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Chapter 17
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
Paul and Bijaz leave Otheym’s, Paul protected by his force-field. Trembling with fear, Bijaz urges Paul to hurry. Suddenly, Stilgar appears from behind a door. Paul, simply enacting his vision of these moments, tells Stilgar about the dwarf, and Stilgar rushes away with Bijaz. Paul gives security guards orders to go to the house next to Otheym’s. Helicopters drone overhead.
It seems that Paul has foreseen this entire moment, because it does not happen to him; rather he acts it out, stepwise, already knowing how it goes. Therefore, it seems likely that this moment is one of the defining moments of his fate that Paul has dreaded and tried to delay for a long while.
Themes
Suddenly, someone screams “stone burner!” Fulfilling his vision, Paul shields his face with his arm. Otheym’s house bursts into flames. People flee, throwing themselves on the ground. Paul knows that none of them can escape the radiation issuing from the fire. People complain that they will go blind, and someone assures them that the Tleilaxu will sell them eyes. Paul—who knows that stone burners can sometimes burn to the cores of planets—tells everyone to stay down and that Stilgar will be back with help. Someone screams that they can’t see.
The main danger of the stone burner is that it can make a person blind. For most people, this is frightening because they have one kind of sight available to them. For Paul, he had seen and dreaded this moment because of its threat to his human vision, comparably blind to his prescience. Paul fears being confined to his prescience alone—he fears when his life will become only anticipation for the future.
Themes
Paul watches buildings crumble into the fire. He feels the reverberations from the stone burner die beneath him and rises to his feet. As he looks around, his eye sight fades to black. He recalls his prescient vision of these moments to see what’s around him. He tells everyone that help is coming and says that he is the Muad’Dib. Amid everyone’s blind confusion, Paul watches Stilgar approach with his prescience.
Paul no longer has the power to distinguish the present from the future; he now exists entirely within the fate his prescience has shown him, so he has no other option but to live out his dreaded future, unable to see anything except what will happen. In this way, the loss of his human sight is the loss of a kind of freedom.
Themes
Stilgar runs up to Paul and looks into his ruined eyes with despair. Paul gives orders for the guards to help the people who were closest to the fire. He then touches Stilgar’s tears, and assures him that though his body his blind, he still has his prescience; he lives in the “world beyond” and it is now the same as this one. Stilgar says they must hide Paul’s blindness, but Paul says not to hide it from anyone. In keeping with Fremen custom, Paul orders none of the people blinded by the fire to be abandoned in the desert; he orders them to be fitted with new eyes.
Paul attempts to compromise between Fremen customs and his own mercy. To get around the Fremen order of what to do with the blind, Paul asserts that other kinds of sight—prescience and technological eyes—count. In this modern universe, the various kinds of vision challenge the meaning of “sight.” Is sight the usual ability to see only the present, or is it the ability to see what is beyond the present?
Themes
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Paul leaves Stilgar in charge and goes to one of the helicopters, able to see every moment. People exclaim that Paul recognizes them even though his eyes are ruined. In the helicopter, Paul discusses the stone burner with a weapons specialist. The stone burner—which used atomic fuel–would arouse ancient fears. Paul instructs the weapon specialist to discover where the stone burner was made. He then orders another guard to call Chani and tell her he will be with her soon. He can feel fear in the air around him.
The destructiveness of the stone burner on an atomic level disrupts the relative peace that has reigned since Paul assumed power. It arouses an “ancient” fear of danger. Having foreseen this moment, Paul goes through the motions of handling the collapse of his safe and trusted Imperium.
Themes
