Kaleff and Orlop (Harah's sons)


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famicommander
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Kaleff and Orlop (Harah's sons)

Post by famicommander »

Did anyone expect these characters to be a lot more significant the first time they read Dune?

I felt like the book made a big deal out of Paul taking them into his House, then they pretty much disappear from the story forever even when Harah features prominently. I always thought it would've been interesting to spend more time with Paul acting as a surrogate father to them but they just sort of wander out of the story, never to return.
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Re: Kaleff and Orlop (Harah's sons)

Post by Serkanner »

I always thought it would've been interesting to spend more time with Paul acting as a surrogate father
This comes very close to prequalite blasphemy. :lol:
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famicommander
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Re: Kaleff and Orlop (Harah's sons)

Post by famicommander »

I've never even read the prequels. I probably will some day because I'm a completionist idiot, but thus for the only B. Herbert/Anderson stuff I've read are a couple of their short stories and about 1/3 of Hunters of Dune.

I'm just saying that the first time I read the original novel, I got the impression that the characters would be more significant given how they're introduced. But then they don't really do anything ever again and I thought it was strange to introduce them at all, that being the cast.
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Re: Kaleff and Orlop (Harah's sons)

Post by Serkanner »

famicommander wrote:
I'm just saying that the first time I read the original novel, I got the impression that the characters would be more significant given how they're introduced.
But why? They are two little boys and in no way of any importance to the plot. It is this "need" to fill in what was deliberately left out by Frank which makes your comment smell of prequelite thinking.
"... the mystery of life isn't a problem to solve but a reality to experience."

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”

Sandrider: "Keith went to Bobo's for a weekend of drinking, watched some DVDs,
and wrote a Dune Novel."
famicommander
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Re: Kaleff and Orlop (Harah's sons)

Post by famicommander »

Serkanner wrote:
famicommander wrote:
I'm just saying that the first time I read the original novel, I got the impression that the characters would be more significant given how they're introduced.
But why? They are two little boys and in no way of any importance to the plot. It is this "need" to fill in what was deliberately left out by Frank which makes your comment smell of prequelite thinking.
Then why did he make them such a point of emphasis when they were introduced? It just felt like maybe there was more planned for them and then for whatever reason nothing ever happened. There are few characters that Frank introduced and then discarded so quickly.
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Re: Kaleff and Orlop (Harah's sons)

Post by Serkanner »

famicommander wrote:There are few characters that Frank introduced and then discarded so quickly.
You have to be kidding me.
"... the mystery of life isn't a problem to solve but a reality to experience."

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”

Sandrider: "Keith went to Bobo's for a weekend of drinking, watched some DVDs,
and wrote a Dune Novel."
famicommander
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Re: Kaleff and Orlop (Harah's sons)

Post by famicommander »

Serkanner wrote:
famicommander wrote:There are few characters that Frank introduced and then discarded so quickly.
You have to be kidding me.
No?

Are you so blind that you don't question Frank's thought process on anything you encounter while reading his books? I'm not saying I hope his goofball son and his idiot sidekick write a book about Kaleff and Orlopp, I'm saying that Frank's writing led me to believe those characters would be more important than they turned out to be.
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Re: Kaleff and Orlop (Harah's sons)

Post by Serkanner »

famicommander wrote:
Serkanner wrote:
famicommander wrote:There are few characters that Frank introduced and then discarded so quickly.
You have to be kidding me.
I'm saying that Frank's writing led me to believe those characters would be more important than they turned out to be.
And I didn't, deal with it. One rather important reason being: THEY HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FUCKING PLOT! They were not important in any way, so no, i didn't believe Frank had any other intentions with the two boys when I read it. Second reason: they are not the only characters discarded "quickly", and no, I am not going to name them because you can look it up yourself.
"... the mystery of life isn't a problem to solve but a reality to experience."

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”

Sandrider: "Keith went to Bobo's for a weekend of drinking, watched some DVDs,
and wrote a Dune Novel."
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Re: Kaleff and Orlop (Harah's sons)

Post by georgiedenbro »

famicommander wrote:
Serkanner wrote:
famicommander wrote: Then why did he make them such a point of emphasis when they were introduced? It just felt like maybe there was more planned for them and then for whatever reason nothing ever happened. There are few characters that Frank introduced and then discarded so quickly.
Assuming you give the author full credit, to correct question to ask is "in what way did the two boys serve the story exactly as they were intended to?"

Answer that, and you see what their function is within the story. I could give you my opinion, but it really doesn't matter. To be introduced, and then forgotten about, is not an accident, so you could ask yourself what function it serves to have two children lose their father than then be forgotten about.
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Re: Kaleff and Orlop (Harah's sons)

Post by Cpt. Aramsham »

OK, who pissed in Serkanner's coffee?

I'm not sure I'm prepared to give Frank Herbert "full credit" and assume that Dune is necessarily flawless in every way.

I think Frank did have a tendency to elaborately introduce things for the sake of the worldbuilding without really having any idea of what more to do with it, and therefore quietly forgetting about it as soon as their intro scene is over. For example, he makes a whole lot out of how secret and exclusive crysknives are, but as soon as Jessica gets one from the Shadout Mapes and Duke Leto returns the one they captured, we never hear anything more about it. Similarly, there's a big to-do about Paul's secret sietch name, but as soon as the naming is over the whole thing is more or less forgotten, and Herbert never even bothers to tell us the sietch names of any of the other Fremen.

I'd argue that Kaleff and Orlop fall into that same category: they're there to show off a particular facet of Fremen culture, but Frank didn't really have any idea what to do with them beyond that. (In fact, it raises the question of what happens to the wives and children of all the other Fremen who challenge Muad'Dib and are killed, but the book never considers this.) I guess you can call it deliberate, but I think that just throwing in a bunch of shit for color and because it's cool, without any greater significance or effort to tie it all together, amounts to a weakness in the composition.

One of the things that has been discussed around the movie adaptation is that Dune is a book in which a whole bunch of things happen, but few of them pay off; few of them are actually necessary for the story. For example the ornithopter trip out to the harvester that gets eaten by a worm: it's an iconic moment and an excuse for a lot of exposition, but it doesn't really have any significant repercussions for the rest of the story (beyond making Kynes more sympathetic to the Atreides, which is achieved more significantly in other scenes). If you had to streamline the script, you could easily cut it.

But Dune is made up to a very large extent of bits and pieces like that; everything that makes it special is in all these "unnecessary" details. That makes it hard to adapt, as Villeneuve has discussed, and has led to a film that some critics say fails to tie the story together, where not much seems to "really happen," so that it just feels like prologue and setup for the sequel even though it covers almost three quarters of the book.
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Re: Kaleff and Orlop (Harah's sons)

Post by georgiedenbro »

I don't agree at all that details such as you mention are unnecessary detail. The event of the missing ornithopter and Leto saving the men tells us several things of importance:

1) What kind of man Leto really is (so it establishes character, both for Leto and for Kynes).
2) That the Harkonnens clearly still have agents around - this is one of a few 'feeble' plots meant to make the Atreides think they're dealing with the real threat. The hunter-seeker is another.
3) It shows us first-hand how dangerous the worms are.
4) It helps establish how insignificant the Imperial and Harkonnen forces are compared to the might of the planet and its ecology; that with all their dominance over the universe, doing anything on Dune is still difficult and unreliable.

We don't need to ask how this scene pays off - the payoff is already built into the scene.

Regarding something less important to the story, about Harah's sons, I think it's enough of a payoff to note that Paul does not have the time or inclination to be able to focus on 'little stuff'. He doesn't get to have a domestic life; he doesn't get to mourn his father; he doesn't get to even have feelings about many things. He just has to follow through on what's needed and expected of him. The sons are just one facet of this, and don't individually have a payoff, but it's part of a larger pattern.
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Re: Kaleff and Orlop (Harah's sons)

Post by Cpt. Aramsham »

All of those things are already established elsewhere, though. That's my point: the chapter is inessential. If you cut it, the rest of the book would work just fine (with just a couple of slight alteration in dialogue in a couple of places).
georgiedenbro wrote:We don't need to ask how this scene pays off - the payoff is already built into the scene.
I feel this is kind of saying the same thing. It's an episode we value for its own sake, not for its role in the greater narrative. If Dune was a TV show, this would be a standalone ep.

I should correct myself slightly: there is a little bit of payoff, in that Gurney calls back to it towards the end when he chides Paul, "Your father would've been more concerned for the men he couldn't save." And it's also worth mentioning that the movie actually does make it a key event, by
making it the first time Paul is exposed to a large dose of spice, putting him in a trance.
Good movie scripts, so I've heard, are all about structure: making sure each scene is essential to the whole. That is not one of the book's strengths, so it takes some work and ingenuity to adapt.
georgiedenbro wrote:Regarding something less important to the story, about Harah's sons, I think it's enough of a payoff to note that Paul does not have the time or inclination to be able to focus on 'little stuff'. He doesn't get to have a domestic life; he doesn't get to mourn his father; he doesn't get to even have feelings about many things. He just has to follow through on what's needed and expected of him. The sons are just one facet of this, and don't individually have a payoff, but it's part of a larger pattern.
I feel that reading is a little generous.
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Re: Kaleff and Orlop (Harah's sons)

Post by georgiedenbro »

Well it's literally a plot point that Paul doesn't have the luxury to focus on immediate things around him, and must focus on the future. This is clear from the tent scene and onwards. But it also serves as a parallel to the greater prescient trap he ends up in, which is related to the nature of the oracle in the first place. So yes, I think all of these incidents of him flying through events at light speed without being able to stop and look around is directly part of how FH wrote the story. I mean, what about this amazing love story between him and Chani? We get it as a grand arc in the broad strokes, but in minute detail there is very little we get between them. I don't think this lack of a domestic life is an accident: he is always caught up in something bigger.
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Re: Kaleff and Orlop (Harah's sons)

Post by Freakzilla »

Holy sandtrout...

I think the importance of Harrah's kids was Paul establishing his place in the tribe, nothing more.
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Re: Kaleff and Orlop (Harah's sons)

Post by Serkanner »

Freakzilla wrote:Holy sandtrout...

I think the importance of Harrah's kids was Paul establishing his place in the tribe, nothing more.
Exactly. And I utterly despise the attitude we should learn more about the boys and it's a missed opportunity Frank didn't add more about them in the book(s); it is fucking prequelite thinking.
"... the mystery of life isn't a problem to solve but a reality to experience."

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”

Sandrider: "Keith went to Bobo's for a weekend of drinking, watched some DVDs,
and wrote a Dune Novel."
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