Dune: Book 2, Part 9 Summary & Analysis

The epigraph from Princess Irulan’s text “Private Reflections on Muad’Dib” reflects on the nature of Muad’Dib’s gift of foresight. She wonders how much of prediction is reading the set future and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the prediction. Does a prophet read the future or does he see a “line of weakness” that he can “shatter with words or decisions.” Irulan concludes that this weighty question remains unanswered.

Paul and Jessica are still surrounded by hostile Fremen on the top of a rocky outcrop. Mother and son tense for battle as they hear a Fremen give the command to “Get their water” in the common language. Through her Bene Gesserit training, Jessica can understand their indigenous language as Chakobsa and deduces that the Fremen are holding back as they consider whether the two strangers are might be the ones they have apparently been searching for. She tries to control their leader using the Voice, but he is too well-trained and mentally guarded to obey.

The Fremen leader reveals himself as Stilgar, the individual Fremen that Paul met through Duncan Idaho during one of Duke Leto’s staff meetings in Arrakeen. Stilgar acknowledges that Paul and Jessica made a brave crossing by traversing the open sands with the threat of sandworms. A Fremen called Jamis continually urges Stilgar that the Fremen should kill Paul and Jessica and take their water—this is law for “Ones who cannot live with the desert.”

Stilgar decides he will not kill Paul because Liet-Kynes has ordered the Fremen to find the young Duke. Stilgar also knows that Paul may be Lisan al-Gaib, the Fremen’s prophesized messiah. However, Stilgar believes Jessica’s death and reclaimed water is worth more to his Fremen community than she is alive. He tries to explain to Jessica that this is “nothing personal,” it must be done “in the general interest.” All the while Jamis continues to urge Stilgar that both strangers must be killed according to desert law.

Jessica reads the dangerous situation and pretends to slump to the ground. As Stilgar approaches her to kill her with his knife, she catches him by surprise by disarming him and holding him powerless against the rocks. Paul has anticipated his mother’s attack and sprints for cover in the rocks, disarming a Fremen who tries to block him. With the Fremen’s projectile weapon he quietly climbs the rock face to try and gain height on the Fremen, to better protect his mother while remaining safe.

The Fremen soldiers send projectiles at Paul and approach Jessica warily. Stilgar yells at them to stop, recognizing that his life is in the hands of the very capable fighter who has rendered him defenceless with her hands. He asks her why she didn’t tell him that she was “a weirding woman and a fighter.” The Fremen leader is awed by Jessica’s combat skills and decides that if she can beat a strong Fremen commander, then Jessica is “worth ten times your weight in water” alive and teaching the rest of the Fremen her skills.

Stilgar has to command his Fremen troops to fall back again, hurling colorful insults at their hotheaded approaches. He warns off a young woman called Chani who is stealthily trying to approach Paul at his hiding place, calling her a “spawn of a lizard” to which she curses at. However, she listens to her leader and pulls back.

Stilgar offers Jessica and Paul a safe place in his community if Jessica will teach them the “weirding way.” When she asks how she can trust him, the Fremen notes that their culture’s word is law—and because he is a leader, his people’s word is bonded to his. He reminds her of his hatred for the Harkonnens and reiterates his offer of support to her. Jessica accepts his proposition.

Lady Jessica knows that not all of Stilgar’s men are convinced they should offer her and Paul sanctuary. She calculates that Fremen culture was implanted with Bene Gesserit legends many generations ago and plays on these myths and prophecies to demonstrate that she and Paul are beings of great power. The Fremen are impressed yet also uneasy to learn that she is Bene Gesserit herself. When she speaks of the gom jabbar, she knows she has “struck to the heart of them.”

Paul disarms Jamis who has tried to overpower him despite Stilgar’s clear orders. Jessica gives the all clear and Paul emerges from his hiding place, coming face to face with the Fremen girl from earlier. She is pointing a projectile weapon at him and laughingly reveals that she would not have let him harm any of her companions. The young woman reveals that she is Chani, Liet-Kynes’s daughter, and Paul is shocked to recognizes that she is also the girl from his dreams on Caladan. Her face is the same, but the setting they meet in is different.

Chani offers to lead him down the rocks, teasingly chiding Paul that he chose the most difficult path to climb up and was “as noisy as a shai-hulud in a rage.” She moves gracefully down the rock face, and Paul is glad that it is dark so no one can see him blushing. He is still amazed at meeting the young woman from his dreams and thinks that she is “like a touch of destiny.”

Before the group leaves for Stilgar’s sietch (community gathering space), he gives them each a kerchief that will identify them as Stilgar’s sietch members in case they are separated. He also instructs Chani to look after the “child-man,” meaning Paul, and keep him out of trouble. Chani takes great delight in teasing Paul further, but also takes her job seriously in ensuring he does not compromise the safety of the group as they travel to the sietch. Jessica, who is exhausted, focuses on keeping up with the troops and also considers the military discipline with which the Fremen move. She is thrilled that they may be able to inspire the Fremen to support Paul in his cause to claim back his rights for House Atreides.