Dune: Why Become A Worm?

hi guys it's me quinn and as always if you appreciate my content consider hitting the like button it's the only way the youtube algorithm really notices me hi guys it's quinn again and today we're going to discuss a topic that people bring up to me a lot and even people that have read the entire dune saga a lot of people are kind of fuzzy on this so we're going to talk about the metamorphosis of paul atreides's son later the second and the ramifications of it uh the personal ramifications of it specifically and the reasons behind it and also the way it happened and how he was able to do this so to understand it we have to start with the bitty jesuit the order of women that have been secretly manipulating the bloodlines of various people in the dune universe for thousands of years so they've been in jesuit have extreme control over their internal chemistry they can control their internal chemistry down to a molecular level they can remove poisons they can convert substances into other substances within their body so they have this extreme control and paul atreides was trained in the vinnie jesuit way because his mother was a beni jesuit and she was attempting to produce the quizets had iraq by having him and training him in the vinnie jesuit way now paul's children lato angonema because of their genes which were manipulated by the benny jesuit in addition to the spice heavy diet that their mother was on during the pregnancy were preborn um and the book children of dune is largely about the ramifications of someone being pre-born and how they struggle against the multitude of lives that live within them because when someone is pre-born they are born with the memories of all of their ancestors so there's all of these other people that have lived in their mind so they don't really have a solid ground they don't really have a solid basis for personality they're not a person themselves and so often what happens is what the benny jesuit have named abomination and this is when one of the inner lives becomes the dominant mind in this person and it's usually it's usually a malignant mind it's usually like a crazed mind for instance spoiler alert paul's sister aaliyah who is also pre-born in the book children of dune succumbs to abomination and she is possessed by the ego memory of the baron who is spoiler alert her grandfather she is he's the grandfather of paul and leah in case you didn't know that and so she succumbs to that so throughout children of dune you have lato and gennima recognizing the fact that their aunt has been possessed by the baron and wondering if they too can avoid becoming eventually possessed by some ego memory within their own mind now because of the fact that they are pre-born these children are also born with the memories of their ancestors and so they're they've also inherited benny jesuit memories so like paul like their grandmother jessica they too possess the same internal control that benny jesuit possessed and that is crucial in how later the second was able to become what he became the warm god emperor so on arrakis there are creatures known as sand trout and they're basically these little creatures that basically swim around in the sand and insist water the sand trout are actually the proto life form of the sand worms so eventually a bunch of sand trout will become a single worm they kind of come together and become a worm eventually it's part of its life cycle so later the second because of his mini jesuit inherited abilities is able to take the sand trout manipulate his own chemistry in such a way to allow a symbiotic relationship to form so he allowed the sand trout to basically fuse to him and become a part of his body now in the early stages of this it was more like a sand trout skin think if you're a fan of comics the symbiote from venom it was more of a skin and as the millennia went on the metamorphosis continued and he became more worm-like now that's the how now let's move on to the why and a lot of people know the basic why which is because to save humanity he did it to save humanity but why was this the way now the basic reason is because this was the only way to live 4 000 years and to be able to see his plans through essentially because lato like paula tradies was prescient and arguably his prescience was even clearer than paul etrey's especially once he took on the sand trout skin so later like his father paul obviously saw that humanity was headed for an extinction event and not just an extinction event a devastating painful cruel extinction event and he needed to live long enough to see that his plan to board it would actually be seen through and the fact that he was on arrakis and that he would be in a worm body also added to this because the worms of arrakis are central to the imperium right so the spice the guild navigators need needed to navigate you can't travel without spice plenty of people throughout the imperium were addicted to spice and spice withdrawals were deadly so spice is very important therefore the worms are very important because they're kind of at the center of all human events so later takes this being which is at the center of all human events and makes it into a god so it really is still at the center of all human events and iraq is is still at the center of all human events not because it's the place where spice is produced because in the distant futures another spoiler alert it's no longer the place where spice is produced because it's terraformed but it's still the center of all human events because that's now where the worm god lives the last worm now of course the worm in the form of shyhalud was already a god to the fremen but lato took this kind of aesthetic and brought it to essentially the masses um and enforced the worship so laketoe was essentially harnessing the spiritual force of something that was once purely an economic thing mostly and actually neil gaiman does a great job in his book american gods of discussing you know what is a god necessarily is it is a god you know thor or yahweh or can a god be an idea can a god be a system because if you look at the modern world people are worshiping traditional gods less and less and worshipping other things like social media or just like a fandom or conspiracy theory what is really holding people's attention what is really captivating them and what are they dedicating a spiritual amount of attention to what are they devoting themselves to what are they devoting their lives to and i say they but i mean we because i'm a human too obviously you know it's not it's not traditional gods anymore that's less and less so lato took so lato took something that wasn't divine in the traditional sense but was divine in this kind of nuisance this spice trade this worm and he took it in a different direction and roped it back around and said let me take it back to this original sense and show you how bad it is to worship anything and show you how bad it is to be dependent on anything i'm gonna take this thing that doesn't speak and i'm gonna give it a voice and i'm gonna show you it's true horror so that's why lato did what he did now let's talk about the actual cost to him so because he does this he is denied a life of his own an actual human existence of his own he has access to all of these other all of these other inner lives within his mind but he can never have a human experience himself with his own body uh the the sand trout skin rejects water he can't moisture is like acid to him so he can't have a lover he doesn't have a penis and yes that's discussed in the books too um he can't really have human intimacy and he also has to appear as a god as something that is far above humanity so he can't really like express any form of humanity openly and as the years go on he gradually becomes less and less human he's simultaneously the most human and the least human at the same time because he has all these inner lives and he has this intimate deep understanding of human humanity and what it is to be human but he can never ever experience it firsthand and he's tortured because of it it's tragic i mean god ever of dune is straight up a tragedy so i think i covered everything that i wanted to cover in this video make sure you like and subscribe for more quince ideas and if you have any more questions about the lore of dune or questions about the lore of other science fiction series leave them in the comment section below and if another if enough people ask the same question or if i'm intrigued enough by the question i might make a video on the topic thank you so much for watching by the way i totally make graphic novels and if you want to support me in this channel then you can totally buy one off my website thank you so much [Music] you

Channel: Quinn's Ideas

Views: 883,258

Keywords: Dune, Lore, Explained, God Emperor, Leto II, Science Fiction, Melange, Spice, Emperor, Worm, Ruler, Paul's Son

Id: ai9X0xYHuZ0

Length: 11min 49sec (709 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 20 2022