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Chapter 17

Posted: 13 Feb 2008 17:48
by Freakzilla
I will not argue with the Fremen claims that they are divinely inspired to
transmit a religious revelation, it is their concurrent claim to ideological
revelation which inspires me to shower them with derision. Of course, they make
the dual claim in the hope that it will strengthen their mandarinate and help
them to endure in a universe which finds them increasingly oppressive. It is in
the name of all those oppressed people that I warn the Fremen: short-term
expediency always fails in the long term.

-The Preacher at Arrakeen

Leto has talked Stilgar into accompanying him on a sand crossing to The Attendant, a nearby rock outcropping adjacent to Seitch Tabr. There are things Stilgar needs to know to prepare him for the near future. Leto is frustrated by his inner lives, he feels like he is merely an extension of them, a window for them to peer through. This is what destroyed Alia. They watch the sunrise, the day makes Stilgar nervous. Leto is trouble by the way the lives in their empire are going. Leto considers risking the spice so he can use his prescience but Stilgar doesn't want him to be destroyed by it as Paul was. Leto tells Stilgar he has brought him here to see the place he may die. He's seen it in a vision but it may have only been a dream. He saw three paths, one would require him to kill Jessica in order to preserve the Atreides spice monopoly. In the second, he and Ghani breed to preserve the Atreides bloodline. Stilgar warns against that, according to Fremen Law, incest is punishable by hanging. In the third path he must bring down the deification of Paul. Leto warns Stilgar against Alia should he die. This pisses Stilgar off, he tells Leto to wait until he's of age. Leto tells him he's the oldest person around and that he can remember back fifty centuries. He insists the empire needs good government. Leto says his problem is that to be a good Fremen leader he must be rooted in the past, but his past goes back to ancient times. To live in the past is to risk destruction. Leto orders Stilgar to take Ghani and flee from Seitch Tabr if he should die in the desert. He reminds Stilgar of the time he and Paul met up with Gurney at Habbanya Ridge and Gurney berated Paul because he was more concerned about loosing the spice harvester than the men. He ask Stilgar to save lives. If he should die, Ghani will be the only hope for the Atreides. On the way down Leto comments on how beautifull the young women are this year.

Posted: 22 Feb 2008 00:57
by Tyrant
On the way down Leto comments on how beautifull the young women are this year.



anyone care to explain this quote to me...i feel really stupid not knowing why this statement affects stilgar so much

Posted: 22 Feb 2008 14:11
by Mandy
Without checking the book.. I think I always thought it meant that the women were beautiful because their lifestyle had changed. They weren't starved for water, or food and they had access to a different kind of culture. This would make Stilgar long for his old way of life. People don't like change.

Posted: 22 Feb 2008 18:56
by Freakzilla
Mandy wrote:Without checking the book.. I think I always thought it meant that the women were beautiful because their lifestyle had changed. They weren't starved for water, or food and they had access to a different kind of culture. This would make Stilgar long for his old way of life. People don't like change.
I think you nailed that one. :D

Posted: 23 Feb 2008 15:16
by Tyrant
ok thanks..its pretty much as i figured...but with all of franks deeper meanings sometimes i try to read too much into things

Re: Chapter 17

Posted: 06 Feb 2010 23:45
by Eyes High
That was one thing I really liked about this chapter, how with just a simple "innocent" phrase, young Leto cause Stilgar to think in the direction he wanted him to think. A lot of time we fail to see what is happening right in front of our eyes because they happen so slowly, it is only when we look behind that we can see how much things have changed and how fast they really did change.

Re: Chapter 17

Posted: 12 Feb 2010 03:43
by trang
Funny I just finished that chapter and it is truly profound for Stigar, leto's talk and the statment just shook him to the foundations. As sharp a Naib he was, I felt the part that took him the hardest is that he just didnt see it coming, being so rooted in the ways of old days.

I think on this kind of thing myself, comparing how things were when I was young and young adult to the ways of the day. hmmmm Ill just tip, sip, and salute with a spice beer to frank, stilgar and this chapter.

Re: Chapter 17

Posted: 03 Apr 2010 05:36
by Freakzilla
I think FH really shines in CoD.

Re: Chapter 17

Posted: 17 May 2010 20:39
by Freakzilla
RedHeadKevin wrote:It could be posted under Chapter 18, yes. I was actually expanding on the explanations of Leto's "The girls are beautiful" line, since Tyrant asked, and I felt that I could add to the conversation. And since "Chapter 18" is buried with no posts, I thought that adding to this discussion would be a better place.
The idea of the Reading Group is to make posts about a particular chapter IN that chapter.

[edit]I've merged your post with the Chapter 18 topic[/edit]

Re: Chapter 17

Posted: 17 May 2010 23:46
by merkin muffley
That's such a perfect ending to that chapter. Imagine a child saying that. It's one of the lines in the Dune books that really stands out for me.

Re: Chapter 17

Posted: 29 Oct 2011 17:13
by Nietzsche's mustache
The following excerpt caught my attention:

"[...] To be sighted in the land of the blind carries its own perils. If you try to interpret what you see for the blind, you tend to forget that the blind posses an inherent movement conditioned by their blindness. They are like a monstrous machine moving along its own path. They have their own momentum, their own fixations. I fear the blind, Still. I fear them. They can so easily crush anything in their path."
Freakzilla wrote:I think FH really shines in CoD.
:happy-sunny:

Re: Chapter 17

Posted: 07 Jun 2012 11:00
by Freakzilla
Revised, clean.

Re: Chapter 17

Posted: 16 Jan 2013 02:36
by distrans
the disability community has a term, TAB
given your nearly 90% chance of ending up disabled in your lifetime
if your not disabled now
the best description of you is Temporarily Able Bodied.

the strong and adept have unique weaknesses
chief of which is the oversite of their arc as such

they brace themselves against changes they can anticipate
things they can see
all the while changes happens nevertheless and in spite of their best efforts

and it usually gets well along places theyre not looking

stilgar got showed this

Re: Chapter 17

Posted: 13 Mar 2014 11:22
by Freakzilla
This paragraph stood out to me in my current re-read:

During the Jihad, Fremen had learned much about the old Padishah Emperor,
Shaddam IV. The eighty-first Padishah of House Corrino to occupy the Golden Lion
Throne and reign over this Imperium of uncounted worlds had used Arrakis as a
testing place for those policies which he hoped to implement in the rest of his
empire.
His planetary governors on Arrakis had cultivated a persistent pessimism
to bolster their power base. They'd made sure that everyone on Arrakis, even the
free-roaming Fremen, became familiar with numerous cases of injustice and
insoluble problems; they had been taught to think of themselves as a helpless
people for whom there was no succor.


I must have read it a dozen times but never really noticed what it said.

Re: Chapter 17

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 13:08
by Naïve mind
I can't claim to have sifted and re-sifted the books in the way you have, but it's new to me too.

And it contradicts the perspective on the novels I'm currently enamoured with; that the old Empire was corrupt and ineffectual, but not actively malicious towards its subjects.

Re: Chapter 17

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 17:56
by Serkanner
I agree with the previous poster ... I need to ***** read the books again!

... and the 81st Padishah Emeperor was Shaddam IV ... not an Emperor from "the past".

Re: Chapter 17

Posted: 17 Mar 2014 08:11
by Freakzilla
I think maybe by "old empire" he means pre-Leto II or pre-scattering.

Re: Chapter 17

Posted: 13 Apr 2014 13:32
by distrans
you cant be an empire
unless you are malicious toward their subjects

Re: Chapter 17

Posted: 14 Apr 2014 08:02
by Freakzilla
distrans wrote:you cant be an empire
unless you are malicious toward their subjects
:teasing-smokingcrack:

em·pire noun : a group of countries or regions that are controlled by one ruler or one goverment; especially : a group of countries ruled by an emperor or empress

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empire" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Re: Chapter 17

Posted: 28 Oct 2014 11:51
by georgiedenbro
The first paragraph of the chapter is the most striking to me:
Children of Dune wrote:Leto had come up in the night with Stilgar to the narrow ledge at the crest
of the low rock outcropping which Sietch Tabr called The Attendant. Under the
waning light of Second Moon, the ledge gave them a panoramic view
-- the Shield
Wall with Mount Idaho to the north, the Great Flat to the south and rolling
dunes eastward toward Habbanya Ridge. Winding dust, the aftermath of a storm,
hid the southern horizon. Moonlight frosted the rim of the Shield Wall.
After reading Messiah we can't help but remember Paul's identification with the moon, which began with his naming and persisted as the image of a falling moon being his descent from a height. And now we have a passage regarding the waning moon, Paul's time and influence fading, and with the fading of that legacy a panoramic view of the future becomes possible. This seems to suggest Leto's intention to go through with the third option he presents - to complete the waning of Paul's image so that he can see the 'panoramic' - the full view of the future's possibilities not limited by Paul's prescient vision.

Here's another amazing passage related to the first:
Children of Dune wrote: "So I surmised." The voice beside Leto came low and wary. The child had
sounded disturbingly of the father. It was a thing of forbidden magic which
touched a cord of revulsion in Stilgar. Fremen knew the terrors of possession.
Those found possessed were rightfully killed and their water cast upon the sand
lest it contaminate the tribal cistern. The dead should remain dead. It was
correct to find one's immortality in children, but children had no right to
assume too exact a shape from their past
.
As a side note, this passage about it being correct to find immortality through one's children is what I think is being expressed in the Preacher's words to Alia in chapter 16.

Regarding the "dead should remain dead" passage, this is a piece of deep wisdom from Fremen culture that I think Stilgar knows is a contradiction to his tendency to always think towards the past ways. We know from Dune that Stilgar isn't as married to 'the old ways' as some other Fremen are; he's more pragmatic and realistic. But this passage about the dead goes even further, and suggests that there's something evil about following Muad'Dib's edicts as if he were still alive, keeping his Empire going as if he was still in charge of it, and acting under a religion whose messiah is supposedly dead and gone. "Children had no right to assume too exact a shape from their past" is a beautiful literary image both for possession, but also for what happens when a people refuse to change and to live new lives with each generation. To be stuck in old ways and to live a repetition of the lives of one's ancestors is just the kind of stagnation and lack of movement and vitality that Paul railed against, and possession is, in a way, a metaphor for that; to not be one's own person living one's own life, and by extension to not leave a legacy that will allow the next generation to live their own lives, separate from yours.

This is Alia's major crime and the crime of any bureaucrat or tyrant: to want the way things are at present to stay that way forever and to refuse to make way for those to come.

Re: Chapter 17

Posted: 12 Apr 2022 17:09
by stilgarr
Freakzilla wrote: 03 Apr 2010 05:36 I think FH really shines in CoD.
I can only agree. I'm reading CoD currently so haven't finished all the 6 books yet. Still I have this feeling that I'm more "into it" with this book than the previous two. I can't explain it but so far I really enjoy reading CoD. This chapter was great I loved the dialogue between Stilgar and Leto. The last line made me chuckle at first but it also showed how much Arrakis as we have known it has changed. I must also say I love the character development of Stilgar. He was first the friend, then he became a follower and now he becomes a sceptic.

Re: Chapter 17

Posted: 28 Apr 2022 20:32
by Freakzilla
You'll cry about it later