65 pages • 2 hours read
Frank HerbertHeretics of Dune
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1984A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Change and Resistance to the Status Quo
The importance of transformations marks the Dune universe, from the Bene Gesserit’s spice agony ritual that transforms acolytes (Bene Gesserit Sisterhood trainees) into Reverend Mothers to the extreme metamorphosis of Leto II into a giant sandworm to save humankind. One of the central themes in Heretics of Dune is the need for the Bene Gesserit to change and alter their ingrained principles to survive and thrive. Such changes permit the widening of perspectives, the expansion of knowledge, and the challenge to the status quo that perpetuates inequalities and stifles individual autonomy.
The Bene Gesserit relies on spice precisely for its transformative properties, yet the ritual’s results are far from a radical change. The spice agony allows their acolytes to unlock millennia of Other Memories and exponentially expand their access to knowledge throughout the ages. However, such expansion remains limited to the Bene Gesserit’s controlled lineage of Reverend Mothers. Lucilla regards her Other Memories as capable of providing her with clues, but she acknowledges “their linear selectivity and confinement to the female side” (10). The ritual may broaden their perspective, but the points of view are all essentially from other Bene Gesserit who are often like-minded. Thus, the transformation of the spice agony does not necessarily signal change but rather a reiteration of the status quo.
One of the main conflicts in the novel is how the Bene Gesserit have become too stagnant in their principles, and their refusal to change indicates that they are on the path to irrelevance. In an urgent scene where Teg’s party must escape the no-globe, Lucilla proclaims, “We of the Sisterhood are noted for going into battle with only our skills as weapons [...] It diminishes us to change that pattern” (428). For Lucilla, to do something other than the prescribed Bene Gesserit behavior is seen as a weakness. She prides herself in her staunch obedience to tradition. In contrast, Leto II’s warning in his spice chamber calls out the Bene Gesserit’s insularity and accuses them of allying with “a dogmatic stink of [their] own creation” (441). Leto’s warning awakens Odrade to the necessity of change, and she gradually learns that she gains more independence in going against some of the Bene Gesserit’s expectations.
In the novel’s beginning, Odrade does very little to challenge the Bene Gesserit’s protocols. In her meeting with Taraza, she concedes that she will never be given full information on the ghola project. She comments, “There was an organizational rubric laid down by the original Bene Gesserit Chapter House, which had endured with only minor changes for millennia” (27). In this organizational hierarchy buttressed by time, Odrade simply accepts that her decisions are rarely of her own making. However, after encountering Leto’s chamber, Odrade comes to understand the importance of change, and she recognizes that this impetus is also in Taraza’s design. Taraza tells Odrade in their early meeting, “If we become institutionalized in our judgments, that’s a sure way to extinguish the Bene Gesserit” (20). To Taraza, it is in the Bene Gesserit’s best interest for the Reverend Mothers to challenge her and identify as “heretics.”
Taraza shares a similar message with Teg when she tells him, “By your belief in granular singularities, you deny all movement—evolutionary or devolutionary [...] But [the universe] moves of itself when you do not move. It evolves beyond you and is no longer accessible to you” (209). Like Leto II’s message, Taraza’s lesson instills change as the means to remain connected and relevant to the universe, whether the concept of progress accompanies it or not. Teg understands Taraza’s message, as her words are not that different from his perspective on military strategy. Teg believes, “Mobility is the key to military success [...] If you’re tied down in forts, even whole-planet forts, you are ultimately vulnerable” (34). Teg’s “signature” has always been “the unexpected,” and Odrade values unpredictability and uncontrolled change in her new role as Mother Superior.
The novel ends with future transformations, for better or worse. The single sandworm will transform into a sandtrout (the docile larval form of sandworms), and Chapter House will terraform into a desert. In contrast to the Bene Gesserit’s managed breeding program and “Stud Record,” Odrade reevaluates the Scattering as a liberating space of “[s]o many magnificent unknowns [...] Think of the uncounted genes out there! Think of the potential talents floating free in universes where they might be lost forever!” (29-30). At the novel’s end, even the much feared and unknown change that the Tleilaxu made in the Duncan ghola turns from being the Bene Gesserit’s threat to their asset.
The Critique of Religious Corruption
A consistent theme throughout the Dune Chronicles series is the role of religious corruption as an exercise of political power. For the priests of Rakis, the Church of the Divided God is less an organization based on faith and spirituality and more an institution to separate the haves from the have-nots. For the most devout believers, religion becomes a manipulative force that trades independent thinking for passivity and obedience.
With the Church of the Divided God, Herbert depicts how religion has infiltrated all the institutions of governance and has become a vehicle of oppression. The critique of organized religion is most notable in Sheeana’s distrust of the Rakian priests. She repeatedly refers to them as “bad” and considers them corrupt individuals who punish on a whim and vie for authority. She thinks, “Priests were men to be feared [...] Priests possessed ornithopters. Priests fed you to Shaitan for the slightest infraction or no infraction at all, for only priestly whims” (84). To Sheeana, religious authorities function as the elite class, an arbitrary judicial system, and the police force combined. The priests also represent an authoritarian rule in which dissenters are silenced or punished. Herbert describes Sheeana’s “test” in the sand as a familiar “standard punishment, a handy way to remove obstructionists from the populace or priesthood, or to pave the way for acquiring a new concubine. Never before, though, had they seen a lone child as victim” (86). In addition to their misogyny, the priests have no objections to killing a child, one of the most vulnerable members of their community. Decisions are based not on right or wrong but on what will reduce a threat to their authority.
The Rakian priests structure their religious organization and society as a hierarchy, in which competition and usurpation mirror the political rivalry of the Major Houses of the earlier novels. Murder, even within their ranks, is not uncommon for the Rakian priests, as Tuek has Dromind executed, and Stiros attempts to assassinate Tuek to place his family members in higher positions. Herbert highlights the hypocrisy of these men of God by describing their inner desires as not to serve a higher authority but to serve their ambitions. The priests were “[s]cions of old priestly families, [and] each carried in his heart the belief that matters would move better if he were sitting on Tuek’s bench” (87). Rather than be motivated by faith, the priests covet power and aspire for status, as emblemized in the High Priest having the “best” quarters.
Within this social hierarchy is Sheeana, who belongs to the class described as “the poorest dregs at the bottom of the Rakian heap” (83). Adversity in Sheeana’s community is the twin threat of “[p]overty and fear of priests” (83). Religious devotion in terms of worshiping the worms is secondary to survival. For Sheeana, “[h]er people believed in Shaitan first and Shai-hulud second. Worms were worms and often much worse” (83). Pragmatism, not prayer, is what keeps them alive.
One of the ironies of the Rakian priests’ veneration of Sheeana is that Sheeana is not a divine being. Her ability to ride the worms without maker hooks, Fremen tools used to ride sandworms, is not a miracle. Rather, it is an ability derived from her genetic lineage and the Dune universe’s metaphysics where a Fremen with just the right combination of Atreides genes can communicate with the pearl of Leto’s consciousness in the worm. Sheeana is no more a god than Leto II and Paul Atreides were. However, that she can inspire fear and obedience in her devotees demonstrates how eager religious followers are to credit extraordinary human efforts to a higher power. Adults are “groveling” and “bowed themselves backwards” in Sheeana’s presence (121). In contrast, Odrade knowingly sees her as the long-awaited product of their breeding program and as a petulant child needing discipline.
Religion is an institution that keeps people compliant under the guise of a higher purpose and authority. As in the series’ earlier novels, the Bene Gesserit have mastered religious manipulation to serve their agendas. Heretics of Dune begins with the plan to use Sheeana to revive the old religion, but as Taraza, Odrade, and Teg prove in the twist ending, their true design was to destroy Rakis and be rid of the cult of Leto II for good—perhaps just as Leto intended.
Love and Empathy as Vital Human Traits
In the world of the Bene Gesserit, love in all its forms is taboo and considered a weakness and a liability. The Sisterhood has long operated on the premise that strict control of one’s physical and emotional energies produces an extraordinary concentration of power and influence. However, even in the first novel, Dune, such stoicism and self-denial robs the Bene Gesserit of their desires and a sense of their humanity. Lady Jessica serves as the prime example of a Reverend Mother acting, if only momentarily, in her interests. For Odrade, an existence without love and empathy may not be worth fighting for.
The Bene Gesserit pride themselves on the precise control of their minds and bodies and the forceful suppression of emotions. Voice, imprinting, and their prana-Bindu training to control nerves and muscles all function as essential Bene Gesserit skills that they use to secure influence and direct political decisions. By contrast, love is “a very ancient force, which served its purpose in its day but no longer is essential for the survival of the species” (24). Odrade has been taught this lesson but still has childhood memories of affection with her foster parents. Going against convention, Odrade’s foster parents raised her with unrestrained love. The short passage that describes Odrade’s memory of the couple includes the words: “laughter,” “joy,” “not happy,” “sad-angry,” “too involved,” “frustrations,” “angry mood,” “worry,” “fear,” “resented,” “kissed,” “stroked,” and “whispered.” Herbert packs the paragraph with the spectrum of natural emotions to demonstrate how much the Bene Gesserit deprive themselves and others of genuine human sentiments. The Bene Gesserit considers Odrade’s feelings as “residual detritus” that must be “exorcised” (22), but Odrade admits that she is “reluctant to discard [the memory] into the well of rationality” (21). In choosing to hold onto all the feelings that the memory contains, Odrade maintains her sense of humanity and independence.
The question of humanity plays a large role in the Bene Gesserit’s breeding program, and their use of the agony box and the gom jabbar are ironic tests to prove a subject’s humanity. For the Bene Gesserit, withstanding or blocking out excruciating pain makes a person human. These tests are used to filter out any anomalies in their breeding program. Like Sheeana, Odrade went through the test in her youth and understood that she would be killed “if she flinched or cried out” (589). Although the test proved her “acceptable humanity” to the Sisterhood, Odrade argues that true pain comes from the repression and denial of love. Recalling the pain of the test, she remarks to herself, “How soft that passage seemed in comparison to the other pains!” (589). True humanity means feeling these emotions and responding to them. The Bene Gesserit forbids strong emotions like pain, hate, and love; in denying these emotions, the Sisterhood also denies their humanity.
Teg observes this lack of humanity in the Bene Gesserit and initially considers Odrade less human. He believes all Reverend Mothers are “removed from humanity” in their singular focus on manipulation (181). Odrade, however, disagrees with him and holds deeply to the belief that she has not lost her humanity. The fact that “his words pained her” served as evidence of her emotional response (183). Teg’s comment highlights Odrade’s central critique of the Bene Gesserit. She “still felt human, but his judgment of the Sisterhood could not be denied” (183). If Odrade is to bring the quality of life to herself and others, the Bene Gesserit must change. Lucilla learns this lesson when she explores Ysai for the first time and feels strong feelings of revulsion and hate. The experience unlocks the spectrum of emotions that she has repressed, and in feeling hatred, she cracks an unconscious window to dream about love and cradling warmth that brings her to tears.
Odrade’s ability to balance intellect and discipline with genuine compassion makes her one of the most human characters in the series’ universe. She empathizes with Duncan’s trauma in each iteration as a ghola, and she feels “a certain sympathy for Sheeana” (255), who must endure the strict Bene Gesserit training at such a young age. Odrade’s humanity is essential in the novel’s explorations of the tension between the quality of life and bare survival. Odrade is the necessary humanizing element that the Bene Gesserit lacks, and she is the key to their survival and vitality.
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By Frank Herbert
