Re: Shameless plug!
Posted: 05 Jun 2011 12:37
Yeah...lets just say politely (since he was good enough to engage with us on Amazon) that the introduction about the gom jabbar test was full of fail.
Too often the articles were written from the point of view that Frank's characters were in conventional roles, and rarely looked at the fact that Frank purposefully set up his own conventions for his characters to follow, i.e. the articles are written from the viewpoint that protagonist = good guy/antagonist = bad guy.
This especially fails in the role of the two main protagonists, Muad'dib and Leto II. Are they good guys? No, not really. They have 'good' goals, but they can't be said to avoid "evil" decisions for that greater "good", so much so that evil and good really can't be used in that context. There is survival, on a scale that would be fairly inconceivable if Frank hadn't spent so much time dedicated to showing the reader how to think long-term.
It was rather distressing when I realized that some of the articles authors felt that some of the stories about Muad'dib were fabricated, that he would never do that but might use the story as a plot point, for example Muad'dib making Drums out of the skins of his enemies. That's meant to be shocking, it's meant to show the reader that Frank isn't shitting you about the horrors of Muad'dib's Jihad. Also, its very much not to be seen as an 'evil' act, consider it more useful as propaganda. That's closer to the ethical center in Dune Messiah than Good vs. Evil.
Another fault was how often the articles were written from the standpoint of a democratic ethical base (Ours) rather than an aristocratic one (DUNE).
Too often the articles were written from the point of view that Frank's characters were in conventional roles, and rarely looked at the fact that Frank purposefully set up his own conventions for his characters to follow, i.e. the articles are written from the viewpoint that protagonist = good guy/antagonist = bad guy.
This especially fails in the role of the two main protagonists, Muad'dib and Leto II. Are they good guys? No, not really. They have 'good' goals, but they can't be said to avoid "evil" decisions for that greater "good", so much so that evil and good really can't be used in that context. There is survival, on a scale that would be fairly inconceivable if Frank hadn't spent so much time dedicated to showing the reader how to think long-term.
It was rather distressing when I realized that some of the articles authors felt that some of the stories about Muad'dib were fabricated, that he would never do that but might use the story as a plot point, for example Muad'dib making Drums out of the skins of his enemies. That's meant to be shocking, it's meant to show the reader that Frank isn't shitting you about the horrors of Muad'dib's Jihad. Also, its very much not to be seen as an 'evil' act, consider it more useful as propaganda. That's closer to the ethical center in Dune Messiah than Good vs. Evil.
Another fault was how often the articles were written from the standpoint of a democratic ethical base (Ours) rather than an aristocratic one (DUNE).