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Chapter 20
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
Uneasy from his talk with Bijaz, Hayt watches Alia leave her temple, flanked by guards. Alia enters the Keep, walking like someone haunted. Once, Hayt saw her in a white chastity garment and thought she looked at home in the city. Now, she looks fit for the desert. Hiding in the shadows, Hayt steps onto the balcony where Alia now stands. Not knowing Hayt is there, Alia watches a boy with a ball. She just took a huge dose of melange in hopes of penetrating the fog that lay over the future. She wants to know what Paul is seeing in his sightlessness.
To Hayt, Alia represents both the modern city and the ancient desert. When she wears a white garment, she is neat and pure and put together. In this scene, she looks wild and emotional, just like the natural state of the planet—the desert. In this picture, the city is the semblance of order that attempts to tame the wild chaotic nature of the state of nature.
Themes
A shadow moves, and Hayt appears. Alia feels that Hayt is both light and dark, “innocence under siege.” She addresses him as Duncan, and Hayt says that Duncan is dead. Alia notices black facets in Hayt’s metal eyes. Hayt asks if Alia is ill, and she wonders who is speaking: Duncan, or a Tleilaxu pawn; she feels there is something new and latent in him.
Just as Hayt perceived Alia as having two natures—pure and wild—Alia now perceives that Hayt has two natures, too. Both characters seem to teeter between two states of being, and realizing which of these states is their true identity seems to hold the story’s destiny.
Themes
Alia says that she is a Bene Gesserit, and she understands the importance of their breeding program. Her knuckles white from gripping the balcony railing, Alia says that the Bene Gesserit stumbled, and now wish to regain balance by taking a baby from either her or Chani. Hayt asks if Alia is pregnant. Alia whispers that she sees her child and then asks what Hayt sees with his eyes. Hayt says he sees what everyone sees. Feeling intertwined with the vision of time, Alia asks desperately why she can’t see the father of her child.
Just as Paul didn’t see that Chani is carrying twins, Alia cannot see who the father of her future child is. The absence of information about the birth of their children could suggest that the Guild’s prescience of the event is blocking Paul’s and Alia’s visions of their children. On the other hand, it could suggest that love and family create outcomes that prescience cannot show—that a certain hopeful blindness is at play when it comes to the fate of very human affairs.
Themes
Hayt says that the Bene Gesserit wish to mate Alia with Paul for the perfect genetic outcome. Alia wails, suddenly realizing the identity of the dark figure who has been in her dreams. Fearing suddenly for Alia’s life, Hayt demands to know how much melange she took. Alia looks out at the Shield Wall, watches it crumble in her vision, and then looks at Hayt’s face which ages and then becomes young again. Hayt says he will summon a doctor, but Alia insists on having the rest of her vision. Hayt asks what value the future is if she dies, and he pushes her gently inside.
This scene show how dangerous melange can be. Melange puts Alia in a state of heightened prescience, but it does so at the expense of her life and her happiness. Not only does her vision reveal information that torments her, but the high dose of melange itself is enough to kill her. In this way, the power of prescience is dependent on a dangerous tool that diminishes rather than improves a person’s life.
Themes
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As Hayt lays Alia on her bed, she mutters that there is no cause or effect. She feels that the bed is populated with multiples of her body and that the universe is slipping forward, backward, and sideways. She tells Hayt not to be afraid. Hayt wills that Alia won’t die, and Alia thinks to herself that Hayt loves her. A doctor slips a tube down Alia’s throat and says they got to her just in time. Hayt insists on staying with Alia, but the doctor says it would be “unseemly.” Alia commands Duncan to stay. She snaps at the doctor when he chastens her for consuming too much melange, saying she has a right to her visions.
Melange is like any addicting, life-threatening drug, and Alia’s stomach had to be pumped as with a drug overdose. This scene depicts prescience—the kind that accompanies a melange dose—as akin to the hallucinatory effects of a drug rather than a credible source of information.
Themes
The doctor leaves. Alia turns to Hayt, thinking that he is both danger and salvation. Alia’s eyes fill with tears, and she sees Paul standing in the center of time, holding its threads. She wonders if Paul strikes at Time out of hate. Alia cries, saying that she wanted to be able to love and be loved; she didn’t want to be part of history. Hayt assures Alia that she is loved. When Alia addresses Duncan, Hayt says not to call him that. Alia asks Duncan if he loves her. He says yes, and that he will do what is required of love and loyalty to her. Alia says that this makes him dangerous.
Alia bemoans that her position in life has cost her many human joys and experiences. Namely, she feels that her belonging to history excludes her from the experience of love. The image of Paul standing with the threads of Time in his hands is an image of attempted control that precludes love—an experience of self-sacrifice. In this way, the control of time and power is antagonistic to human experience and happiness.
Themes
Alia realizes what she missed in her vision: emotion, grief, and fear lurked behind her vision. She tells Hayt not to let her go, and Hayt urges her to sleep. Alia mutters that Paul is the bait in his own trap, and that he will lose everything; Paul is destroying himself, creating a universe in which he won’t permit himself to live, and it is too late. Her vision fades, and she hears the heartbeat of a baby not yet conceived.
Alia describes Paul’s empire as a creation that antagonizes its creator. In this illustration, the person in power is themselves a paradox. In trying to subjugate the universe, they end up trapping themselves. Therefore, an all-powerful person can’t exist: they will destroy themselves before they gain total power.
Themes
