Illustrations of Dune | Prologue: Paul is You

In this video and series we will broadly discuss Dune assuming you are already familiar with the story. While there are no specific spoilers discussed this time, the videos to follow are much more in depth. I highly recommend that you read Dune and its sequels for yourself but if you’ve only seen one of its many adaptations you should still be able to follow along.

As a side note, I will only be referencing the original books written by Frank Herbert, since I’m not familiar with the expanded series written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. 

It’s just not a Dune discussion until someone points out that Paul Atreides is the protagonist of Dune, but not the hero. So there, I’ve said it now. Fascism averted. With that out of the way, what exactly are we supposed to pull from Dune in order to not miss the point? As Frank Herbert puts it, “power attracts the corruptible.” You could draw a lot of conclusions from that but for our purposes there are two implications in particular I’d like to highlight that are integral to my analyses in the videos to follow.

Firstly and most obviously it implies those being attracted aren’t necessarily corrupt already, but rather corruptible. As the protagonist, Paul is the illustrative example: “You would follow Paul for all the right reasons. He was honest, trustworthy, loyal to his people - up to the point of giving his life for them, if they wanted it.” When the story begins Paul is only 15 years old. He has few friends and mostly spends time with his adult mentors, or alone. We learn with him about the vast imperium and its power structures, as well as the secret schemes that constantly roil beneath its surface. We push forward together with the same incomplete understanding, experience the same confusions and doubts. Far from villainous, Paul is relatable, and not just because he’s the protagonist but because Paul is you.

Likewise, the second implication I want to highlight is also you. By rewording the existing adage from “absolute power corrupts absolutely” to “power attracts the corruptible,” I believe Frank Herbert is making a key distinction. Power isn’t to blame for corruption because power as a concept isn’t alive and it can’t make decisions. Paul - which is to say you - can. It’s your responsibility to claim agency in your relationship to power because power corrupts and you are corruptible.

The goal of this series is to investigate Paul by way of his influences, to understand not just why he makes his decisions but also how he was guided to those decisions beforehand. Paul’s corruption throughout the course of Dune is complicated, a messy web of conflicting motives and desires. Manipulation is rampant from enemies and allies alike. It may seem like a daunting task to weed through the tangle of it, but Dune wouldn’t exist if the author didn’t have faith in us to learn what Paul could not.

In the next video we’ll talk more about the nature of power and influence and in the spirit of the Kwisatz Haderach we’ll do it by starting one generation early. But enough dad jokes, for now.