hwi and the rest of Leto’s entourage begin the wedding peregrination from the Citadel and head up the Rimwall surrounding the Sareer. Hwi asks Leto what went on between him an Malky. He tells her that he told Malky that some things shouldn’t be invented. Malky called him a fool, in a world without birds men would still invent aircraft. Leto fears that the Ixians could invent catastrophy. Education helps but it is not enough, you must outrun catastrophy. She says he is sharing his soul with her which upsets him. She says he lives in the tension between the love and fear of loving. Love is all he understands and he has faith in life. Leto sheds tears which burn his cowl. She wipes them from his cheeks, the first person to touch them since his transformation began. He tells her he will share his sould with her.
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Paul of Dune was so bad it gave me a seizure that dislocated both of my shoulders and prolapsed my anus.
~Pink Snowman
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Dravition
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Re: Chapter 49

Post by Dravition »

The last portion of this chapter where Hwi speaks directly into the soul of Leto is truly moving. I added boldness to emphasize the profound impact this has on Leto. (Some of this was captured in the chapter summary, but I would like to stretch it out a bit.)
The excerpt starts with Hwi speaking to Leto.
"I am beginning to understand something of you," she said. "I can sense some of your fears. And I think I already know where it is that you live."
He turned a startled glance on her and found himself locked in her gaze. It was astonishing. He could not move his eyes away from her. A profound fear coursed through and he felt his hands begin to twitch.
"You live where the fear of being and the love of being are combined, all in one person," she said.
He could not blink.
"You are a mystic," she said, "gentle to yourself only because you are in the middle of that universe looking outward, looking in ways that others cannot. You fear to share this, yet you want to share it more than anything else."
"What have you seen?" he whispered.
"I have no inner eye, no inner voices," she said. "But I have seen my Lord Leto, whose soul I love, and I know the only thing that you truly understand."
He broke her gaze, fearful of what she might say. The trembling of his hands could be felt all through his front segment.
"Love, that is what you understand," she said. "Love, and that is all of it."
His hands stopped trembling. A tear rolled down each of his cheeks. When the tears touched his cowl, wisps of blue smoke erupted. He sensed the burning and was thankful for the pain.
To me personally, this scene is about FH doing justice by Leto -- such a key character in the Dune series. I think that the average reader of GEoD instinctively wants to relate to Leto, being that he is the protagonist of this story. Our minds want to accept him as ultimately being human. For me at least, this actually dampened the import of what Leto goes through in this book (at least through my first read). Such an unthinkable sacrifice he made out of love for all of humanity. He is true Atreides -- the servant of those for whom he is responsible. Ironically (and tragically, it seems at first) the price he agrees to pay is his own humanity. His noble intentions, he knows, put him on a dreadful path towards something akin to Christianity's concept of limbo -- an eternity trapped in the form of unthinking consciousness.

But, I would argue (in line with above comments), Leto's story is not one of tragedy. FH, in a stroke of literary kindness and justice, gives him the gift of Hwi -- and one last true taste of his fading humanity. Leading up to his death after meeting Hwi, and especially in his death, he displays a healthy mix of both good and bad human traits long since lost to him. Imo, this was not FH intending to diminish Leto's character by giving him ugly traits (anger, frustration, jealousy, doubt, fear, desperation, etc.) These are actually part of Frank's farewell gift -- the flip side of the coin being comprised of things like faith, hope, trust, love, reassurance, etc.

The above excerpt is made all the more significant due to the incomprehensible depth of Leto's ancestral memories. The reader is repeatedly reminded that Leto retains all of the memories and life experiences of countless people in his long lineage. To me, Leto is, in this, a symbol of humanity's past-entire. The implication here is that Leto knows both intellectually and emotionally what key aspects of the human condition he is denied through his willful transformation. This goes beyond sex, as FH several times reminds us. Specifically, this great giver and lover of life both fears and doubts that he himself (ie. Leto as a singular identity, separate from the tangle of OM within him) will ever be seen-true and loved by another. At the risk of redundancy, I'll repeat part of the excerpt for effect.
"What have you seen?" he whispered.
"I have no inner eye, no inner voices," she said. "But I have seen my Lord Leto, whose soul I love..."
He broke from her gaze, fearful of what she might say. The trembling of his hands could be felt all through his front segment."
I think I fell in love with Hwi myself here. I can see her pure, beautiful face framed by a divine radiance as speaks these lines. It's as though she's an angel, descended to deliver a long awaited judgement. She looks through his eyes and into his soul, and gives him all the affirmation of his own humanity he could ever need, even in when confronted by his own mortality (the following chapter).
Leto smiled. "Duncan, have I not told you that when you think you know something, that is a most perfect barrier against learning?"
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A Thing of Eternity
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Re: Chapter 49

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

Not a whole lot to say to that, other than yup. :D
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Dravition
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Re: Chapter 49

Post by Dravition »

Dravition wrote:even in when confronted by his own mortality (the following chapter
Whoops -- three chapters later, not one.
Leto smiled. "Duncan, have I not told you that when you think you know something, that is a most perfect barrier against learning?"
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Hadi Benotto
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Re: Chapter 49

Post by Hadi Benotto »

That was part of the trap laid by the Tleilaxu, but which backfired on them. She was such a perfect creation that called to Leto's memory of humanity that he almost faltered himself on staying true to the GP. But it was Hwi's steadfast/ unwavering love, the fact that she was the one person in the universe to truely know him, that helped keep him true. After spending, basically, an eternity trapped with Duncan (who basically broke down into the same pattern time after time) and his Majordomo of the time, Hwi was the spark to reignite what he thought he'd lost millena ago.

I pose a different question, but which is related to the subject (which probably needs to be discussed in it's own thread): at what point did the BT lose control of Hwi? I know she says in the book that she turns her back on the BT and pledges herself to Leto, but did it take interaction with him for her to make that decision, or do you think she'd already made her mind up back in the no-capsule she was raised in?

Good stuff by Dravition :clap:
No, Donny, these men are nihilists, there's nothing to be afraid of.
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inhuien
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Re: Chapter 49

Post by inhuien »

Was it not mainly an Ixian endeavour.
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Freakzilla
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Re: Chapter 49

Post by Freakzilla »

inhuien wrote:Was it not mainly an Ixian endeavour.
It was Ixian/Tleilaxu.

However, the BT provided only the technology to make a female clone of Malky.
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Freakzilla
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Re: Chapter 49

Post by Freakzilla »

Freakzilla wrote:
inhuien wrote:Was it not mainly an Ixian endeavour.
It was Ixian/Tleilaxu.

However, the BT provided only the technology to make a female clone of Malky.
The Guild was involved, too. They financed the construction of the no-field Hwi was created in.
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Paul of Dune was so bad it gave me a seizure that dislocated both of my shoulders and prolapsed my anus.
~Pink Snowman
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Re: Chapter 50

Post by Freakzilla »

Revised
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Paul of Dune was so bad it gave me a seizure that dislocated both of my shoulders and prolapsed my anus.
~Pink Snowman
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