God Emperor of Dune

“Leto had found his accusation irritating, like a grain of sand in an eye. He held onto the remnants of his once-human self with a grimness which could not be denied, although irritation was the closest he could come to anger.”

Leto’s lost humanity becomes one of the pivotal themes that garners sympathy for his character. When the older Duncan accuses Leto of no longer being human, his reaction is a resigned irritation rather than anger. The simile of the “grain of sand in an eye” is a pun on Leto’s sandworm transformation, as his natural habitat is the desert. He has become so desensitized to insults to his humanity that they are minor nuisances, like sand to a sandworm. Leto has accepted his alienation and isolation from the rest of humanity, and this scene heightens the thrill Leto experiences when Hwi sees his human side as no one else does.

“All rebellions are ordinary and an ultimate bore. They are copied out of the same pattern, one much like another. The driving force is adrenalin addiction and the desire to gain personal power. All rebels are closet aristocrats. That’s why I can convert them so easily.”

Leto’s cynical view argues that patterns of domination repeat themselves and rebellions are banal because they do not represent any real change. Rebels are as corruptible as the forces they claim to depose. Leto relies on rebels as indicators of whether humanity is learning his lesson on tyranny, and his tone belies a frustration and disdain at the ease of his ability to corrupt rather than a boasting of his influence. Many of Leto’s admonitions will carry a similar tone, where he appears to bolster his authority while actively undermining it, and the dynamic makes him an unreliable narrator. Siona will disprove Leto’s theory of rebellions, as he intends, and help him achieve his goal of building a resistance to tyranny.

“Siona is fresh and precious. She is the new while I am a collection of the obsolete, a relic of the damned, of the lost and strayed. I am the waylaid pieces of history which sank out of sight in all of our pasts. Such an accumulation of riffraff has never before been imagined.”

The novel establishes early on Leto’s allegiance to Siona as the antithesis to his loathsome tyranny. Leto holds all his ancestors’ memories, yet his access is not a collection of past glories and grand narratives. Instead, he describes himself with a metaphor of detritus and considers himself both irrelevant and cursed. Siona offers the necessary renewal to keeping humanity on track, whereas Leto represents the “lost and strayed.” The two characters represent the larger dichotomies of life and death and the future and the past. Their differences highlight the novel’s theme of The Burden of the Past.

“The Butlerian Jihad tried to rid our universe of machines which simulate the mind of man. The Butlerians left armies in their wake and the Ixians still make questionable devices . . . for which I thank them. What is anathema? The motivation to ravage, no matter the instruments.”

The motif of dangerous technology casts a shadow over the novel, as the ancient scourge of machines during the Butlerian Jihad re-emerges as a future threat and the purpose for Leto’s Golden Path. Leto critiques the ban on thinking machines, since it does not prohibit military technology that has been equally destructive for humankind. The implicit irony of the ban is that humans object to machines that may threaten them yet are unperturbed when humans use technology to kill each other. The ban forestalls inventions solely on the premise that they mimic human intelligence, and Leto points out that the danger is not in the type of technology but in humanity’s “motivation to ravage.” What motivates people to destroy one another is where Leto sees the root of the problem, and his “enforced tranquility” is his method of quelling humanity’s proclivity for destruction.

“Idaho did not like the sound of fanaticism in this Friend’s voice, but he felt secure in the integrity of the Atreides. They could appear cynical and cruel to outsiders and enemies, but to their own people they were just and they were loyal. Above all else, the Atreides were loyal to their own.”

The latest Duncan ghola struggles to make sense of his new surroundings and uses his loyalty to the Atreides family to morally ground himself. Though he questions Leto’s manipulative methods of control, Duncan feels uncritical loyalty to the Atreides family and hostility toward their enemies. Herbert uses this aspect of Duncan’s character to illustrate the dangers of nationalism, as Duncan objects to Leto’s treatment of his own people but neglects to ask whether the Atreides’s treatment of those perceived as outsiders is just.

“A copy is worse than nothing.”

Siona is offended by Topri’s use of a crysknife replica in the “Showing” ceremony. In her view, the prop denigrates the Fremen rather than commemorates them. Siona acknowledges that seeing the copy invoked an inner recognition of her heritage’s former greatness. However, she is angry that the replicas are now mere commodities and have lost their original function as part of a living culture’s expression. Siona’s statement also reveals her strong convictions and weariness of compromise. She would rather have no crysknife at all than something that tarnishes its memory.

“To those who dare ask why I behave as I do, I say: With my memories, I can do nothing else. I am not a coward and once I was human.”

Leto explains in The Stolen Journals how his ancestral memories have exposed him to countless experiences of war and how those traumas have motivated him to follow the Golden Path. Leto claims he is no coward, as he has been on the very frontlines of all the horrific battles in history and has not turned away from his responsibility to enact change. Leto implies that what he has done is brave, as sacrificing his humanity to merge with a giant sandworm is something even his father refused. Leto’s reminder that he was once human elicits sympathy for his cause and reiterates that despite his monstrous form, he is not an enemy of humankind, but its most devoted ally and unspoken savior.

“‘For what do you hunger, Lord?’ Moneo ventured.

For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions.”

Leto measures the success of his actions in millennia and laments humanity’s poor and short-sighted decisions. His comment alludes to the disastrous consequences of terraforming Dune into a verdant planet, a solution hailed in Book One and subsequently determined to be the planet’s downfall by Book Three. Leto’s long reign allows him to institute changes in the human condition for the long-term goal of survival, and his perspective functions as an ecological warning about humans’ impact on the environment. The paradox of Leto’s intentions is that in privileging his actions for the long-term, he tolerates the suffering he causes in the present and overlooks the ethics of his breeding program. In his far-reaching perspective, humankind is just a mote in the infinite universe, and his longevity has made him desensitized and indifferent to the precious mortality of individual lives.

“Except for this last desert, my Sareer, the remodeling of Dune into verdant Arrakis has gone on remorselessly since the first days of my rule.

The influence of geography on history went mostly unrecognized, Leto thought. Humans tended to look more at the influence of history on geography.

Who owns this river passage? This verdant valley? This peninsula? This planet? None of us.”

Leto’s reflection on the disappearance of Dune’s ecosystem is the novel’s most overt statement on ecology and environmentalism. The Sareer, the planet’s last desert, is an artificial biome regulated by satellites and heat dishes which create a poor imitation of the original sand dunes. Dune’s geography produced the Fremen’s resilience and ingenuity as they learned to adapt to the hostile desert environment. Leto suggests that the planet’s geography taught the Fremen to be a formidable culture. The altered landscape may make Fremen lives may be easier, but they have lost their dynamism and independence. Leto’s comment that no one owns the planet and its natural features alludes to Arrakis’s history of colonialism and the exploitation of its natural resource, spice. The Fremen were able to remain a resilient culture and resist domination during their years of foreign occupation because they learned about survival from the desert.

“‘In the wrong hands,’ Leto said, ‘monolithic centralized power is a dangerous and volatile instrument.’”

Duncan struggles to understand the despotism of Leto’s reign and his masquerade of ruling as a god. To Leto, all forms of leadership under a monolithic government can be corrupt, and it is only a matter of finding the least offensive party to rule. He considers himself the better option over the Bene Gesserits, the Ixians, the Tleilaxu, and the Harkonnens, yet he cannot promise to rule with the ideals of a good leader. Leto acknowledges that his manipulation of religion is obscene and that he violates people’s rights. By claiming that he is the lesser evil, Leto implies that the structures of government need to change and not just the person designated as the leader.

“‘The Baron ate whole planets, Duncan. What could be worse than that?’

‘Eating the Empire.’

‘I am pregnant with my Empire. I’ll die giving birth to it.’”

Duncan accuses Leto of abusing his authority and alludes to the Greek myth of Cronus who devoured his children to keep any of his offspring from dethroning him. To Duncan, Leto is worse than the Harkonnens, the Atreides’s arch enemy, because he is oppressing his own people and subjugating them to worship him as a god. Leto retorts with an extended metaphor of pregnancy to argue that he is nurturing humanity. The metaphor references both the Golden Path’s goal of delivering a new humanity with a specific gene trait and Leto’s ability to access both male and female ancestral memories. In the metaphor of pregnancy, Leto also occupies the role of a god by being a creator of new life. His death in childbirth symbolizes the sacrifice of his lost humanity and foreshadows how his death catalyzes the continued life cycle of the giant sandworm.

“The historians died peacefully. Not a one felt the flames. Torquemada, however, delighted in commending to his god the agonized screams of his burning victims.”

Leto often employs random acts of violence to spark fears that he is an angry, spiteful god. In year 2116 of his reign, he sedated and executed nine historians by burning them at the stake in their own papers. Leto differentiates himself from the cruel Torquemada of the Spanish Inquisition by clarifying that he rendered his victims unconscious beforehand. Leto is convinced that he executed the historians humanely and was merely performing the persona of an irrational and violent tyrant for the greater good. However, Herbert uses Moneo’s comparison to question whether the distinction is enough to justify Leto’s brutality. Leto murdered nine historians and seems indifferent and unremorseful of the crime. The episode recalls the larger paradox of the Golden Path and the question of whether Leto’s self-justifications are credible.

“To be surprised, to have a new thing occur, that is what I desire most.”

Leto’s millennia-long rule and near-total knowledge of past and future have left him with little sense of wonder or enjoyment in his life. Here, he wishes to be released from the burden of knowing everything before it happens. Surprises also represent free will, the antithesis of the curse of prescience. Leto has seen the extinction of humans in the future, and this vision compelled him to follow the one course of action that will save humanity. He chose the Golden Path, his last act of free will, out of a sense of moral duty, and he became imprisoned by the fate of humankind for the rest of his very long life. Leto refuses to probe into the future to find out about his death, as he also wants this to be a surprise. The subtext of this wish for surprise is that Leto does not want an opportunity to prevent his death and is longing for his misery to end.

“Their tears will be gone and smiles will be pasted on their faces by the time we reach Onn, Leto thought. They think I spurn them! What does that really matter? This is a flickering nuisance among the short-lived and the short-thoughted.”

Following the Tleilaxu’s attack on the Royal peregrination, Leto orders Moneo to quickly replace the dead bodies and make it appear that no one has threatened his life. The scene demonstrates how Leto has become insensitive to the lives of ordinary people whose life spans are far more limited than his own. He lacks compassion for those mourning, yet he understands the value of empathy for himself when he meets Hwi. Leto’s indifference offers evidence for an interpretation that reads him as an unsympathetic and cruel character precisely because he can only envision the long-term effects of his actions and not the present.

“‘I will inform you only this once,’ Leto said. ‘I have no sexual habits whatsoever. None.’”

In his attempt to dispel the lewd Tleilaxu rumors, Leto ironically declares before the masses at the plaza that he has no sexual habits because he is God. The chapters with Hwi demonstrate that he does indeed have sexual desires that are very vivid and stimulating, but he has sacrificed his human form to the Golden Path and can never fulfill his longings physically. In playing God, Leto cannot be a sexual man, yet the fact that he sexually desires Hwi illustrates that he is no God at all. This limbo heightens Leto’s sense of loneliness and alienation, and his hybrid body represents a relationship not only of symbiosis but also of negation.

“When has an Atreides ever asked you to like your job?”

After the Siaynoq ritual, Duncan accuses Leto of being a tyrant and refuses to worship him as a god. Leto insinuates that Duncan’s loyalty to the Atreides has always been unconditional and this time should be no different. He reminds Duncan that he has killed under the Atreides banner before and that Duncan was also a rebel who helped Paul Atreides usurp the throne. Leto relies on the past to validate his position of authority, yet for Duncan, what he witnesses before his eyes in the present goes against his ethics. Duncan represents the dangers of political loyalty as his dogmatic allegiance to the Atreides prevents him from making independent moral decisions.

“Our task has always been to bring the new into balance and, with it, modify behavior while not suppressing survival.”

Leto’s upcoming wedding stirs up vulgar rumors about his sexuality, and he welcomes the slurs as a positive change. Leto’s Peace is a balancing act of various human drives. He rules with absolute dominance to instill a rebellious core against tyranny in the collective psyche, and he limits diversity and travel in the hopes that his restrictions will create desire for the different and new. Just as Leto has tested Siona and Moneo to see the Golden Path, he is also testing humanity to see if they will improve to survive. When he fears that his rule has made them too complacent and subservient, he adds incidents of irrational violence to incite rebellion. To Leto, the human condition operates on the spectrum of tranquility and chaos.

“The Face Dancers had put on dark, seamed faces with these robes and performed a dance which told how Muad’Dib’s legions had spread their religion through the Empire…

Hwi…leaned close to his face and asked: Is that not a parody?”

Leto punishes the Face Dancers by dressing them in priestly robes appliquéd with green hawks and forcing them to perform. The dance is a propaganda piece meant to humiliate the captured enemies by forcing them to exult in Leto’s heritage. Hwi recognizes the performance as a “parody,” and the comment has a double meaning. First, the Face Dancers lack any genuine conviction in the dance’s message, causing the routine to connote coercion rather than allegiance. Secondly, her comment implicates the Atreides’s own collusion with colonialism and the civilizing mission. Rather than acknowledge that the Atreides were another imperial power to take control of Arrakis, the dance manipulates the historical narrative by celebrating Paul Muad’Dib as the messiah. Instead of symbolizing the prestige and honor of a noble family, the Atreides’s green hawk, the color worn by priests, symbolizes the corrupt merging of Church and State.

“Trust is what goes with a pledge of loyalty.”

One of Duncan’s major struggles in the novel is his conflation of trust with loyalty. As the esteemed swordmaster for House Atreides, Duncan has devoted himself to serving and protecting the noble family. The oath is so unbreakable that in book one of the series, the original Idaho gives his life to save Paul and Jessica Atreides, Leto’s father and grandmother. Duncan has no problem renewing his service to an Atreides when he awakens as a ghola, as the term loyalty implies allegiance and support. However, he mistakenly adds trust to the equation, whether it is earned or not. Trust requires integrity and honesty, and the more Duncan learns about Leto, the less he trusts him. By the end of the novel, Duncan learns that without a foundation of trust, loyalty is hollow.

“Nature makes no leaps.”

Leto tells Siona that his personal religion is Natura non facit saltus, an axiom frequently cited in Charles Darwin’s Origins of Species to explain evolution as a slow and gradual process rather than a sudden change. Leto appropriates the maxim to enact his Golden Path, a course that requires nearly 4,000 years to see his final transformation into a giant sandworm. In that time, he conducts both a genetic and social experiment in human evolution that violates individual rights. By referring to himself as a predator and by controlling reproduction, Leto evokes historical echoes of fascism and eugenics. Siona and Duncan challenge Leto’s tyranny and the ethics of his breeding program, and the novel’s central paradox is Leto’s claim that he needed to employ the tools of fascism to free future humans from tyranny.

“I never met a greedy Fremen.”

Leto explains to Siona that the Fremen only took what was necessary for them to survive in the desert. Efficiency defined their lives, and the foundation of their practices was the crucial conservation of water. Herbert evokes the themes of sustainability and preservation in his romanticized depiction of Fremen culture. By contrasting the Fremen’s economy with greed, he also implicates capitalism as one of the forces that endangers the environment and corrupts societies. Leto later refers to the “suk mentality” (235), a reference to the word souk for markets in Arab countries, which have spread throughout the empire and have distorted relationships into the logic of a market economy.

“[T]he Lord Leto looked on prayer as attempted coercion, a form of violence against the chosen god, telling the immortal what to do: Give me a miracle, God, or I won’t believe in you!” “Prayer as hubris,” Moneo said. “Intercession on demand.”

Herbert points out the hypocrisy of religious prayer, where devotion pivots on the bargaining for one’s own interests. In these instances, praying becomes an act of aggression, a “coercion,” “violence,” and “demand,” rather than an expression of praise or forgiveness. Leto’s disdain for prayer reflects his larger contempt for religion’s manipulation of spirituality to legitimize hierarchies of power. In this example, he castigates the worshippers themselves for their disingenuous rituals and reverses the significance of prayer from an act of humility to one of arrogance.

“I try to tell them that all words are plastic…Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change.”

In The Stolen Journals, Leto alludes to systems that perpetuate ideologies such as government, religion, and in this passage, language. Leto often distrusts the value of words to express truths and cautions that words are pliable. Meanings are discerned not in a simple equation of signifier and signified, but in the context of their utterance. Propaganda is a prime example of ideologically-laden language masking itself as objective truth. Leto’s warning about “unexamined beliefs” explains his propensity for abstract language and verbosity; Leto’s long-winded speeches force his listeners to stop and ask what his words actually mean, and many characters accuse him of using convoluted words that say nothing. Leto’s comments on language as an ideological system call into question the veracity of historical documents, the Oral History, and even his own journals, thereby casting himself as an unreliable narrator and provoking a critical engagement with language.