Dune Flashcards
Context
1960s America
- post-war baby booms
- America’s political situation
- influenced by oregon dunes
- ideological division - eastern communism v western democratic capitalism
Regress from technology - thinking machines
“Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind”
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them”
Hawat’s characterisation as Mentat
“The natural human’s an animal without logic. Your projection of logic to all affairs is unnatural, but suffered to continue for its usefulness”
Significance of ecology on Arrakis
“God creased Arrakis to train the faithful”
“The highest function of ecology is understanding consequences”
Form - nonlinear, princess Irulan’s historic introductions
“It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be.”
“Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere”
“A man snared by Destiny… what is a son but an extension of the father”
Juxtaposition - fate and choice
“Infected with terrible purpose”
“The day the flesh shapes and the flesh the day shapes”
Symbol of the Mentat
“The natural human’s an animal without knowledge. Your projection of logic to all affairs is unnatural, but suffered to continue for its usefulness”
Bene Gesserit breeding program - Kwisatz Haderach
“They were all caught up in the need of their race to renew its scattered inheritance, to cross and mingle and infuse their bloodlines in a great new pooling of genes… the ancient way… jihad”
Jessica’s disobedience
“If only she’d borne us a girl as she was ordered to!”
Motif of gom jabbar
“A human would remain the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove the threat to his kind”
Corruption of religion to achieve power
“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way”
Politics - BG
“Power’s a two-edged sword… how easy for her to shape a human tool to thrust into an enemy’s vitals… we truly exist only to serve”
“That which submits rules”
Juxtaposition house harkonnen v atriedes
“There is no escape we pay for the violence of our ancestors”
Motif of spice
“He who controls the spice controls the universe”
