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/lit/ - Literature

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6754911 No.6754911 [Reply] [Original]

In this thread you post what you think Dune is about (it's really not that hard to get it right). Prove that you understand that it's more than sand wars and not a total pleb.

>> No.6754946

>trying to narrow down Dune
Pleb detected

>> No.6754948

>>6754911
If this was /tv/ I'd say penises. But it isn't, so I'm obviously going to suggest penises AND the British North African campaign.

>> No.6754958

>>6754911
the importance of drugs in transhuman development

>> No.6754989

I'll bite.

It's "about" how society develops. Stripping away the plot elements yields a look at what Herbert believes to be an inherently utopian tendency of human society that is constantly constrained by conflict. To attain the utopian ideal requires something authoritarian, but that is doomed to fail since it simply fosters more conflict no matter how long it takes.

The plot elements that illustrate this most strongly are Paul and Leto II's plans. One is on a decades long timeframe and the other spans millenia. Paul recognizes the futility of what he can do and engages in it merely as a delay tactic, while Leto II thinks he was able to succeed. The series is incomplete so we don't know how it would've ultimately ended but Heretics and Chapterhouse seem to indicate that for all his prescience Leto II was still unable to devise a plan that fully accounts for the arbitrary designs of individuals within society.

There are subsidiary and tangential topics as well but the above is what I feel the book was "about." Happy to be educated or shown otherwise.

>> No.6755018

>>6754911
s[poiler]YUEH DIES[/spoiler]

>> No.6755032

>>6754911
Oil, drugs and colonialism, quite deep indeed.

>> No.6755035

i'll bite: it's basically about what is referred to in alchemy as the royal art. also spice equals mushrooms.

am i close?

>> No.6755392

it's an alternate history novel about a future where germans converted to islam instead of christianity

you know, like hitler wished

>> No.6755414

>>6754911
It's more that no one cares because it's genreshit.

>> No.6755853

>>6755018
nice meme. now stop.

>> No.6756012

>>6755018
>fucking up a spoiler tag that bad

>> No.6756018

Oil, politics, power, ecology, economics, drugs, technology, and social change

>> No.6756025
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6756025

>>6754911
Conservation.

>> No.6756161

Dune is about oil.

It's kind of like the civil war where peoe try to dance around the fact that it was about slavery.

>> No.6757289

Dune is about repackaging John Carter to trick readers into thinking that they're not reading pulp.

>> No.6757327

Dune is a white savior fantasy. White male goes to foreign country, joins the local populations, etc.

>> No.6757335

>>6755032
well, those are deeper topics than banalities like life or maturing. those are things that happened and affected reality for all of us at many levels, not abstract things the author could never actually fully grasp so he just uses his own limited interpretations.

>> No.6757370

>>6754911
It's Lawrence of Arabia in space, updated to reflect the politics of the Middle East oil boom.

>> No.6757392

>>6757335
>oil is a deeper topic than life
>drugs are less banal than the process of maturation
I'm willing to hear you out but please make it good.

>> No.6757509

>>6757392
Wow. Somebody can actually be arrogant in ignorance, why am I not surprised this is on /lit/. 'Cause it's actually full of yuppie faggots.

>> No.6757537

>>6757509
>yuppies are more concerned with questions about life and the human psyche than with oil and drugs
I remain willing to hear you out but I want you to make it gooder than you just did.

>> No.6757540

>>6757392
i was half joking. those are topics that are part of our history and understanding them should be a previous step before trying to understand things that go beyond the material world.
or not, nothing too serious.

>>6757509
and you're being arrogant without argumentation, not much better.

>>6757509

>> No.6757612

>>6757540
Half-joking as well. They can certainly be more complex topics, or at least oil and colonialism can, given their past and current strong influences on global development. Not sure about calling it deeper on account of that, but it's not like it matters whether one calls it that or not.

>> No.6758962
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6758962

>>6754911

Can you see beyond?

>> No.6759064

>>6754911
It is about sand wars. And it's damn good at that and would fall flat with any pretention of being something else.

Also a bit of
>>6757327
>>6757370
Though that's a good thing. We need more obvious white man's burden epics.

>> No.6759643

so many yuppie know-nothings on /lit/

>> No.6760894

There's a substance which makes long-distance travel possible, and which can only be mined from a desert inhabited by religious fanatics. How subtle of analogy.

>> No.6761485

Im about to read this shit. What should i expect? I thought it was a fantasy saga mad max style.

>> No.6761624

>>6754989
samefag here. no one wants to talk about my take on it? am i way off? am i so right everyone is speechless? something? anything? oh god please talk to me i'm so lonely

>> No.6761834

>>6761624

I think you are right anon

It's just that other people are posting with the intent of hoping to receive the psychological reward when someone replies to their half-joking post and so they don't care about serious posts

>>6761485
Expect Machavellian intrigue, ecology, futuristic feudalism, entheogens and hot hot brown pussy