That so, we could ask: What about HoD and Ch:D then? Just milking the previous success KJA-style? Or simply completely unrelated stories?Freakzilla wrote:I don't think the goings on in HoD had anything to do with the GP, which Leto made sure was established before his division.
Having lately re-read Ch:D, as opposed to simply going through GEoD as i tend to over and over again, i came to wonder... Why? One of the many possible takes on it is that Leto II by Taraza's time is "an older model" like the GEoD Duncan. Thus the whole Matres+Many Faces+Jews+no-no-no-ship+whathaveyou in Ch:D would simply be beyond Leto II. It would be more than He had gambled for. This view would be reflected for example in:
Not wanting to sound dismissive, but i think this line of reasoning has nothing to give us. Even by this point Leto's Diaries were not completely understood, at least not to the point of been seen as having one straightforward reading. Not only that, much of the current state-of-affairs was just too much his direct doing, as in Honored Matres = Fish Speakers. And finally, from GEoD to HoD we have 1500 years, which is HALF of Leto's age, so i pretty much guess that to His point of view that would not exactly amount to an eternity.Lionel Horsepackage wrote:thereby killing off all but the one worm they transported to Chapterhouse. In doing this, they destroyed the majority of the prescient hold Leto had, which was still locking humanity into just one path, the Golden Path.
Back to basics, trying to find some baseline definitions upon which to agree, we have Freak again:
Well said, and something i would usually subscribe to, but... That being what i originally intended to say... After rereading Ch:D this just does not seem to fit. I say so because, throughout the first 1/3 of Ch:D, FH is very didactically telling us that we must NOT follow the Matres approach. He gives us a chapter where Odrade goes on and on about the illusion in the feeling of possessing something, directly followed by another chapter where he showcases how much the Gran HM is bound to her possessions. Then the same, focusing on prejudices, and so on.Freakzilla wrote:Blasphemy! The Golden Path was the survival of humanity, even in the form of Honored Matres if that was how it turned out.
So, even if in a purely plot-oriented analysis we can say that Ch:D has nothing to do with the GP -- and even that sounds thin, to me -- even then in light of the structure of the book i believe we must take it as a furthering of the GP.
I was finally motivated to come forward and again try to present my case by this guy:
I would add: A vision in accord with Frank's. In fact, if you take the GP as getting rid of heroes and gods and "final authorities" then not only Ch:D makes much more sense, fitting with GEoD, we also fit GEoD with Dune itself, with a main theme and it's developments.Aquila ka-Hecate wrote:My take on it is this: Tar is a heretic to the BG mainline. She has a vision in accord with Leto's, that of humanity finally freeing itself from heros, gods and emperors to such an extent that they will never be bound again.
In this light, i advance that Ch:D is an even better "twilight of idols", a better dethroning of the hero, than GEoD or even Dune itself. In Dune Paul tries to be the one to avoid feudalism and fails. In GEoD Leto tries to be this guy, but acknowledges that the attempt itself is bound to fail, in Ch:D Odrade does not try to but succeeds.
We go from Paul that was a tide of destruction, to Leto that was the stilling of the tides, to Odrade that was swimming in the tides.
A final point. Why i think that the GP=Scattering argument does not stand even purely in plot. In Ch:D we see the BG, in their not-finest moment, facing a dire lack of resources, make their own scattering, and if it was not as grand as Leto's it was enough that they had no idea whatsoever about what did go on with those people. Second, they did have no idea what happened with those people, and wondered about it, and knew and faced the fact that it was a reasonable backup plan but was much more a gamble than an actual plan (as in Odrade's musings about this). Third, the next so-big-nothing-looks-bigger-than character we have in the Chronicles, namely Marty and Daniel, they don't seem to be running at all, they seem like the archetype of the non-scattering people, two old people living by the fields. Fourth, the people returning from the Scattering we see are not like Siona, which Leto worked hard and long to create, but instead they are like the Fish Speakers, which to Leto were just a handy tool but not really his goal. And finally, one of the crucial pieces of whatever would be Dune 7, and therefore FH's in-story "future", is Sheeana, which is in-our-faces said to be Siona 2.0.