Ahira's Hangar

Quote:Many have marked the speed with which Maud’Dib learned the necessities of Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this speed. For the others, we can say that Maud’Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic truth that he could learn. It is shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Maud’Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson. – From ‘The Humanity of Maud’Dib’ by the Princess Irulan.

A short chapter this, but one that reminds us of something we probably rarely think about. Or at least, I rarely think about it.

But first, as is my wont, let us dwell for a moment on the little introductory quote. The quote that hints that Paul Atreides will become such a figure of history that books will be written about him. About his very humanity.

We know that the Bene Gesserit teach how to learn. And we know that Paul has received BG training from his mother, contrary to doctrine (although not contrary to the sense that the Reverend Mother earlier praised in Jessica).

And the quote carries an important reminder to us that experience is learning. Certainly I believe that every experience can be a learning tool, if only we know how to learn from it.

The chapter opens with Paul pretending to be asleep. Filled with excitement, he has faked taking his pill from Yueh, and now plans to get out on his own, exploring this new environment.

Already he has learned the…moral ambiguity that can be so helpful, and the ancient maxim, “it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission.”

Immediately our attention is drawn to the room. A room designed to entrance a young teenager, with secret panels, hidden controls, hints of things that boys love, like the ornithopter thrust bar for a door handle.

And this is the reminder I was talking about. The easily forgotten fact that Paulo Atreides is a boy. Scarce more than a child, and yet already, by necessity, adept at the intrigue of politics.

We also learn two other important facts in this brief paragraph. Arrakis was a botanical desert testing station, (stocked with what he calls ‘terranic’, i.e. originating from Terra, or earth, species), and interestingly, that the filmbook he studied carried a mnemonic pulse, apparently to embed the information. Easy learning in other words.

Almost as soon as Paul rises from the bed, the headboard of his bed folds down onto the spot where he had been sleeping, (perhaps it would have trapped him?), and freezing into immobility, he sees a hunter-seeker, a well-known assassination tool, slip out from the recess behind it.

A small remote-controlled killer designed to chew up nerve channels to an organ. His deeply instilled training comes to the fore with facts about the device, and we can spend a moment pondering the type of life that these children of the royal blood must live. Trained from infancy to detect and avoid threats to their lives, this is a bloody and brutal society it seems.

Keeping still, he reviews what he knows about it, and understands that he must grab and immobilise it.

Suddenly another door to his room opens with a knock, and the Shadout Mapes enters to summon Paul to his father. The hunter-seeker goes right for her, and as it passes, his trained reflexes drive his hand to grasp it, smashing its nose against the the door plate.

Mapes recognises the threat, and, more readily than Paul it seems, grasps the implications not only of the device, but of his rescue of her.

Here perhaps, we see a hint of the innate nobility of the Atreides. Paul, to all intents and purposes, doesn’t seem to have even considered allowing it to take her, although she understood that possibility before all others.

Ordering her to inform Hawats men, we see the other side of the Atreides as well. He wonders whether this creature could have guided it. Not this woman, or this person, or this fremen, but this creature. That almost unconscious view of either women, (as MW suggests) or simply lower classes, the “inferior” as somehow less than human. A theme that I believe runs strongly through the book.

It seems that human rights, equality have not survived mankinds move to the stars in this universe.

Mapes is indebted, and shares warning with him of a traitor, incidentally mentioning the great seriousness with which the Fremen treat their debts, be they “black debts or white debts.”

Gripping the shattered seeker still, Paul sets off to find his mother, looking for what Mapes called the “weirding room.”

--A ____________________________________

A sense of the sardonic preserves a man from believing in his own pretensions. -The Sayings Of Maud'Dib<i></i>

Human rights do not seem to exist at all in the Duniverse, do they?

You can see how well trained Paul is here. He does not panic. He stays in control of himself both emotionally and physically. He immediately knows what the hunter seeker is, and how dangerous it is. And his physical training shows when he grabs the bloody thing out of the air. The only people I personally know who could do something like that are wrestlers or other martial artists who are trained to do hand fighting. And all of this from someone we would consider to be an older child.

I like how his instinctive move is to protect the person coming in through the door. But yes, his thinking of the Mapes woman as a "creature" is more than a bit odd.

I do not think that being a person of common birth in the Duniverse would be a good thing. But the noble born do not have very good lives, either, with the constant threat of assassination. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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I think we can certainly say that Paul was indeed trained in martial arts.

And yes, a good demonstration of that training. Perhaps there was nothing noble about the impulse to "save" Mapes. Perhaps it was merely the training recognising the opportunity to seize the hunter-seeker. I don't know. I like to think not though.

That training has a flip-side though, which becomes obvious in the next chapter, and which I'll discuss when we get to it.

And no, good point Duchy. No human rights as we know them, or so it seems. Might makes right here.

And for all the dangers of noble birth, I think I'd take it over a common one anyday.

--A

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A sense of the sardonic preserves a man from believing in his own pretensions. -The Sayings Of Maud'Dib<i></i>

Maybe from Paul's point of view, at that moment the Shadout Mapes's strangeness (her blue eyes, her emaciated Fremen flesh) looked so alien to him that he could only register her as a "creature" rather than as man or woman.

But, yes, I think it does indicate the paternalistic attitude that the Atreides (or any House) has towards the lower class: common folk exist to serve the royals, nothing more - just like the vassals of ancient feudal society. The royals will protect their servants from harm in return for, well, lifelong servitude. Nice bargain, I suppose, if you're willing as a servant to humiliate yourself in front of your masters every day. (Hey, wait a minute, isn't that what we do all the time in our 9-to-5 jobs?)

However, I also like to think that Paul had some altruistic impulse when he prevented the hunter-seeker from killing the Shadout Mapes. Maybe a lesser royal would have just let the thing kill her. <i></i>

I could definately see the Harkonnen just letting the thing kill her as she walks in through the door... ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Yeah, me too.

A good point about her strangeness though MW. This is, IIRC, the first time he has actually seen a Fremen at all, and to his eyes, she probably looked wild and "uncivillised."

--A ____________________________________

A sense of the sardonic preserves a man from believing in his own pretensions. -The Sayings Of Maud'Dib<i></i>