Dune

Dune is a novel concerned with the power of prophecy. Visions of the future are littered throughout the novel’s cultures, with many believing that a messiah-type figure will arrive to lead them to glory. The Kwisatz Haderach, Lisan al-Gaib, and the Mahdi are all such messianic figures in various prophecies, many of which are seemingly realized in the rise of Paul Atreides. Paul embraces his role as the foretold leader of the Fremen and the product of generations of Bene Gesserit breeding, anointing himself the Kwisatz Haderach and then becoming Emperor, seemingly satisfying the terms of the prophecy. However, Paul’s role as a prophesied leader reveals the inauthentic nature of such divinations in Dune. The Fremen prophecy is a deliberately manufactured cultural artifact, inserted into the Fremen religion by the Bene Gesserit. Meanwhile, the Bene Gesserit breeding program that is designed to produce the Kwisatz Haderach is not so much a prophecy as it is a eugenics program, which Jessica defies when she chooses to give birth to Paul. As a result, Paul is not a supernatural product of a long-held authentic prophecy. Rather, the true power of prophecy is to lend credibility to the emergence of a powerful figure who has been deliberately trained and fabricated to satisfy the terms of a similarly manufactured prophecy.