After watching Dune 2 movie, I had to decided to read the Dune book. Inspired by the comments online that recommend to not stop at the first book, I continued and read till fourth part. Now, I have come to the conclusion that it is a good idea to stop at the first book. There are several reasons for my frustation which I elaborate below.

The message “Dangers of charismatic leader” is not in the book

I was inspired to pick up the book when I saw an interview of Frank Herbert, telling he wrote the Dune books to convey the message of be aware of charismatic leaders. The readers say that you have read till the second part till you get the message. Many argue that Paul is the villain infact. But after reading the second part, I don’t get that message at all. People argue that Paul is the charismatic leader who caused Jihad leading to 60 billion deaths. Here are some of the facts in the book, which don’t mean that:

1) Paul is not responsible for the Jihad.

And Paul saw how futile were any efforts of his to change any smallest bit of this. He had thought to oppose the jihad within himself**, but the **jihad would be.** His legions would rage out from Arrakis **even without him**. They needed only the legend he already had become. He had shown them the way, given them mastery even over the Guild which must have the spice to exist. A sense of failure pervaded him, and he saw through it that Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen had slipped out of the torn uniform, stripped down to a fighting girdle with a mail core. This is the climax, Paul thought. From here, the future will open, the clouds part onto a kind of glory. **And if I die here, they’ll say I sacrificed myself that my spirit might lead them. And if I live, they’ll say nothing can oppose Muad’Dib.

Firstly, if you are god and leader of a certain group, how can you they NOT listen to you. Just before, he had convinced Fremen, that he would not kill Stilgar and he didn’t follow Fremen tradition. And he can’t convince them to NOT go for war? And what happened to the warning of destroying sandworm cycle? That won’t hold any more?

Suppose you let go these arguments. If Fremen would carry out the Jihad irrespective of he lives or dies, how is Paul villian or anti-hero in this case? When you ask this question on reddit(TODO-ref), they respond telling Paul through his prescience had seen 2 paths - Jihad and he dying. So instead of he dying, he chose Jihad to avenge his father’s death, which is selfish. Several times in the book before, they mention that prescience was many times incomplete. Secondly, the alternative was Arrakis being made to prison planet in hands of Harkonnens.

“I said something like this,” the Baron said. “ ‘The Emperor knows a certain amount of killing has always been an arm of business.’ I was referring to our work force losses. Then I said something about considering another solution to the Arrakeen problem and I said the Emperor’s prison planet inspired me to emulate him.”

If Herbert had considered giving this message, he did a bad job!

Dune part 2 ending

If Paul arrested the ones who were planning to kill him, why would he bring them to Chani’s birth endangering his children.

He had summoned odd companions for this journey, she thought—Bijaz, the Tleilaxu dwarf; the ghola, Hayt, who might be Duncan Idaho’s revenant; Edric, the Guild Steersman-Ambassador; Gains Helen Mohiam, the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother he so obviously hated; Lichna, Otheym’s strange daughter, who seemed unable to move beyond the watchful eyes of guards

Half of the above people don’t want Paul to be the emperor and were plotting to kill him. When Chani asks Paul why, there is as usual vague words

Why such a strange mixture of companions?

“We have forgotten,” Paul had said in response to her question, “that the word ‘company’ originally meant traveling companions. We are a company.” “But what value are they?” “There!” he’d said, turning his frightful sockets toward her. “We’ve lost that clear, single-note of living. If it cannot be bottled, beaten, pointed or hoarded, we give it no value.”

Hurt, she’d said: “That’s not what I meant.” “Ahhh, dearest one,” he’d said, soothing, “we are so money-rich and so life-poor. I am evil, obstinate, stupid …” “You are not!” “That, too, is true. But my hands are blue with time. I think … I think I tried to invent life, not realising it’d already been invented.” And he’d touched her abdomen to feel the new life there.

Part 1 shows Paul as a guy who is both mentally and physically well trained to handle such situations. And such a well trained emperor now makes dumb decisions of bring his all enemies together in the open at his child’s birth when he is emotionally weak?

There is another part which I didn’t like about the ending. Paul becomes fully blind, yet gets his vision from newly born son. Wasn’t this a sci-fi book? When did this magical phenomenon of transfer of sensory signals come in? I had a tough time already accepting the dominant role of prescience in a sci-fi novel and this transfer of vision added to the frustation.

Dune part 3 relatively good

The third one was relatively a better book. It chronicles adventures of the Paul’s children. At this point, I had given up on considering this book as sci-fi. A sandtrouth fusing with a human? With the mindset that you are not reading a sci-fi book reduces the frustation by a lot. The book ends with Leto becoming ruler. Obviously, I proceeded to the next part to know what the Golden path is?

Dune part 4 - the nail in the coffin

Dune fans call it the Gom Jabbar of Dune series. There are several problems with it.

  1. A lot of the people face trouble getting across long ambiguous musing of Lord Leto.
  2. In the near 600 page long book mostly filled with vague sentences you don’t explain what the Golden Path is, when other characters Moneo and Siona know it. Ambiguity in fiction writing is good because it helps reader think of multiple interpretations. But deliberately not explaining what Golden path is explicitly force readers to read the further books.

If Moneo and Siona know what the golden path is and saw a way humanity could get extinct, why don’t they explain to Duncan and ask him to join forces. The online interpretations again mess up several things.

Why did Leto commit suicide in the end? Many say, he didn’t commit suicide, Siona killed her. But we see a couple of times Leto refusing Lasguns and air protection via ornithopters. People say, Leto did this to bond Siona and Duncan together. Have you tried explaining Golden Path to Siona and Duncan that their genes will help save humanity so it is important for them to breed. He tells that before just before he dies.

I prefer to understand Golden Path as the plan to save humanity by breeding a human whose actions are not visible to orcale. There are a added a couple of meanings which I feel are totally messy!

a) Remove spice addiction

b) Force humanity to migrate to further stars

c) embedd a message in humanity that they don’t want to be under a ruler

(a) is the most reasonable among them. But after Leto dies and as he professes sandworms are back, wouldn’t the spice addiction return? The point was to save humanity for de-addict only for this duration of 5000 years?

(b) and (c) don’t make sense to me. If Leto wanted humans to migrate, he could just send people to stars. He is the God Emperor. Who would say no to him. You can make a whole another planet just with Duncans. (c) is the least sensible because people never chose Leto as their ruler. He became the leader after Alia’s death and because he is Paul’s son. Tyrant leaders rise to power irrespective of people’s desire. Isn’t the current state of the world make it evident?

In short, the events seem to occur because author forced it to rather than they occuring as a logical consequence of past events.

Of course, after reading the above, fans will blame the “inattentive” or “dumb” reader. But the explanations on the internet generally make up for the parts we couldn’t understand. Here, the best answers after checking several reddit posts, still don’t give are not at all satisfying as I mentioned above. If someone comes up with a better answers for my questions mentioned above, I am ready to change my mind!