Sandworms This, Bene Gesserit That, Something I Really Love About The Dune Books Is They Look You Dead

Sandworms this, Bene Gesserit that, something I really love about the Dune books is they look you dead in the eye and tell you how fucked up parents and children are.

A huge part of the Dune novel is about subtle workings of violence and resentment in the family. The way Jessica views Paul as her creature and posession and recoils in horror from the parts of him she can't control. The way Paul sees her as a source of both his strength and his deepest fears: She bore me; she trained me. She is my enemy. And in all this they still love each other. It's not the lack of love. It's the idea that birth and nurturing are inherently violent for both sides.

Just like with Duke Leto and his father. Just like with Jessica and Alia. And we see the same thing mirrored in the Harkonnens. The Baron abusing Feyd-Rautha while raising him and preparing him as his successor?? Fully aware the boy's rise to power will be his own death. The Baron himself as the book's main villain is a giant grotesque baby. Parenthood as existential horror.

The theme continues with Messiah where the birth of Leto II and Ghanima erases their parents. In Children of Dune Paul offers himself as sacrifice to the son he tried to kill and Chani nearly returns from the dead by possessing her daughter. Leto II and Ghanima are eldritch horrors trapped in child bodies. But even they come off as less cruel than Jessica in her final abandonment of both Paul and Alia. Leto II returns in God Emperor to claim humanity as his children, becoming both a god and a tyrant. Meanwhile his whole dead family lives inside his head and has to be kept from overpowering him at all times.

There is so much weird horror surrounding parents and children in the Dune books.

And I love that a lot of that found its way into Villeneuve's Jessica. That's who she is, that's why Rebecca Ferguson's performance is a horror performance even though it might not always serve the character. It captures that part of the books beautifully.