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Chapter 15
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dune Messiah, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Power
Religion
Guilt and Longing
Fate and Choice
Summary
Analysis
One evening around sunset, Paul heads toward the Qizarate offices, wearing a stillsuit and limping to disguise himself. A protective shield surrounds him, and helicopters monitor his movements from above. Looking back, Paul glimpses a movement on his hidden balcony and guesses that Chani is watching the desert. Painfully, Paul remembers their parting: Chani could tell he was upset but incorrectly assumed he was afraid of danger; she didn’t know the horrible choice he had to make.
When Paul goes out into his city, he has to conceal himself in a stillsuit and even alter his movements so that nobody will recognize him. This shows how much his power has alienated Paul from a normal life. Since his city worships him as though he were a god, Paul doesn’t dare appear as the mere human that he is.
Themes
Paul enters the Qizarate offices. Bureaucratic signs hang from the walls. Recently, a new kind of “religious civil servant” has been developing, one who is business-oriented and prefers machines and statistics to human beings. Bells ring, signaling the start of an evening rite at Alia’s temple. Alia’s temple is weatherworn, giving it an ancient, traditional feel. Although Stilgar and Chani disapproved, Paul and his appointed guide had agreed to meet in Alia’s temple.
Religion’s manifestation on Dune shows how the spiritual ideals of sacrifice and progress are wrapped up with the hunger for power. Instead of attending to the health of human beings, the Qizarate seeks to advance the productivity and power of the world through technology, suggesting that religion is often a disguise for another motivation.
Themes
As Paul nears the temple, the crowd increases. People bump into him and repeatedly apologize. Ignoring them, Paul thinks about how much has changed since his childhood. He feels that no one action set him on the path he is now on, and he still believes that he could change the fate the path leads him to. The crowd enters the temple and grows silent. A black altar wood stands at the front of the temple, lit by glowing tubes. Black-robed religious servants sing a chant about how Alia protects the people from all dangers. Paul despises the pilgrims’ fanaticism but also envies their religious intent.
Paul feels upsettingly alienated from the people he rules. As their superior, he can see through their religious fanaticism and knows that it is a farce—he knows that he and Alia are not really gods. On the other hand, as a human being like everyone else, he envies the religious passion of the pilgrims and the purpose it gives them. Paul feels that blindness and powerlessness bring a person more happiness than power.
Themes
Feeling a hand on his arm, Paul turns to see a man grasping his knife as if to attack. Paul braces himself, but the man says the word that indicates he is Paul’s guide, Rasir. The crowd surges forward, chanting Alia’s name and thanking her for light, sustenance, and protection. Paul feels sick, forced to accept that Alia “the child witch” is growing older. Paul feels one with the crowd, but also isolated by a “personal sin.” He thinks of the immensity of the universe and wonders how one man can make this immensity “fit” everyone.
Deep down, Paul feels just as isolated as the pilgrims who seek religion to make them feel better. Like them, Paul feels the immensity of the universe. However, his “personal sin,” or his presumption that he could control the universe, alienates him from them. Instead of rising him above the crowds, Paul’s foolish pursuit of power only isolates him from a crowd with whom he is actually on the same level.
Themes
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Alia enters dressed in a yellow robe and the crowd hushes. Standing with the pilgrims and seeing Alia from their perspective, Paul doesn’t recognize his sister. Alia lifts a chalice (that Paul knows it is filled with melange) and says that in the beginning they were ignorant of the “Power” that exists in all places. The crowd chants that Power brings them joy and life. Although he knows firsthand the experience that Alia is undergoing, its mysteriousness fascinates him like everyone else. Alia sinks to her knees, and Paul suddenly feels he can see a present that his prescience usually conceals from him; he feels a beautiful rhythm that “no poet or artist” could reproduce.
Alia’s entire performance rests on the melange that fills the chalice. Melange heightens Alia’s ability to see the future, and therefore shrouds her in a prophetic state worthy of the pilgrims’ worship. Furthermore, the pilgrims are all vitally addicted to melange, and their dependence therefore strengthens their reverence for Alia, since she’s the person who can provide them with it. In this light, the sway that Alia holds over everyone is disingenuous, since it’s dependent on a manipulative, weaponized drug.
Themes
Alia’s amplified voice fills the temple, and Paul feels he is waiting for her to say something to him. Alia says that all things are beginnings, and that within all differences is unity. Paul is disappointed and feels that he didn’t hear what he wanted to hear. Everyone else seems restless, too. Alia asks who summons her, and pilgrims start going forward, asking for her help in their personal trials. Alia answers in riddles, saying that nothing is lost, that all things return in different forms, and that ends and beginnings are the same thing.
The language that Alia uses to bewitch the pilgrims and to assist with their trials is intentionally cryptic and full of riddles. This language tricks the pilgrims into believing that Alia is truly wise; they think she is speaking of matters too lofty and sublime for them to understand. In this way, language also helps promote the fallacy of religion on Dune.
Themes
The pilgrims mutter that Alia is in a “fierce mood.” Paul thinks to himself that Alia must know he is here. A pilgrim asks Alia how long Paul will rule. Alia says that the pilgrims are only alive because Paul rides “the worm of chaos” then disappears angrily into the curtains. As the religious servants pick back up their chant, Paul wonders what “track through the future” Alia had seen. Something different happened tonight. Paul moves toward the exit with the crowd, feeling that he has become a “non-being” that moves with a power beyond his control. He thinks he knows what Alia saw.
This scene reveals that Alia has not yet seen all of the future; tonight, she sees more than she has never seen before. When Paul is leaving her temple, he also seems to experience increased foresight, feeling that he is not moving out of freewill but rather fulfilling fate like a “non-being.” Paul and Alia’s heightened foresight suggests that Paul’s dreaded fate is coming closer and becoming less possible to evade.
Themes
