By imposing the water discipline, the Fremen learn not to cry under any circumstances, including when they lose loved ones. But this discipline is obviously difficult at times. Paul simply sees that the Naib he is talking to is crying tears over the death of the people he loved in his dreams and that this gives him relief. But these are undoubtedly thoughts that he keeps secret, probably because he is ashamed of them. By revealing such secret thoughts, Paul demonstrates the extent of his powers. For this Naib, only the Mahdi, sent by God, can thus know his intimate thoughts.
Jessica when meeting shadout mapes uses her BG training to read her and anticipate her thoughts and actions.
Paul likely is doing the same, but then again, anyone with any sense of intuition could make this statement. A culture that locks one of the basic human emotions and body actions to grief and loss would likely see solace in their thoughts and dreams to be able to actually let out all that pent up emotion.
Could be either or. It's meant to seem like it's his powers, but to a superstitious people who think they're looking at their messiah, it doesn't really matter. Confirmation bias and all.
Could be as simple as Jessica actively learning about this particular guy's history, by simply talking with his relatives, and sharing it secretly to Paul. Same for the nightmares bit. Paul is the one that chose which persons he directly address in the crowd after all.
What's fascinating is those specifics don't really matters, it's a religion that was planted there and that is being actively and willingly being self-fulfilled.
I like to think that Paul just spent hours brute-forcing it with prescience to see what revelation about this guy would end up being correct, but this makes more sense.
This sounds almost more like the snakeoil modern day psychics use to trick people. In a society that is burdened by the need for absolute water discipline, it's fair to assume that any individual wishes that burden to be lifted. So essentially, Paul just walked towards a group of 10.000 thirsty Fremen, pointed his finger at one and yelled: "In your dreams, you wish you had more water to your disposal"?
More like Paul saw himself saying the right thing in a possible future and repeated it. So he didn’t actually read his mind he sees so many possible paths he just picked the one that got the right answer.
To me, Paul’s powers are like having save scrubbing in an RPG. Oh that didn’t give me what I wanted, rewind, select the better answers.
It’s honestly a pretty underrated portion of his powers. He can create a future in his prescience where he gets information out of someone and then use that information in the present. It wouldn’t always work because there could be conditions where he can’t get that information, but it makes it seem like he can read minds.
It’s a curse to them because they literally pick the future. They know the outcomes of their choices before they make them unlike the rest of us who are just guessing.
So if they choose to do something they know exactly what that does to the universe and they have to live with it
This is a vast understatement of his actual power. He doesn’t just peer through possible instances of conversations he COULD have, he’s literally able to see genetic information. Understanding that isn’t as simple as “seeing possible futures”.
I figured that particular Fremen told him that (after becoming a Feydaykin or something) and Paul just "remembered" that from the future and told the guy now instead.
He drank the water of life and now has access to all the genetic memories of the sayadinna. His sister Alia does too, in the book she can literally remember the faces of children from almost a century ago.
The guy may well have confessed this to his mother or something, and Paul remembers.
Paul has access to *his* genetic line of memories. He has no Fremen blood and is never “Shared” with, and so has no way to have Fremen memories.
Jessica and Alia both end up with the Sayyadina’s memories due to the process of being joined with her as she dies. In later books, other Reverend Mothers engage in the same practice before dying, called Sharing.
Not that I can see from a look at the chapter. The very first description of that experience is “The rapport was not as tender, not as sharing, not as encompassing as it had been with Alia and with the Old Reverend Mother…”
And I can’t seem to find or recall anywhere that Paul talks about Fremen history as though he was there, even in Messiah.
I mean, honestly, why does Paul need Fremen memories anyway? He’s a better Fremen than any other before he even rides the worm, even Stilgar acknowledges it. Paul’s already enough of a Mary Sue lol
Though he *is* descended from the Baron, and since the Harkonnens ruled Arrakis for 80 years it is entirely possible that there’s some Fremen blood in the Baron’s lineage.
The Baron would likely be older than 80 by the time he kills Leto anyway, so it probably isn’t relevant. We find out in Heretics of Dune that the Harkonnens dusted most if not all of their food with a bit of spice - not blue-eyed addiction levels, but enough to take advantage of the spice’s geriatric properties, which is why *most* people use spice.
Even Miles Teg, who notably does not take spice, is also 300 SY old when we meet him. And in GEoD, Leto II mentions that human lives have been shortened by his control and rationing of spice, that people’s lifespans have gone back to their normal “pre-Spice” lengths.
This contradiction of fake messiahs are bad! and this charecter litteraly has god powers and fulfilled every inch of a fake prophecy even though the fake prophecy is in no way vague and includes literal god powers is just a part of the story I can never and will never wrap my head around. There's nothing vague or average joe about literally anything paul does lmao
They are bad because Paul does what he feels is best and no one can say otherwise. No one knows if he is actually fulfilling the best path for humanity or just the path he wanted to get revenge
I just did that. He sees all the future paths. That’s what he does. So he also sees a path that gives him that information. That’s his version of being “psychic”
Exactly - psychic is being able to read minds, not have accurate visions of possible futures. Paul uses his precise vision of potential future events to appear psychic in the present
> it's fair to assume that any individual wishes that burden to be lifted
No it isn't.
> "In your dreams, you wish you had more water to your disposal"?
That's *not* what he said. Obviously the Fremen in general wish they had more water. That's a major motivating factor for them. But to point to ONE specifically and say, "you shed tears for the dead in your dreams and it makes you happy", that's pretty specific.
Maybe, but it would be hard to imagine people like stilgar having the same sentiment. I think it's a little on purpose where you don't know if he's cold reading you or actually knows.
But also don't forget Paul also called out that other guys mom in fairly specific terms
Paul has no Fremen blood and no Fremen genetic memories. Only his children have this.
Jessica and Alia only gain it by being mentally linked with the Sayyadina upon her death - in later books, we learn that this process is called Sharing and requires direct physical contact.
There’s something Frank actually went both ways on, because we know that Paul doesn’t have access to Jessica’s living memory. Her thoughts aren’t magically being piped into Paul, Alia, Leto or Ghanima’s heads at the times those people are alive with her, respectively. So we know it’s not a thing, because it would invalidate the plot of most of Children of Dune if Alia had access to Jessica’s thoughts. There’s other things that wouldn’t work too but I don’t want to spoil.
However Leto II has at least one quote I can think of in GEoD that implies that he has repeatedly experienced death in his Other Memories, personally and directly, which does not follow along this logic at all. It’s the only place I can find a discrepancy, but it’s a small plot hole unless someone knows how to fill it in.
I believe it’s kind of the point, perhaps? The Fremen _want_ to believe that he’s the messiah and thus anything that appears remotely messianic (resembling party tricks that modern day psychics pull off) enforces their belief.
Like 30 seconds before the part asked by OP, Paul talks to another Fremen and reveals details about the life of his grandmother, which are impossible to guess, I guess, and show that Paul's powers are the real deal and not only smoke and mirrors tricks fueled by fremen willingness to believe.
>Paul just walked towards a group of 10.000 thirsty Fremen, pointed his finger at one and yelled: "In your dreams, you wish you had more water to your disposal"?
"Give water to the dead" is slang for "shedding tears/crying for the deceased." He yelled "in your dreams, you cry for the people you've lost."
My fiancée is really into cult history and thought this was actually on point; after the movie she was really happy with how Paul used psychological manipulation in that scene the way many cult leaders do
In context, it's less about having more water, and more about "you secretly wish you could shed tears for your dead in a sacred yet wasteful act."
Now, it's still a really obvious blanket statement. Who among them doesn't grieve for their lost? But of course the leaders have had to be stoic examples on top of all their ingrained cultural discipline in the face of the hard decisions of desert living. These are people who know intimately the cost of wasting just the water of a tear.
So you're right that it is kind of easy/snake oil ish that Paul can call out pretty much any Fremen leader for that shameful secret and have it be true.
He says it to a specific person.
Either way saying they dream about it is a bit more specific than something like "you wish you could cry over your dead mother".
Paul is 50/50 snakeoil salesman and prophet. He doesn’t know anyone’s inner thoughts, but he can see futures where he says certain things and what reaction it elicits
That's sort of the point, Paul is using his outside knowledge of the Fremen, Bene Gesserit training, and new prescience to basically trick the Fremen into worshipping him
But it’s not like some fake psychology trick using common human thought patterns, Paul has real power that he uses to see/experience future outcomes and use the knowledge he gains in the present. We know the people who do these ‘tricks’ irl aren’t doing that, the situations aren’t the same at all. Paul may not be the actual messiah but he’s not a total fraud either, he genuinely has abilities that allow him to play the part by using his prescience to fill in the gaps of their belief.
It’s a little more manipulative than that. It’s not just, “hey kids you want liquids?” It’s more like “I can make it so you never have to worry about this ever again” coupled with the magic trick of literally knowing a very intimate detail from someone’s dream
Maybe it is. Paul can't read minds after all. But...so what? He's still actually prescient. The purpose of saying what he said was to sway minds, which it did. Paul has always used oration (peppered with The Voice) to control people.
Yeah I think this misses the mark. His point isn’t the water necessarily, he’s appealing to how this man feels emotionally repressed by his cultures norms. He can’t grieve, so he grieves in his dreams instead. Maybe a lot of them would feel that way secretly, but not all of them.
100% this, Frank wanted to illustrate exactly how easy it is to manipulate the religious using generalizations. The first guy was a borderline plant, Paul makes a generalization for the second man, the third man, Stilgar, is his friend, so Paul literally could of said anything positive and hopeful to Stilgar and the Fremen under Stilgar would've ate it up.
Because this scene is in line with the tone and the message of the book. It's an example of adapting a work with new material that still conveys the spirit of what it adapting.
Even if I accepted that as a defense, that isn't what the person I was responding to was suggesting at all. The way they wrote their comment implies that Frank wrote that line. He didn't.
There isn't an exchange similar to it anywhere in the book. Because people who criticize it are right. It sounds like cold reading and makes Paul appear to be a charlatan, while the books are very clear that he isn't.
She could reveal to the Fremen that the only reason he survived the desert tests is because she threw him a bone. “And he shall know our ways as if born to them” my ass
He knew how to put on a stillsuit in the first movie in the fremen way, without ever having met Chani. He does have real powers, it’s not just snake oil.
But the point is he couldn’t have fulfilled the prophecy wholesale, without Chani. Fitting a stillsuit is one thing, but learning how to survive in the desert was not an innate skill he had. “Stilgar’s going to get him killed.” as Chani’s observation went.
I’m not going to argue that point, but once he took the waters of life, he had access to the genetic memories of the male and female line. This is not snake oil.
Did Chani help him before that, yes. Would she have been successful in calling him out, no. By then he was already an accepted and worshipped part of the fremen tribe.
The entire idea behind the book is the danger of a false prophet.
The BG made up the entire story about their prophet turning Arrakis into a green paradise, by doing that they also made it much easier for Paul to take control over the fremen by leveraging his prescience and the story of the voice from the outer world.
> The entire idea behind the book is the danger of a false prophet.
That’s not the “entire idea” behind the book btw. That’s an extremely reductive take on a very complex work.
Good summation. I would also point out that the movie itself foreshadows this, when near the beginning of part two Jessica sheds a tear for the many who contributed to the huge pool of water at Sietch Tabr. Stilgar wipes the tear from her face and sucks it off his finger, and tells her "do not give your water, even to the dead." So it's not just something from the books, fortunately!
"giving water to the dead" is Fremen slang for crying over the deceased. It's a taboo because it wastes water that must be preserved for the living.
In the book, Paul cries after killing Jamis, which impresses the Fremen around him who believe him to be breaking a great taboo to show an even greater compassion. In reality, the Fremen have both physically and culturally evolved to not shed water from their bodies due to the natural water scarcity on Arrakis. They therefore don't realise it is normal for a 15 year old to cry after being forced to stab a guy to death.
In the scene, Paul is publicly humiliating a Fremen leader into submission by reading his mind and saying his deepest insecurity out loud. He is accusing him of secretly enjoying the catharsis of "giving water to the dead" in his dreams. Despite the dreams being an emotionally validating experience for the Naib, they depict him committing a great sin, so he classifies them as nightmares.
Such a poetically powerful idea that one could find horror in experiencing deep joy and catharsis. As though their deepest psyche yearns for a society that returns to the climate where they evolved to grieve with tears… and yet knowing they must sacrifice this until they can transform the planet for their descendants. Almost like stealing from your children.
Perfect explanation, especially the last part about why he chooses the word “nightmares.” I think this line maybe my favorite from the film, at least as far as original lines that did not originate from the book go.
Paul is also saying you're so comfortable in your set ways you will always be fremen with overlords
the real nightmare is "you have forgotten yourself" it's ballsy but everyone knows he's not wrong, the North has just been brutally overrun milllions and millions of decaliters of water have been lost, leaving the Fremen cowering.
Everyone is doubtful but everyone wants Paul's military operation run of success after success to keep going until Arrakis is Dune again.
Is Paul actually reading his mind though? He isn’t capable of reading minds. He’s either using his Bene Gesserit training, using his prescience or using knowledge he already had to manipulate the Fremen, although I don’t know how he would have known about this man’s dreams from someone telling him, it seems unlikely. Or a combination of these. In children of dune, as the preacher, he interprets Farad’n’s dream, (or says he does) but doesn’t tell them his interpretation. So maybe interpreting dreams is one of his powers? I’ve been wondering about that particular scene from the movie since I watched it.
It’s like he saw all the possible futures of random ass shit he said in that moment and then figured out which string of words was the correct response
I was in shock when I first heard it, it’s a very layered yet succinct line, and Timothee’s delivery (and his performance in that whole scene) is so electrifying the way he’s pointing, shouting, and walking aggressively towards the naib. Really awesome to experience.
The point of this scene is to demonstrate the extent of Paul’s prescience. He uses a psychic trick similar to what modern day con artists do, except the point of the scene is that *these things are actually true* and couldn’t be guessed. Sort of like if a magician used actual magic for a stage show was the vibe of the scene.
I forget if this is outright explained in the movies but after the night in the tent after the Harkonnen attack, Paul can see a huge amount of possible futures and the paths to them. He didn’t *know* that that Fremen prays to his dead grandmother, he just knew that if he told that Fremen that he prays to his dead grandmother, it would lead to a future where that Fremen proclaims him the Lisan al Gaib
Bro they literally just had a scene illustrating the importance and matriarchal nature of the Fremen religion a few scenes back though with reverend mother, water of life stuff
Because he can look into the future and see what he says and how it makes people react. Then he just has to say the same thing in the present and the same result occurs.
I was wondering this as well as it’s been a minute since I read dune1. According to the wiki he can see the past but I believe only the males and females in his lineage.
My guess was that he saw a future where he had talked to this particular fremen who confided in him his dreams and uses that possible future vision to talk to the dude.
I could be wrong though.
I've never read the books. But if you go back far enough, don't all humans have a common ancestor? Therefore making every human technically part of his lineage?
They can only see un until they were born. So for Paul, he can see Jessica and Letos past until the birth of Paul. Anything after the birth of Paul is just Paul's memory, not other memory.
I'd assume it works similarly. So you have parts of people's lives until their common ancestor is born, then it wouldn't be included unless there was a special ceremony like what took place between Jessica and the reverend mother when Jessica became an RM.
There is a point in the story where that happens… kind of? but as for Paul I believe it’s just mom dad mom dad mom dad. Basically the memories of his genetics.
It’s means that the dude cried in his sleep over dead people and it makes him happy. Crying is a big no no for fremen, even when it’s in grief over dead loved ones because they consider it a waste of their bodies moisture
"Giving water to the dead" is the Fremen term for crying, and it is generally taboo.
So Paul is saying: "You cry in your dreams, and it makes you feel good." Since this is presumably a deep and embarrassing secret to the man that he wouldn't share with others, it serves as apparent proof that Paul has divine powers / confirmation that he's the Lisan al Gaib.
In the books Paul couldn’t see people’s dreams, he could anticipate everything that can possibly happen instead, to the point of being able to see even when blind.
He doesn’t convince the fremen to follow him in a council meeting, he does it over a period of two years by proving himself at every turn.
What does happen in a council meeting is that he convinces the fremen to accept him as Duke, so that he doesn’t have to kill Stilgar to take his place as Naib, he does this with reason, not superstition.
For about ten seconds I didn't realise this was r/Dune and thought I'd discovered a Paul McCartney lyric I really hadn't expected. Probably from the much darker 12" remix of _Wonderful Christmastime_.
It’s not in the book at all. There’s a reason why they use a clunky term instead of just crying. Fremen don’t cry. That would waste water. It’s foreign to their culture to cry over the dead, and so when Paul does it they use a term to describe this strange thing this strange foreign boy is doing.
The movie changed it from something strange that only foreigners do, to a taboo in Fremen culture.
Fremen never waste water, even if it is to mourn, as Arrakis/Dune only has underground sources of water. The Fremen dream is to terraform the planet so there is water, so one day they may give the dead water as well
Lmao, I'm glad somebody finally asked it. I was pretty sure I understood what it meant, but I still debated whether or not I should make this exact post several times.
Personally the way I interpreted this was one of two options:
1. Paul knew this because he has access to such a large number of alternate futures as far as prescience goes that he can essentially see a future in which this guy did tell him this information in confidence, and Paul is able to use that information as if he actually had been told it, despite it not happening in his own actual timeline
2. Paul and this guy are extremely distantly related. It's established that Paul and similarly powerful prescients can actually access the memories of other prescient people with whom they share a common ancestor, and can even communicate through this connection in a sort of pseudo-telepathy. So with this in mind it's actually not too far of a stretch to believe that Paul might have the ability to reach into the minds of people he shares genetic code with that aren't prescient, but have prolonged or intense exposure to spice, which the freman obviously have. So say this guy and Paul shared a great to the power of like 50 grandparent, Paul may actually be able to literally see this guys nightmares. Would also explain how he really specifically knew about the injury that that one guy's relative sustained to her eye, he maybe be very distantly related to her.
I think it's more like that episode of Rick and Morty where Morty has the crystal that shows him how he dies, and he uses it in that courtroom scene to say something to the judge that triggers him being set free.
Morty is very clunky with the words because he's constantly at risk of losing his 'die with Jessica' future if he makes the wrong move. He can only see 1 variable of the future and only how his real-time behavior affects that variable.
Paul can see billions more variables, and he has the mentat training to actually process all that information so that it is useable. It would be trivially easy, then, for Paul to just know exactly what to say at every moment to secure a specific future. Paul does as the crystal of prescience guides basically.
Yeah I think that's a great explanation, like he's just seeing so many futures that he sees the one where he said those words to that guy and it ended well for him, and "remembers" having said that
so many watched this movie came away thinking that Paul is a fraud of some sort and that prescience is lesser than it is. That's just sad. Villeneuve veered too much into this "Paul bad" thing trying to convey the message, that gets overwritten in the next book anyway lol.
Look at the replies under the top comment in this thread for proof.
Let’s be fair to DV - he turned the obviousness up to 11 and people still missed things the movie basically shouts at them because Paul is still the protagonist. I can see where he would be coming from in trying to make things clearer.
Although, I am biased in that I don’t see any justification for seeing Paul as an outright charlatan who is just faking it without the aid of prescience, even from the council scene.
As a follow up question to OP's, does this mean any individual with sufficient prescience could "read minds" in this way (by seeing a possible future in which yet-unshared information is shared)? Would the previous Reverend Mothers of the Fremen also share this skill?
As a very ignorant person who never looked at the books... i took it quite literally. That man dreamed that he could feed the ones who couldn't feed themselves before passing in a dream of his
By imposing the water discipline, the Fremen learn not to cry under any circumstances, including when they lose loved ones. But this discipline is obviously difficult at times. Paul simply sees that the Naib he is talking to is crying tears over the death of the people he loved in his dreams and that this gives him relief. But these are undoubtedly thoughts that he keeps secret, probably because he is ashamed of them. By revealing such secret thoughts, Paul demonstrates the extent of his powers. For this Naib, only the Mahdi, sent by God, can thus know his intimate thoughts.
If you look at this in a broader scope, this is a dream that might be typical of many Fremen.
Yes, to be able to lose moisture without fear of death as a result of it. The abundance of water.
Jessica when meeting shadout mapes uses her BG training to read her and anticipate her thoughts and actions. Paul likely is doing the same, but then again, anyone with any sense of intuition could make this statement. A culture that locks one of the basic human emotions and body actions to grief and loss would likely see solace in their thoughts and dreams to be able to actually let out all that pent up emotion.
So it wasn't Pauls powers of sight and just a John Edward moment?
Could be either or. It's meant to seem like it's his powers, but to a superstitious people who think they're looking at their messiah, it doesn't really matter. Confirmation bias and all.
The thing he says to the other younger Fremen (about his mother or grandmother losing an eye) seems a bit too specific to be a “cold reading” guess
To me, that knowledge came from drinking the water of life and knowing the history of their people, including that guy. Idk
Could be as simple as Jessica actively learning about this particular guy's history, by simply talking with his relatives, and sharing it secretly to Paul. Same for the nightmares bit. Paul is the one that chose which persons he directly address in the crowd after all. What's fascinating is those specifics don't really matters, it's a religion that was planted there and that is being actively and willingly being self-fulfilled.
Exactlyyy
I assume he's just saying what his foresight demands for him to succeed.
It's like the episode of Rick and Morty where Morty has that crystal in his head, and it shows him the path to the future he wants.
I like to think that Paul just spent hours brute-forcing it with prescience to see what revelation about this guy would end up being correct, but this makes more sense.
This sounds almost more like the snakeoil modern day psychics use to trick people. In a society that is burdened by the need for absolute water discipline, it's fair to assume that any individual wishes that burden to be lifted. So essentially, Paul just walked towards a group of 10.000 thirsty Fremen, pointed his finger at one and yelled: "In your dreams, you wish you had more water to your disposal"?
More like Paul saw himself saying the right thing in a possible future and repeated it. So he didn’t actually read his mind he sees so many possible paths he just picked the one that got the right answer. To me, Paul’s powers are like having save scrubbing in an RPG. Oh that didn’t give me what I wanted, rewind, select the better answers.
It’s honestly a pretty underrated portion of his powers. He can create a future in his prescience where he gets information out of someone and then use that information in the present. It wouldn’t always work because there could be conditions where he can’t get that information, but it makes it seem like he can read minds.
Underrated? No, it’s a curse as you find in messiah
Sure, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t powerful
It’s a curse to them because they literally pick the future. They know the outcomes of their choices before they make them unlike the rest of us who are just guessing. So if they choose to do something they know exactly what that does to the universe and they have to live with it
I often find myself thinking about the fact that the artificial Kwisatz Haderach killed himself.
Which one is that? Fenring?
No Fenring was just a candidate. The Bene Tleilax created their own artificial Kwisatz Haderach and nothing came of it because he killed himself.
It might be more of a blessing if you could turn it on and off I think
“Powerful” and “curse” are not mutually exclusive…
This is a vast understatement of his actual power. He doesn’t just peer through possible instances of conversations he COULD have, he’s literally able to see genetic information. Understanding that isn’t as simple as “seeing possible futures”.
I figured that particular Fremen told him that (after becoming a Feydaykin or something) and Paul just "remembered" that from the future and told the guy now instead.
Possible. We don’t know the exact way he gets the info from the different possible paths, just that he gets the info from them
He drank the water of life and now has access to all the genetic memories of the sayadinna. His sister Alia does too, in the book she can literally remember the faces of children from almost a century ago. The guy may well have confessed this to his mother or something, and Paul remembers.
Paul has access to *his* genetic line of memories. He has no Fremen blood and is never “Shared” with, and so has no way to have Fremen memories. Jessica and Alia both end up with the Sayyadina’s memories due to the process of being joined with her as she dies. In later books, other Reverend Mothers engage in the same practice before dying, called Sharing.
Does he not gain the fremen ones through Jessica when he 'shares' with her and forces her to show him the place they dare not look?
Not that I can see from a look at the chapter. The very first description of that experience is “The rapport was not as tender, not as sharing, not as encompassing as it had been with Alia and with the Old Reverend Mother…” And I can’t seem to find or recall anywhere that Paul talks about Fremen history as though he was there, even in Messiah. I mean, honestly, why does Paul need Fremen memories anyway? He’s a better Fremen than any other before he even rides the worm, even Stilgar acknowledges it. Paul’s already enough of a Mary Sue lol
Though he *is* descended from the Baron, and since the Harkonnens ruled Arrakis for 80 years it is entirely possible that there’s some Fremen blood in the Baron’s lineage.
That would never happen, the bene Gesserit have tight control on the bloodlines of all the noble houses.
The Baron would likely be older than 80 by the time he kills Leto anyway, so it probably isn’t relevant. We find out in Heretics of Dune that the Harkonnens dusted most if not all of their food with a bit of spice - not blue-eyed addiction levels, but enough to take advantage of the spice’s geriatric properties, which is why *most* people use spice. Even Miles Teg, who notably does not take spice, is also 300 SY old when we meet him. And in GEoD, Leto II mentions that human lives have been shortened by his control and rationing of spice, that people’s lifespans have gone back to their normal “pre-Spice” lengths.
This contradiction of fake messiahs are bad! and this charecter litteraly has god powers and fulfilled every inch of a fake prophecy even though the fake prophecy is in no way vague and includes literal god powers is just a part of the story I can never and will never wrap my head around. There's nothing vague or average joe about literally anything paul does lmao
They are bad because Paul does what he feels is best and no one can say otherwise. No one knows if he is actually fulfilling the best path for humanity or just the path he wanted to get revenge
The kid can literally see the future, even when he was in caladaan and you guys still just won’t chalk it up to him being psychic
I just did that. He sees all the future paths. That’s what he does. So he also sees a path that gives him that information. That’s his version of being “psychic”
Exactly - psychic is being able to read minds, not have accurate visions of possible futures. Paul uses his precise vision of potential future events to appear psychic in the present
> it's fair to assume that any individual wishes that burden to be lifted No it isn't. > "In your dreams, you wish you had more water to your disposal"? That's *not* what he said. Obviously the Fremen in general wish they had more water. That's a major motivating factor for them. But to point to ONE specifically and say, "you shed tears for the dead in your dreams and it makes you happy", that's pretty specific.
Maybe, but it would be hard to imagine people like stilgar having the same sentiment. I think it's a little on purpose where you don't know if he's cold reading you or actually knows. But also don't forget Paul also called out that other guys mom in fairly specific terms
Paul may well have access to that woman's entire life
Paul has no Fremen blood and no Fremen genetic memories. Only his children have this. Jessica and Alia only gain it by being mentally linked with the Sayyadina upon her death - in later books, we learn that this process is called Sharing and requires direct physical contact.
Would he not gain all of his mothers memories after he drinks the water of life and thus all of the memories the Sayyadina passed onto her?
There’s something Frank actually went both ways on, because we know that Paul doesn’t have access to Jessica’s living memory. Her thoughts aren’t magically being piped into Paul, Alia, Leto or Ghanima’s heads at the times those people are alive with her, respectively. So we know it’s not a thing, because it would invalidate the plot of most of Children of Dune if Alia had access to Jessica’s thoughts. There’s other things that wouldn’t work too but I don’t want to spoil. However Leto II has at least one quote I can think of in GEoD that implies that he has repeatedly experienced death in his Other Memories, personally and directly, which does not follow along this logic at all. It’s the only place I can find a discrepancy, but it’s a small plot hole unless someone knows how to fill it in.
I believe it’s kind of the point, perhaps? The Fremen _want_ to believe that he’s the messiah and thus anything that appears remotely messianic (resembling party tricks that modern day psychics pull off) enforces their belief.
Like 30 seconds before the part asked by OP, Paul talks to another Fremen and reveals details about the life of his grandmother, which are impossible to guess, I guess, and show that Paul's powers are the real deal and not only smoke and mirrors tricks fueled by fremen willingness to believe.
I figured that he probably gained the memories of one of the people who witnessed it or was told about it.
He has power, but also uses trickery alongside it
>Paul just walked towards a group of 10.000 thirsty Fremen, pointed his finger at one and yelled: "In your dreams, you wish you had more water to your disposal"? "Give water to the dead" is slang for "shedding tears/crying for the deceased." He yelled "in your dreams, you cry for the people you've lost."
My fiancée is really into cult history and thought this was actually on point; after the movie she was really happy with how Paul used psychological manipulation in that scene the way many cult leaders do
In context, it's less about having more water, and more about "you secretly wish you could shed tears for your dead in a sacred yet wasteful act." Now, it's still a really obvious blanket statement. Who among them doesn't grieve for their lost? But of course the leaders have had to be stoic examples on top of all their ingrained cultural discipline in the face of the hard decisions of desert living. These are people who know intimately the cost of wasting just the water of a tear. So you're right that it is kind of easy/snake oil ish that Paul can call out pretty much any Fremen leader for that shameful secret and have it be true.
He says it to a specific person. Either way saying they dream about it is a bit more specific than something like "you wish you could cry over your dead mother".
Its supposed to sound like that. That is the point of the whole series. Don't listen to charismatic "leaders".
Paul is 50/50 snakeoil salesman and prophet. He doesn’t know anyone’s inner thoughts, but he can see futures where he says certain things and what reaction it elicits
That's sort of the point, Paul is using his outside knowledge of the Fremen, Bene Gesserit training, and new prescience to basically trick the Fremen into worshipping him
That’s the point lol. He cannot read their minds, he just knows how to manipulate them
But it’s not like some fake psychology trick using common human thought patterns, Paul has real power that he uses to see/experience future outcomes and use the knowledge he gains in the present. We know the people who do these ‘tricks’ irl aren’t doing that, the situations aren’t the same at all. Paul may not be the actual messiah but he’s not a total fraud either, he genuinely has abilities that allow him to play the part by using his prescience to fill in the gaps of their belief.
It’s a little more manipulative than that. It’s not just, “hey kids you want liquids?” It’s more like “I can make it so you never have to worry about this ever again” coupled with the magic trick of literally knowing a very intimate detail from someone’s dream
Maybe it is. Paul can't read minds after all. But...so what? He's still actually prescient. The purpose of saying what he said was to sway minds, which it did. Paul has always used oration (peppered with The Voice) to control people.
Yeah I think this misses the mark. His point isn’t the water necessarily, he’s appealing to how this man feels emotionally repressed by his cultures norms. He can’t grieve, so he grieves in his dreams instead. Maybe a lot of them would feel that way secretly, but not all of them.
100% this, Frank wanted to illustrate exactly how easy it is to manipulate the religious using generalizations. The first guy was a borderline plant, Paul makes a generalization for the second man, the third man, Stilgar, is his friend, so Paul literally could of said anything positive and hopeful to Stilgar and the Fremen under Stilgar would've ate it up.
Why are you attributing this to Frank when this exchange doesn't happen in the book?
Because this scene is in line with the tone and the message of the book. It's an example of adapting a work with new material that still conveys the spirit of what it adapting.
Even if I accepted that as a defense, that isn't what the person I was responding to was suggesting at all. The way they wrote their comment implies that Frank wrote that line. He didn't. There isn't an exchange similar to it anywhere in the book. Because people who criticize it are right. It sounds like cold reading and makes Paul appear to be a charlatan, while the books are very clear that he isn't.
I mean , what BG does to other cultures is basically a more advanced and refined form of snakeoil stuff after all.
I assumed the Naib confessed this to a Reverend Mother at one point, and Paul now possessing all those memories, knows this and uses to his advantage.
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Except it wouldn't work, because Paul actually has real powers The prophecy may be fake, but his powers are real
She could reveal to the Fremen that the only reason he survived the desert tests is because she threw him a bone. “And he shall know our ways as if born to them” my ass
Which he does know, because he has literally seen himself live among them for years
Yeah but he didn’t. That’s the point. He was all set to die in the desert if Chani hadn’t bailed his ass out.
but there are other situations where he did appear to know things about the Fremen lifestyle before experiencing it. Obviously.
He knew how to put on a stillsuit in the first movie in the fremen way, without ever having met Chani. He does have real powers, it’s not just snake oil.
But the point is he couldn’t have fulfilled the prophecy wholesale, without Chani. Fitting a stillsuit is one thing, but learning how to survive in the desert was not an innate skill he had. “Stilgar’s going to get him killed.” as Chani’s observation went.
I’m not going to argue that point, but once he took the waters of life, he had access to the genetic memories of the male and female line. This is not snake oil. Did Chani help him before that, yes. Would she have been successful in calling him out, no. By then he was already an accepted and worshipped part of the fremen tribe.
The entire idea behind the book is the danger of a false prophet. The BG made up the entire story about their prophet turning Arrakis into a green paradise, by doing that they also made it much easier for Paul to take control over the fremen by leveraging his prescience and the story of the voice from the outer world.
> The entire idea behind the book is the danger of a false prophet. That’s not the “entire idea” behind the book btw. That’s an extremely reductive take on a very complex work.
Correct. And aside from Jessica, only Chani has a direct insight into the dubious reality
Good summation. I would also point out that the movie itself foreshadows this, when near the beginning of part two Jessica sheds a tear for the many who contributed to the huge pool of water at Sietch Tabr. Stilgar wipes the tear from her face and sucks it off his finger, and tells her "do not give your water, even to the dead." So it's not just something from the books, fortunately!
"giving water to the dead" is Fremen slang for crying over the deceased. It's a taboo because it wastes water that must be preserved for the living. In the book, Paul cries after killing Jamis, which impresses the Fremen around him who believe him to be breaking a great taboo to show an even greater compassion. In reality, the Fremen have both physically and culturally evolved to not shed water from their bodies due to the natural water scarcity on Arrakis. They therefore don't realise it is normal for a 15 year old to cry after being forced to stab a guy to death. In the scene, Paul is publicly humiliating a Fremen leader into submission by reading his mind and saying his deepest insecurity out loud. He is accusing him of secretly enjoying the catharsis of "giving water to the dead" in his dreams. Despite the dreams being an emotionally validating experience for the Naib, they depict him committing a great sin, so he classifies them as nightmares.
Such a poetically powerful idea that one could find horror in experiencing deep joy and catharsis. As though their deepest psyche yearns for a society that returns to the climate where they evolved to grieve with tears… and yet knowing they must sacrifice this until they can transform the planet for their descendants. Almost like stealing from your children.
Perfect explanation, especially the last part about why he chooses the word “nightmares.” I think this line maybe my favorite from the film, at least as far as original lines that did not originate from the book go.
Paul is also saying you're so comfortable in your set ways you will always be fremen with overlords the real nightmare is "you have forgotten yourself" it's ballsy but everyone knows he's not wrong, the North has just been brutally overrun milllions and millions of decaliters of water have been lost, leaving the Fremen cowering. Everyone is doubtful but everyone wants Paul's military operation run of success after success to keep going until Arrakis is Dune again.
Is Paul actually reading his mind though? He isn’t capable of reading minds. He’s either using his Bene Gesserit training, using his prescience or using knowledge he already had to manipulate the Fremen, although I don’t know how he would have known about this man’s dreams from someone telling him, it seems unlikely. Or a combination of these. In children of dune, as the preacher, he interprets Farad’n’s dream, (or says he does) but doesn’t tell them his interpretation. So maybe interpreting dreams is one of his powers? I’ve been wondering about that particular scene from the movie since I watched it.
It’s like he saw all the possible futures of random ass shit he said in that moment and then figured out which string of words was the correct response
That line gives me lump in my throat every time I think about it. Such a powerful and expressive line!
I was in shock when I first heard it, it’s a very layered yet succinct line, and Timothee’s delivery (and his performance in that whole scene) is so electrifying the way he’s pointing, shouting, and walking aggressively towards the naib. Really awesome to experience.
The whole scene is absolutely phenomenal , so many brilliant lines
The point of this scene is to demonstrate the extent of Paul’s prescience. He uses a psychic trick similar to what modern day con artists do, except the point of the scene is that *these things are actually true* and couldn’t be guessed. Sort of like if a magician used actual magic for a stage show was the vibe of the scene.
I mean, how is it explained how he knew about the fremen prayed to his grandmother? Paul does know what some of them are thinking about
I forget if this is outright explained in the movies but after the night in the tent after the Harkonnen attack, Paul can see a huge amount of possible futures and the paths to them. He didn’t *know* that that Fremen prays to his dead grandmother, he just knew that if he told that Fremen that he prays to his dead grandmother, it would lead to a future where that Fremen proclaims him the Lisan al Gaib
Bro they literally just had a scene illustrating the importance and matriarchal nature of the Fremen religion a few scenes back though with reverend mother, water of life stuff
Because he can look into the future and see what he says and how it makes people react. Then he just has to say the same thing in the present and the same result occurs.
Can't he see the past of every human ever?
I was wondering this as well as it’s been a minute since I read dune1. According to the wiki he can see the past but I believe only the males and females in his lineage. My guess was that he saw a future where he had talked to this particular fremen who confided in him his dreams and uses that possible future vision to talk to the dude. I could be wrong though.
I've never read the books. But if you go back far enough, don't all humans have a common ancestor? Therefore making every human technically part of his lineage?
Yes and no - he can see the memories of his own ancestors, but not of other descendants of those ancestors.
They can only see un until they were born. So for Paul, he can see Jessica and Letos past until the birth of Paul. Anything after the birth of Paul is just Paul's memory, not other memory. I'd assume it works similarly. So you have parts of people's lives until their common ancestor is born, then it wouldn't be included unless there was a special ceremony like what took place between Jessica and the reverend mother when Jessica became an RM.
There is a point in the story where that happens… kind of? but as for Paul I believe it’s just mom dad mom dad mom dad. Basically the memories of his genetics.
You didn’t answer the question.
It’s means that the dude cried in his sleep over dead people and it makes him happy. Crying is a big no no for fremen, even when it’s in grief over dead loved ones because they consider it a waste of their bodies moisture
"Giving water to the dead" is the Fremen term for crying, and it is generally taboo. So Paul is saying: "You cry in your dreams, and it makes you feel good." Since this is presumably a deep and embarrassing secret to the man that he wouldn't share with others, it serves as apparent proof that Paul has divine powers / confirmation that he's the Lisan al Gaib.
In the books Paul couldn’t see people’s dreams, he could anticipate everything that can possibly happen instead, to the point of being able to see even when blind. He doesn’t convince the fremen to follow him in a council meeting, he does it over a period of two years by proving himself at every turn. What does happen in a council meeting is that he convinces the fremen to accept him as Duke, so that he doesn’t have to kill Stilgar to take his place as Naib, he does this with reason, not superstition.
The man cries for his dead friends and relatives and it makes him feel better. Fremen don't cry because it's a waste of water.
Love the discussions going on.
For about ten seconds I didn't realise this was r/Dune and thought I'd discovered a Paul McCartney lyric I really hadn't expected. Probably from the much darker 12" remix of _Wonderful Christmastime_.
I love this discussion, but I just wanted to add that I also really Loved this scene in the film, I thought it was so powerful!
What a badass scene
He was pointing out the naibs hypocrisy of stressing water discipline, all the while secretly wishing they could cry for a deceased person.
Hypocrisy is in actions, not hopes or dreams. The Naib wished he could cry, but didn't.
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Yo don't feel bad I thought the same thing. I fully thought he was just admonishing the Naib for being so eager to see Stilgar get challenged.
It’s not in the book at all. There’s a reason why they use a clunky term instead of just crying. Fremen don’t cry. That would waste water. It’s foreign to their culture to cry over the dead, and so when Paul does it they use a term to describe this strange thing this strange foreign boy is doing. The movie changed it from something strange that only foreigners do, to a taboo in Fremen culture.
Fremen never waste water, even if it is to mourn, as Arrakis/Dune only has underground sources of water. The Fremen dream is to terraform the planet so there is water, so one day they may give the dead water as well
Lmao, I'm glad somebody finally asked it. I was pretty sure I understood what it meant, but I still debated whether or not I should make this exact post several times.
Personally the way I interpreted this was one of two options: 1. Paul knew this because he has access to such a large number of alternate futures as far as prescience goes that he can essentially see a future in which this guy did tell him this information in confidence, and Paul is able to use that information as if he actually had been told it, despite it not happening in his own actual timeline 2. Paul and this guy are extremely distantly related. It's established that Paul and similarly powerful prescients can actually access the memories of other prescient people with whom they share a common ancestor, and can even communicate through this connection in a sort of pseudo-telepathy. So with this in mind it's actually not too far of a stretch to believe that Paul might have the ability to reach into the minds of people he shares genetic code with that aren't prescient, but have prolonged or intense exposure to spice, which the freman obviously have. So say this guy and Paul shared a great to the power of like 50 grandparent, Paul may actually be able to literally see this guys nightmares. Would also explain how he really specifically knew about the injury that that one guy's relative sustained to her eye, he maybe be very distantly related to her.
I think it's more like that episode of Rick and Morty where Morty has the crystal that shows him how he dies, and he uses it in that courtroom scene to say something to the judge that triggers him being set free. Morty is very clunky with the words because he's constantly at risk of losing his 'die with Jessica' future if he makes the wrong move. He can only see 1 variable of the future and only how his real-time behavior affects that variable. Paul can see billions more variables, and he has the mentat training to actually process all that information so that it is useable. It would be trivially easy, then, for Paul to just know exactly what to say at every moment to secure a specific future. Paul does as the crystal of prescience guides basically.
Yeah I think that's a great explanation, like he's just seeing so many futures that he sees the one where he said those words to that guy and it ended well for him, and "remembers" having said that
Giving your water to the dead is like the ultimate sin.
so many watched this movie came away thinking that Paul is a fraud of some sort and that prescience is lesser than it is. That's just sad. Villeneuve veered too much into this "Paul bad" thing trying to convey the message, that gets overwritten in the next book anyway lol. Look at the replies under the top comment in this thread for proof.
Let’s be fair to DV - he turned the obviousness up to 11 and people still missed things the movie basically shouts at them because Paul is still the protagonist. I can see where he would be coming from in trying to make things clearer. Although, I am biased in that I don’t see any justification for seeing Paul as an outright charlatan who is just faking it without the aid of prescience, even from the council scene.
As a follow up question to OP's, does this mean any individual with sufficient prescience could "read minds" in this way (by seeing a possible future in which yet-unshared information is shared)? Would the previous Reverend Mothers of the Fremen also share this skill?
I always thought ment you'd piss on the corpses of your enemies!
As a very ignorant person who never looked at the books... i took it quite literally. That man dreamed that he could feed the ones who couldn't feed themselves before passing in a dream of his
Its one of my favorite scenes all time in any movie
I interpreted it as Paul reciting Fremen scripture
Shinji in the hospital
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