Chapter 48


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georgiedenbro
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Re: Chapter 48

Post by georgiedenbro »

Freakzilla wrote:
distrans wrote:you know

I didn't expect to be surprised by this reading of the first book
I am, every damned time I read it.
Yes, there's never been a reading when I didn't pick up on new things and realize stuff I didn't before.
"um-m-m-ah-h-h-hm-m-m-m!"
distrans
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Re: Chapter 48

Post by distrans »

georgiedenbro wrote:

The mumbling is a code language the Fenrings use to communicate with each other while simultaneously carrying on a surface conversation. Hasimir wouldn't need to use them outside of her presence, and certainly not when his overt message is the same thing that's really on his mind.
that had never occurred to me at all
is that discussed else where that I'm forgetting?

when I was a kid I liked the third book the best
the movie ruined the first on for me I guess
have never liked that actor

15 years later it was god emperor
five and six are very good
but four is what did it for me

i wish children would up at the book store

i just finished messiah a couple months ago
and god emperor just before that

im stuck with the used stores selection
i hate seeming so many of his kids books on the self

im tempted at time to buy them all and throw them away just so i dont have to look at them anymore
pcqypcqy
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Re: Chapter 48

Post by pcqypcqy »

A couple of thoughts in response to some of the discussion above. No real points to be made, these just sprang to mind.

1. The Baron's plan didn't consider the Fremen I don't think. No one knew how many Fremen there were, nor their fighting qualities. This is evident in Hawat's and the Baron's discussion when Hawat advises him to cut Rabban off from support. I think the Baron's plan was a more general replication of the conditions of Salusa Secundus, and using the any imported prisoners and the non-fremen population as his soliders.

2. Not sure how many people made up House Artreides. It's an interesting question. It could be that a 'house' is simply the ruling elite and an army, and that they have a subservient population that just happens to live within their fief.

I also wonder how many people/soliders made up House Sardaukar as well? Presumably Shaddam didn't bring all of his soliders to Arrakis to sort this mess out, and presumably Paul mobilised quite a lot of the available fighting Fremen for the final battle. I always took the conclusion of this battle to be more of a strategic political victory, rather than an outright military one. The relative numbers are never mentioned, but obviously the Fremen conclusively won that battle. However, Paul only becomes Emperor because of the threat he can hold over the Guild.

I won't go into the intervening years between Dune and Messiah due to spoilers, but if they'd gone on to a protracted war against the Sardaukar WITHOUT the political win, I wonder what would have happened?

Back to how many made up House Artreides, certainly Hawat's interior monologue just before he's captured suggests they had expected, and could handle, the full attack by 1 legion / 10 brigades. In the end, there were 10 times this many Harkkonen and Sardaukar sent to Arrakis.


3. If the Fenrings only hum when together, wouldn't this raise suspicions that it is a secret code they use? Plenty of references to secret codes, languages, hand signals in the book, so this is clearly a thing people know about and take advantage of. As to why he didn't do it in this scene, I figure it's just something he does when he's being smarmy/smug to equals/underlings, and not to the emperor. From memory, this is the only direct bit of dialogue between the two.
georgiedenbro
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Re: Chapter 48

Post by georgiedenbro »

pcqypcqy wrote: 3. If the Fenrings only hum when together, wouldn't this raise suspicions that it is a secret code they use?
And? If it's a BG code no one's going to crack it. And anyhow it's not clear from the text how overt this mumbling really is. It might be innocuous enough to a bystander (without BG training) that they wouldn't notice it that much, but to the reader it's being made clear something's going on.
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pcqypcqy
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Re: Chapter 48

Post by pcqypcqy »

Well it's not much of a secret code if people know you're doing it in the first place? It may be unintelligible, but if people know you're communicating secretly, that would raise suspicions immediately. The way for the Fenrings to cover this up would be to hum all the time and pass it off as a stutter, which is what I thought they did (i.e. when they're discussing Feyd being a precise young man when they meet him and the Baron on Geidi Prime).

The point raised above by someone else was that the Count didn't do this in the final scene with the emperor, and noted it as a difference. I figured he just toned it down around the emperor, but we don't have any other direct dialogue between the two to really say for sure.
georgiedenbro
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Re: Chapter 48

Post by georgiedenbro »

Upon reflection I think you're right. It seems like they would always mumble so as to mask the fact that when they're with each other the mumbling is a code. When speaking alone with the Baron Fenring continues the mumble, which suggests that it's a regular speech pattern for all observers. The lack of it in the final scene would indeed imply that he has no need for deception since he's making his true intentions clear for all for once.
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pcqypcqy
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Re: Chapter 48

Post by pcqypcqy »

georgiedenbro wrote:Upon reflection I think you're right. It seems like they would always mumble so as to mask the fact that when they're with each other the mumbling is a code. When speaking alone with the Baron Fenring continues the mumble, which suggests that it's a regular speech pattern for all observers. The lack of it in the final scene would indeed imply that he has no need for deception since he's making his true intentions clear for all for once.
Or that at some stage, the emperor told him to stop mumbling like a muppet :D
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Freakzilla
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Re: Chapter 48

Post by Freakzilla »

Georgie, I'd like a reference to where the mumbling was a secret code from the text please.
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georgiedenbro
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Re: Chapter 48

Post by georgiedenbro »

Freakzilla wrote:Georgie, I'd like a reference to where the mumbling was a secret code from the text please.
The first clue is this:
"The pressure's on," the Count hummed to his lady in their secret language. "The Baron is just beginning to see the price he really paid to rid himself of
the Duke Leto."
You may note that in that passage there's no hint of the mumbling that we see elsewhere in Fenring's speech. Arguably we might suppose this is because either he intentionally mumbles around others but that it doesn't mean anything, OR that this text that we see written clearly *is* the mumbling, which FH is calling "hummed". You may also note that the "mumbling" consists of sounds such as "ummm" and "ahhh" but also "hmmm" and that latter would certainly be a 'humming sound'. But the others could be humming sounds as well as long as you define humming as 'creating music without words'.

And then there's this little clue, from an exchange that's always made me chuckle:
"White for poison, black for purity," the Lady Fenring said. "A curious custom, isn't it, my love?"
"Um-m-m-m," the Count said.
It would be seem odd for the author to write "the Count said" after he had merely mumbled and not said anything. My conclusion is that the "Um-m-m-m" was indeed him saying something, in their code.

At the end of the scene of Giedi Prime we again have:
Count Fenring faced his lady, spoke again in their personal humming-code tongue: "You saw it, of course?"
Again we see that resuming the humming code results in a lack of apparent ums and hms in the conversation that follows, because what we're seeing is the translation of that code into English.

Hopefully that was convincing to you. The final point regarding this was made above, which is that at the very end Fenring dispenses with the mumbling and speaks plainly. It's never written out in plain black and white that this is what's happening but I'm pretty sure this is what the author meant.
"um-m-m-ah-h-h-hm-m-m-m!"
pcqypcqy
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Re: Chapter 48

Post by pcqypcqy »

+1 - the way they talk was clearly a secret code. A lot was made of it in parts of the book, and then less so in other parts. I wonder if FH had some plot point in mind with it, but then toned it down in edits.
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Re: Chapter 48

Post by Freakzilla »

Thanks Georgie
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DrunkenIdaho
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Re: Chapter 48

Post by DrunkenIdaho »

Just had a thought about this line from Thufir which led to a few interesting ideas:
Frank Herbert in Dune wrote:“Thufir, old friend,” Paul said, “as you can see, my back is toward no door.”
“The universe is full of doors,” Hawat said.
“Am I my father’s son?” Paul asked.
More like your grandfather’s,” Hawat rasped. “You’ve his manner and the look of him in your eyes.
What if he is not, in fact, talking about Leto's father, the Old Duke, but about the Baron? I know this is quite unlikely, but I think it is at least plausible that Thufir, a Mentat, might have worked out in his two years of Harkonnen services that he was Jessica's mother. After all, while Paul says he has "walked the future" and "looked at a record" to know this for certain, he also points out that the clues are there even without prescience.
Frank Herbert in Dune wrote:“When next you find a mirror, study your face—study mine now. The traces are there if you don’t blind yourself.
Look at my hands, the set of my bones
. And if none of this convinces you, then take my word for it. I’ve walked the
future, I’ve looked at a record, I’ve seen a place, I have all the data. We’re Harkonnens.”
What if this line is actually Thufir's way of telling Paul that he also knows this, while everyone else present believes him to be talking about the Old Duke? To go deeper into this, there is also Thufir's earlier thought about the Baron:
Frank Herbert in Dune wrote:He babbles too much, Hawat thought. He’s not like Leto who could tell me a thing with the lift of an eyebrow or
the wave of a hand. Nor like the Old Duke who could express an entire sentence in the way he accented a single word.
Now look back at the Mentat's later statement to Paul - he says he has the look of his grandfather, who I'm speculating to be the Baron, in his eyes. It seems likely that in this moment, Hawat would be looking into Paul's eyes, examining them and comparing them to the Baron's. I think it is possible that this look in the eyes is Thufir demonstrating how Paul is closer to the Baron than his father (and other grandfather). Like them, he is expressing a much deeper meaning (see below) in the theoretical look in the eyes accompanying his statement, in the same manner as Leto's "lift of an eyebrow or wave of a hand" or the Old Duke's meaning in his accent.

In this way, he is showing Paul by the example of a mere look in the eyes what sets him apart from Leto and closer to the Baron, because Paul too lacks this ability for expressing things in this way. If we take this to be the case, it also adds another layer to the passage immediately following this:
Frank Herbert in Dune wrote:“Yet I’m my father’s son,” Paul said. “For I say to you, Thufir, that in payment for your years of service to my family you may now ask anything you wish of me. Anything at all. Do you need my life now, Thufir? It is yours.” Paul stepped forward a pace, hands at his side, seeing the look of awareness grow in Hawat’s eyes.


Perhaps this action from Paul is not only in payment for Thufir's "years of service" to his family, as he says, but in recognition of Thufir's message and recognition that he is far from the "true" Atreides that his father was, and that Hawat has every right to kill him as the Emperor orders for this reason as well, mirroring the Mentat's earlier thoughts of slaying the Baron. After all, the idea that Paul is a Harkonnen is later expressed by Bijaz to the first Duncan ghola in the next book:
Frank Herbert in Dune Messiah wrote:“You think of Beast Rabban, the vile Harkonnen, and you glare,” Bijaz said. “You are like the Fremen in this. When words fail, the sword is always at hand, eh? You think of the torture inflicted upon your family by the Harkonnens. And, through his mother, your precious Paul is a Harkonnen! You would not find it difficult to slay a Harkonnen, now would you?”
Now, of course, he just mean this in the sense of his relation to the Baron, and this is just all part of the Tleilaxu plan and getting Duncan to kill Paul, but this could be a deeper message from Frank by putting this line here as well in such a manner to express that Paul is a Harkonnen on a deeper level than just being Jessica's daughter.

Going back to the last chapter of Dune, if we take the whole Thufir idea to be true, it also adds another dimension to a passage concerning Fenring and Shaddam later in the chapter, in which Shaddam similarly expresses what he wishes Fenring to do by just looking into his eyes:
Frank Herbert in Dune wrote:The Emperor turned, looked at Count Fenring. The Count met his stare—gray eyes against green. The thought lay there clearly between them, their association so long that understanding could be achieved with a glance. Kill this upstart for me, the Emperor was saying. The Atreides is young and resourceful, yes—but he is also tired from long effort and he’d be no match for you, anyway. Call him out now ... you know the way of it. Kill him.
In the following passage, Paul feels a "deep compassion" for the Count flowing through him, "the first sense of brotherhood he'd ever experienced." If the comparison between the interaction between Thufir and Paul and the Emperor and Fenring is at all intentional, then Frank has crafted the connection between them even better.

I know that all of this is more than a little far-fetched, but I find it interesting to speculate on these things and I think this in an interesting interpretation.
Power attracts the corruptible. Absolute power attracts the absolutely corruptible. This is the danger of
entrenched bureaucracy to its subject population. Even spoils systems are preferable because levels of tolerance are
lower and the corrupt can be thrown out periodically. Entrenched bureaucracy seldom can be touched short of
violence. Beware when Civil Service and Military join hands! - Murbella
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Freakzilla
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Re: Chapter 48

Post by Freakzilla »

The old woman studied Paul in one gestalten flicker: face oval like
Jessica's, but strong bones . . . hair: the Duke's black-black but with browline
of the maternal grandfather who cannot be named, and that thin, disdainful nose;
shape of directly staring green eyes: like the old Duke, the paternal
grandfather who is dead.

~Dune
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Re: Chapter 48

Post by the rev »

Unless this is hysterical paranoia, I don't quite get it. The Atreides/Harkonnen enmity is long-standing, hardly something cooked up on a pretext. And how would a ploy that all but destroys one house be something that house would agree to? I just don't see the logic of the Emperor's suspecion...
This is the funniest part of the book. Especially because Alia is witnessing the exchange, laughing her ass off and ripping them to pieces. The emperor believes the Baron to be a brilliant tactician. From the conversation with Fenring back on Giedi Prime he believes the baron knows the secret of the Sardaukar and has been using Arrakis the entire time (back to when the Harkonnen controlled Arrakis before the Atreides arrived) to train his own unbeatable army. He has Hawat in his employ, the most brilliant mentat and assassin in the galaxy. A man known to be singularly loyal to family Atreides for generations. Then Paul attacks and defeats the Sardaukar. The only conclusion he can reach is that Atreides and Harkonnen were secretly in alliance to take his throne.

The emperor looks like a paranoid fool for suspecting this alliance but he's maintained his throne all this time by being suspicious. He's of the same bloodline as Paul, only a generation away from being a Kwisatz Haderach himself. He's used to seeing feints within feints. He's certain the baron is playing the fool to mock him. But he's working with incomplete data, garbage in garbage out. He simply can't believe the Baron is as completely dimwitted, blind, and insane so to not be aware of what's happening. This makes the emperor look a horse's ass as well and Alia's throwing barbs all around, including at Mohiam for her part in the debacle.

In this chapter we finally see what a sad, pathetic, lonely, insane, old fool the baron is. There's been hints of this earlier but by this point it all comes home. His hate and fear have ruined him completely. Even Alia feels sorry for him and she's more ruthless then Paul. He's been toyed with and used as a tool by everyone around him. From the emperor to Feyd to Fenring to Hawat to Paul to the Bene Gesserit, Piter, and on and on. Alia's conversation with Paul, where she tells him she killed their grandfather without pain, shows despite their hate they still see him as family. Albeit twisted, evil crazy family. I believe this alludes to what happens in the next book but we'll have to wait.
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