Part 1: The Bene Gesserit and misogyny I want to analyze the concept and execution of the Bene Gesserit from a feminist lens. If you think this is stupid and not worth thinking about, do yourself a favor and just skip this part. But i would love it if it made you think about my thoughts (: First I want to say that I think for a fantasy book of 1965 written by a man the book is quite revolutionary in its depiction of women. Still, we lived and live in a patriarchy and Frank Herbert ultimately was a man. The Bene Gesserit are an organization of women that are trained in a special way that gives them incredible control over their body and even the power to make people obey them. They are good fighters, politically involved and have great influence all across the entirety of space. They have been selectively “breeding” specific people from specific bloodlines for thousands of years. Oftentimes they themselves “breed”, as in the Bene Gesserit are the mothers. From what I understand only bene gesserit can provide royal heirs. One can buy? request? to be sent one. They do this all for a long time goal - to achieve the birth of the Kwisatz Haderach, a male Bene Gesserit. Normally a man cannot survive the Bene Gesserit training, except for him. And this is the core of my issue: this group of powerful women ultimately revolves around a man. It’s not just that he’s the only man who can survive the training, he will be capable of MORE than the female Bene Gesserit. They can only tap into the female side of the prescience, but the kwisatz hadarach can tap into both the male AND female side. If it was just that the kwisatz haderach was a male Bene Gesserit and that gave him different abilities that are special because he's the only one to have them, because he can provide a different perspective and skill set that complements the female Bene gesserit, this would be different. If the bene gesserit didn't revolve around the creation of a man, it would be different. This would truly show the power of women, it would mean men are just simply too weak to be Bene gesserit and still keep the kwisatz haderach as exceptional without diminishing women. But ultimately, what does this symbolize and say? A group of powerful women that only serve for a the creation of a man? A man who bests them and is better at what they can do, the ONLY man who can do it? Truly, I hate that Frank Herbert did this. I love the Bene gesserit, they are so mysterious and morally grey. Frank Herbert created this powerful group of women just to make them end up basically tamed and subjugated by a man. He put them on a pedestal just to make a man knock them off of it. Their strength in relation to normal men but weakness in relation to the male Bene gesserit is nothing more than a power fantasy. He created an exaggerated version of traditionally female traits: They are extremely emotionally intelligent, capable to read miniscule expressions and in result almost reading minds. They can (if strong enough) tell truth from lie. Their ability to give birth is used as a political tool. The Bene Gesserit are not viewed as admirable, they are called witches and either despised or feared. E.g. count harkonnen didn’t want a bene gesserit wife because he doesn’t trust them. Thufir Hawat mistrusted Jessica. While they have many skills, the most important one seems to be that of any woman: to give birth. Just the concept alone simultaneously fetishizes and degrades women. But then comes the Appendix III and it gives us a very clear framing on how the author views them. It’s basically just a rage fest against them and how stupid and ignorant they were for not kissing Paul's feet when he appeared. Even though they were right! They just didn't recognize it was Paul. In addition: Lady Jessica is the Bene gesserit we see the most of. She is a really difficult case (from the feminist lens). It's exceptional how much importance she, as a female character, has. Not only because she is so present and capable, but also because she's a mother. And she isn't just reduced to being Paul's mother and used as an emotional prop, like mother's often are in media. Neither is she shown to be a perfect self sacrificing woman. She has her own goals and training Paul itself was a selfish thing she did. She risked his life! Not saying she was wrong, but it shows that she isn't the kind of fetishized mother trope. And yet, all her motivations revolve around a man. As the book goes on she loses her own goals and ambitions. And what even happened with her and Leto. She was… sold to him? And fell in love with him? And according to the reverend mother Jessica gave birth to a son primarily because Leto wanted one!! And only secondly because she wanted to create the kwisatz haderach. An appendix states that Jessica did it for a reason she doesn't know herself. Either way, it's clear that the author didn't write it as an ambitious decision. For all the different cultures the author put into the book, it’s weird that they ALL are so patriarchal and male-centered. The only powerful and influential organization of women is the Bene Gesserit and they are male centered too. Their motto literally is “We only exist to serve”. This organization then is framed as foolish and dumb and the protagonist looks down on them. Jessica, in contrast, is portrayed as a good bene gesserit. Because while the bene gesserit are male centered with the kwisatz haderach, they don’t obey any man. Jessica, though, gave Leto the son he wished and with this did the right thing. <spoiler> Even as the book goes on and she becomes the reverend mother, she never uses her power to do anything, instead she does everything Paul wants and everything for him. The more she becomes a soft, doting mother instead of an ambitious bene gesserit, the more she is rewarded. Only then do Gurney Halleck and Thufir Hawat recognize she isn’t the traitor. </spoiler> No woman has real agency and no women really dares oppose a man. The wives are all loving and yes hubby. Only the Bene Gesserit are ambitious and they are witches and portrayed as stupid. Generally, the world of dune isn't really egalitarian, at least in the way that women are treated differently. At one point Leto tells Jessica that her worries are “the thoughts of a woman”. This can be read in two ways - Leto is a very positive character and his and Jessica's relationship is almost idolized. That he so casually disregards her worries because she's a woman is quite misogynist. On the other hand, her worries are correct and Leto is the idiot for not heeding them. There's display of prostitution, slavery and the Bene gesserit are viewed as witches by many. Overall it seems the only “strong” women are either Bene gesserit or in highly spiritual positions. And all of them in one way or another center around a man. The fremen too, are divided into the men fighting and the women and children hiding away in the sietches. The women work there, though. But there's also the custom of men having multiple wives and if you kill a man then you inherit his wife 😬😬😬 <spoiler> Harah basically begs Paul to take her as wife because she’s so old </spoiler> Overall, there’s clear gender roles: men fight and provide, while women rear children and are seen as property of men. If you want to have influence as a woman you have to be a super duper special Bene Gesserit “witch” or in a high spiritual position of power. Dune isn’t misogynist in the sense that it says all women suck and men are so much better. It’s misogynist in the sense that it attributes different strengths to men and women and that even for the strengths women have, there will be a man who is better at that too. The entire world centers around men and there is no single woman whose life doesn’t revolve around men. If a woman is ambitious she is punished and if she is docile and dotes on her man, she is rewarded. Dune is feminist in the sense that it acknowledges women have certain strengths in the same way christianity does. In the same way as Virgin Mary is idolized as the one pure woman who birthed Jesus, Jessica is idolized as the one pure Bene Gesserit who threw away her ambitions for a man (first Leto, then Paul) and birthed the messiah. For its time the book is revolutionary, but calling Dune anything other than misogynist is nothing but naivete and ignorance. Part 2: the movie adaptation As I watched the movie before I read the book I find it really interesting to look at how well an adaptation was done. Surprisingly, I think it did a well job! Although I was surprised to find out that the two movies are just the first book. Of course the book goes way more into detail but overall it's a good adaptation. The movie streamlined the many POVs into a more singular narrative. This added more tension as you didn't know everyone's thoughts. Some plotlines were deleted or condensed but I think that was a good decision. I don't feel like much important was left out, instead it prevented the story from dragging. Regarding the female characters, the movies improved A LOT. Some things I criticized about the Bene Gesserit don't happen in the movie. Jessica is much more driven and less lovesick puppy for Leto. Chani also is a proper character. If you expect Chani to be like in the movies, sorry but she is reduced to Paul's little housewife more or less 😬 Unexpectedly, the conflict between Paul and Jessica is both bigger and smaller. <spoiler> Paul very directly points out that his mother is his enemy, but then that goes nowhere. In the movie he doesn’t say it as outright, but Jessica puts much more pressure on him to “go south” and drink the water of life which Paul resists against as long as he can. Instead Paul thinks of it himself and drinks it out of his own volition. Jessica rather doesn’t seem that happy when she discovers Paul is indeed the Kwisatz Haderach. The whole conflict where Jessica doesn’t think Chani isn't fit to be Paul’s wife doesn’t even exist in the movies. But Jessica changes her mind about that anyway. There is no time skip so Alia isn't born yet. Leto II isn't born and doesn't die like he does in the book. Alia not being born is neutral I'd say. Instead of her it's Paul himself who kills Count Harkonnen but I don't think that's particularly important. Other than that she didn't do much of importance and she can easily be added later. Leto II was completely unnecessary and unsettling. The whole Jessica-is-the-traitor storyline was removed. I hated it in the book and it bore me to no end to read Thufir hawat hate on jessica. Especially since it lead nowhere. </spoiler> The atmosphere and scenery is perfect. I feel like the creators of the movie saw Herbert's vision and idea for the characters and properly developed them. All the changes imo ADD to the movies. Part 3: the actual book review (finally lol) 3/10 - 1,5/5 I honestly don't know if I would've finished the book, had I not watched the movies before. It took me over a month to read this and I read like two or three books alongside (wouldn't recommend, it just prolongs the suffering this is). The book wasn't all bad but it certainly wasn't the masterpiece it's hailed as. I rarely read books by men nowadays because I'm so tired of misogyny (enough women have internalized misogyny already). I should've known better than believing a man on reddit that Frank herbert was totally a feminist and admired women 🙄 Having finished the book I can appreciate it more but reading it was not a fun experience. -Writing- The book has an omniscient narrator, so in a single chapter we sometimes jump from one character to another and back in two sentences. I love books with unusual narratives so that made me quite excited in the beginning but after finishing the book I can say I didn't like it. And I don't think that's because I don't like this kind of narrator but because I don't like it here. It just made the storyline unnecessarily complex and took away ANY tension. The chapters already start with a quote of sorts from Princess Irulan that basically tells you what's going to happen in the chapter. So jumping into everyone's head on top just makes it really boring. You already know how the story is going to end and now you also know what's going to happen in the chapter. There's barely anything that is surprising. Having watched the movies just made it even worse. If you use an omniscient narrtar I think you have to add something to replace the tension. The narrator has to be fun or the thoughts of the characters especially interesting or add melodrama. The narrator is so detached from the characters that it was really hard to relate to the characters or really understand them. It's not even a charming or interesting narrator, it's just “a is thinking this and b is thinking this and c…”. It didn't even add that much, I rarely cared much about the newly provided information or characterization. What I hated was the “A-h-h-h". Initially I thought it was supposed to repeated, so like a laugh in this case but as it went on I noticed it maybe is more of an Ahhhhh. I just hate it 😭 maybe that's how it was written back then but i don't want to see that ever again. The prose was… ugh hard to say. I don't know if it was because I'm not a native speaker and read the book and english + it's older. But the sentences were so convoluted and boring to read. -Characters- This is one of the most disappointing parts of the book for me. I was especially interested in reading the book because I loved Paul's progression in the movies (I love that character archetype for some reason). I thought it would be even better in the book because you could get much more of his inner world and properly see his change bit by bit. But no, it's LESS compelling than in the movies. <spoiler> In the movies you obviously see much less of Paul's thoughts but that made it almost better. In both Paul starts off being a pretty innocent young boy with occasional visions of the future. Then his father dies and he gets a heightened spice intake that starts off his change. He sees the jihad in the future and wants to prevent it by all costs. Now comes another thing that really disappointed me. Like I explained in the movie section, Jessica is much less of a factor in Paul's development. In the movie the conflict between Paul's rejection of the jihad and his gradual change is manifested in his conflict with Jessica. While he initially blames her for his change, same as in the movie, and says she's his enemy and doesn't know it, after that there is ZERO of that conflict between them, it's all internal for Paul. That makes it way less compelling. She's his enemy and… it leads nowhere. He doesn't change his behavior towards her or do anything. He never mentions it again. Right from the start he is different from his father in that he cares less about people. E.g. the reason he didn't kill Jamis quickly wasn't like his mother said because he never killed someone, all he thought about was the missing shield and how he had to retrain his reflexes. Paul never was a good or kind person, the only change in him was that he slowly abandoned his father's ideals. Whenever the noble atreides attitude was mentioned, it was in relation to his father. I'm not saying he is a bad person, but he has always been arrogant and calculating. The kindest thing about him is that he genuinely wants to liberate the Fremen. After the timeskip he is shown to be much more violent and willing to sacrifice people, but even that doesn't feel like a progression to me, he wasn't in the same position of power before. Even after drinking the water of life there isn't a significant change. Only during the final fight he is suddenly like yeah i can't evade the jihad, alright then. Even if he just realizes the inevitability then, he doesn't have an emotional reaction to it. It's just like that and that's it. </spoiler> Jessica is extremely tame in comparison to the movie. She isn't really driven by anything other than her love for Leto and Paul. In the first part she still does things, like stand off against Thufir Hawat. Her protecting Paul and thinking strategically was cool too. She was a mid character I'd say. She is very interesting and her conflict between loving Leto + Paul and her education as Bene Gesserit + her mission has a lot of potential but it's not really explored. While she does a lot of cool things in the beginning, after she becomes <spoiler> reverend mother </spoiler> she just does everything Paul wants. Chani is a massive letdown. I would say book and movie Chani are two entirely different people. <spoiler> Unlike in the movies, where Chani and Paul slowly get to know each other and their relationship is being developed organically, they embrace each other and cry together after talking twice and then there's a two year time skip and she had a baby. HE WAS 15!!!! In the end he was 18 but that's still so young and the child was not a newborn. Chani's age isn't mentioned but she won't be much older than him. THAT IS SO WEIRD. That child doesn't even appear. For a while I thought Paul never had seen him. And then the child dies offscreen and Paul pulls the “i can't grieve now" and when he sees Chani he tells her the baby can't be replaced but he will give her more. Wtf 😭😭 </spoiler> Spoiler for the appendix/afterword. Don't read the afterword if you don't want to be spoiled for the following books btw. <spoiler> but then in the afterword Leto II is mentioned doing something in the following books, so is he actually dead???? Or did they actually have a different baby and call him Leto II? I honestly don't know what I want less. Having them have this baby so randomly and die off immediately is so unnecessary but on the other hand a plot twist of him actually being alive is as well. I don't care!!! I've never seen him on page. </spoiler> My favorite character probably is Kynes. He was cool. All the other characters idgaf about. Except for Thufir Hawat. <spoiler> I was so happy when he died, that fuckass was so weirdly antagonistic against Jessica even though she did nothing and tried her best to prove herself. The most valuable and smartest mentat and bro fell for an elementary school scheme 😭😭 all just because he hated the bene gesserit so much. </spoiler> -Worldbuilding- This is the sad thing - the world is so cool! Arrakis already is pretty interesting and every time we learned about a new part of their lifestyle and survival I loved it. The ecological talk sometimes was a bit dry but I still liked it. The entire world with the space is even cooler. All the different planets and the bits about the luteranian jihad was really interesting. Sadly the appendixes give you the most insight, not the book themselves. The one about the first kynes and the other about the religions were super interesting. The more I think about the world and the concepts in it, the more I like it. People living in an inhabitable desert world without rain or open water sources by using every last and little drop of water and resources. How this impacts their culture and behavior. The idea of changing a planet through slow human intervention (we are doing this with climate change but on a faster rate). That's so interesting! The past war on machines and what it means for this society to be highly advanced. Bene gesserit and mentats are two sides of extremely enhanced people. How relevant this makes eugenics in the way the bene gesserit practice it. Someone explained that mentats are developed to be able to compute like computers. That's so cool! But all of this is very hard to see and enjoy when the story and characters are so dry and boring. While I enjoy having to work out things for myself, many things are barely explained and even finishing the book I didn't understand all things. E.g. the connection between having no machines and the mentats. That war is mentioned in one sentence and the capabilities of a mentat are never really explained. Just oh, they're so smart and develop strategies. This is the same for many things. I don't want to be handheld through a lore dump but you have to make the world visible and understandable to a reader. Sometimes I feel like there are classics that are held in high regard because they are hard to understand so people either think they must be good because they didn't understand them or because they worked so hard to understand them. But a book should never be hard to read or understand. -Plot & Pacing- The book is divided into multiple parts. Initially I thought I just had to get to when <spoiler> Leto died </spoiler> and that it would get interesting then. Arrakeen was so oppressive and boring, everyone just talking about boring shit, nothing happening, no interesting world, just boring. It did get better afterwards but it never quite caught me. It was always a bit meh. Many plotlines were unncessary and boring. Later on we sometimes see what's happening for character xyz and having finished the book I can confidently say we didn't need to know. There are storylines that are set up and seem to be important but then they lead nowhere. The book is 600 pages long and if you think about it, not much happens. <spoiler> The Atreides are called to Arrakis/Dune where they will replace their rival family, the Harkonnens. On Arrakis there is an assassination attempt on Paul, which he survives. Turns out there is a traitor amongst them, the doctor Yueh, so the Harkonnens arrive with disguised imperial troops and capture the city. Leto kills himself in an attempt to take count harkonnen with him and paul and jessica manage fleeing with Yuehs help. Duncan Idaho sacrifices himself to save them and Kynes is captured and later left to die. Jessica and Paul meet a group of Fremen and convince them to take them to their sietch. Jamis challenges Paul to a duel and Paul kills him. In the sietch Jessica becomes reverend mother. 2y time skip. Paul has a child with Chani, his sister Alia is born. Alia has the memories of all reverend mothers + Jessica so she's an adult in a childs body. Paul meets Gurney Halleck again. Arrakis is surrounded by guild ships and the 20 houses. Paul and the Fremen attack Arrakeen and the Emperor's base. During the attack it's revealed that Paul's child has been killed and his sister was kidnapped. Alia kills count harkonnen. The emperor and Paul meet and the emperor wants to betray and kill him. Thufir Hawat dies of poison. Paul and Feyd-Rautha fight. Paul wins and wants to marry Irulan so he can be emperor. </spoiler> The book is simply so long because there are so many POVs and everything is extremely convoluted. There probably are things that seem pointless to me but have some reason but I feel like the author just… lost the plot. -Conclusion- I can see why the book was so revolutionary and influential on the sci-fi genre. It deserves to be appreciated for that. But we don't need to kid ourselves that this is some masterpiece. This is like people saying LotR is the best fantasy ever. I love lotr and grew up with it but I can admit the books are a bit boring. Dune is the same, except I don't have the nostalgia. When an author spends their lifetime crafting a world and story oftentimes they start missing the forest for the trees. Reading Frank Herbert’s son’s afterword is only confirming my feelings. I see this in how he throws you into the world with so little explanation, how meaningless storylines are kept in the book because they mean something to the author. He loved the world he created and seems to have gotten lost in it. I will read the next books if I can motivate myself to because I have them at home and want to see how some things will be developed. Watch the movies instead, less time, more fun and better characters. Can't believe I'm saying this.

Absolut Brilliant. coming of age trifft Messias Story. Vorlage für Star Wars.

“Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear’s path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” This book is probably not for everyone but it’s for those who like science fiction and discover new worlds. I loved the story but needed some time to get used to the tons of made-up terms from this world. There are Well-developed characters with interesting personalities I really fell in love with. Sometimes it’s a bit dragging but despite that I enjoyed it very much. ——————————— So I just read it again because of the movie and hell, this book deserves far more than just 5 stars. When I read it the first time it was quite hard for me to understand everything because english is not my first language but after reading it the second time many things made a lot more sense. Its just so damn brilliant. Dunes world is fascinating and huge and it’s breathtaking and I can’t waiiiit to see the story on a big screen. I just hope they don’t ruin the book because boyyyyy I love it so f***ing much.

I have so so so much respect for the story of Dune and I couldn’t be happier about the fact that there are many more books to explore in the Dune universe

3.5