Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Dune, Substantive post

One thing I found particularly interesting about Dune was the use of themes we see in literature today that translate even 10,000 years into the future. Genetic and racial supremacy among the different feudal houses can be viewed as one of the defining atrocities of the 20th century and Herbert shows that they would still exist in a very distant future. The fact that characters in the book are either "human", meaning good, or "animal", meaning bad seems to want to establish one side of the fight as justified in their actions. These types of themes translate and go beyond the details of the plot and can be something with which the reader identifies with. Herbert is showing that, even in a universe where computers are no longer needed and the human mind is seemingly advanced beyond our modern day comprehension, people are still people and the same sort of issues and problem with humanity occur.

No comments: