#dun3

This, I think, is the genius of Herbert's characterisation. As the crowds chant his name, we recall the version of Paul that we met at the beginning of the story, confused and vulnerable after being woken up by a stranger in his bedroom. We remember him crying over Jamis' death because he knew that they could have been friends. We remember him lashing out at his mother after he failed to grieve his father the way that he thinks he should. We remember his earnest puppy love for Chani and his respect for Stilgar and his kind treatment of Harah.

Underneath all the pomp and the mythology, he's still the boy that we grew to love, the one who identified with the little desert mouse and chose it for his name. As much as I question, on a deep and profound level, his decisions throughout the story, reading passages like this....

"The future has a way of talking to me. I can't see what's ahead."

ㅤㅤㅤ❛ — he possessed in large measure the mercurial temperament characteristic of fremen: he could turn from consoling an injured child as tenderly as arty woman in his sietch, to ruthlessly hunting an enemy's blood with his crysknife without a visible wrench. and he was equally skilled at both. ❜