(All citations are from The Illustrated Dune by Frank Herbert.)
Anthropology has been described as “the most scientific of the humanities, and the most humanistic of the sciences.” Sharlotte Neely, Ph.D., discusses what it means to be human within the Duniverse, and unlike the Bene Gesserit’s narrow definition, the focus here has little to do with mere pain tolerance .
A NTHROPOLOGY’S APPEAL, unlike sociology and other disciplines that study people, lies in its breadth. Frank Herbert realized this and made use of the fact in Dune . If a topic somehow relates to people, it is anthropology. In other words, anthropology is incredibly holistic. One can be an anthropologist and study humans as either social or physical beings or both, anywhere on the planet, during any time period. The discipline is so broad that even those who study wild chimpanzees, humans’ closest living relatives, are anthropologists.
Cultural anthropologists study the behaviors and traditions of societies all over the planet, concentrating on the non-Western world so often overlooked by other disciplines. Herbert fulfilled this focus of cultural anthropology with the creation of societies as different as the one ruled by the kindly Duke Leto Atreides on Caladan and the one ruled by the cruel Baron Vladimir Harkonnen on Giedi Prime. Herbert’s ultimate society is, of course, that of the Fremen of Arrakis. Archaeologists are the cultural anthropologists of the past, studying societies that existed hundreds or thousands of years ago. Herbert pursued this path in anthropology with the bits and pieces of information he provided on how past societies were dominated by thinking machines and how those past societies impact the present. Linguists are anthropologists who study the thousands of human languages, both living and dead, and how language shapes a view of the world. Examples of this in Dune include instances of Bene Gesserit code phrases and the speech patterns of various schools of espionage. Physical anthropologists focus on human biology whether it is human evolution or contemporary genetics. Herbert looked at topics ranging from the effects on the human body of geriatric melange to the breeding program of the Bene Gesserit.
Anthropology is best known, however, for its examination of exotic cultures, and anthropologists pride themselves on their ability to interpret other ways of life. In writing Dune , Frank Herbert drew most heavily upon anthropology in describing the Fremen people and their traditions. Nowhere is the influence of anthropology on Herbert more powerful than when the Fremen leader Stilgar intrudes upon a strategy meeting Duke Leto Atreides has convened with his staff, early in Dune (93–97).
At one point Stilgar pulls aside his veil and pointedly spits on the conference table. Interpreted via their own cultural values, the Duke’s men view Stilgar’s action as an insult and jump to their feet to restrain the Fremen leader. They stop only because Duncan Idaho, the Duke’s Swordmaster of Ginaz, orders them to stop. Playing the role of cultural broker, a translator of other cultures, Idaho assures those at the conference table that they have not been insulted. Instead, he interprets the symbolism of the act in terms of Fremen culture. Idaho reminds them that water is such a precious commodity on the planet Arrakis that, in fact, Stilgar’s behavior was an act meant to convey honor, not insult, to the Duke.
Idaho speaks and acts as an anthropologist would: “‘We thank you, Stilgar, for the gift of your body’s moisture. …’ And Idaho spat on the table in front of the Duke. Aside to the Duke, he said: ‘Remember how precious water is here, Sire. That was a token of respect’” (Dune 95).
Even earlier in Dune than the scene just described, the influence of anthropology is felt. Anthropologists often describe the feeling of culture shock anyone experiences when encountering a new and different society for the first time, and anthropologists love to tell stories of their own episodes of culture shock. Dune begins with a description of a world so different from our own that the reader experiences some culture shock. One struggles to grasp the social organization of this new world and to deal with all the new terms. There are, in fact, so many new terms invented by Herbert for Dune that he devoted twenty pages at the end of the book to a “Terminology of the Imperium.” The reader, like an anthropologist beginning fieldwork in a new land, flips back and forth to this dictionary to get the meanings of all the foreign words.
I first read Dune on the recommendation of two of my anthropology students. And when I recommend Dune to someone else, I give the same words of caution those students gave me: You have to read the first part of Dune on the faith you will love this book. Otherwise, your struggle to grasp this new world will make you give up on the book. First the culture shock and then the appreciation.
There is a lot that is new in the world of Dune . Within the first ten pages, the reader is exposed to a material culture that includes suspensor lamps and gom jabbars, a social organization of royal concubines and fiefs-complete, and a religion with its “Litany against Fear” and the ability to use Voice. Along with the reader, the main character, Paul Atreides, struggles with culture shock: “Paul’s mind whirled with the new knowledge” (Dune 4).
Later in Dune when Paul and his mother, the Lady Jessica, find themselves refugees among the Fremen, they experience culture shock. People most often experience culture shock over common things like new smells, the taste of food, the distance between people in conversation. When Paul and Jessica arrive at Stilgar’s home base, his sietch, they are assaulted with strange and unpleasant smells. By contrast, the Fremen are comforted by the “smells of home.”
To help Paul in his adjustment, Jessica coughs to get his attention, and says, “‘How rich the odors of your sietch, Stilgar. …’ And Paul realized she was speaking for his benefit, that she wanted him to make a quick acceptance of this assault on his nostrils” (Dune 341).
Within hours of their arrival at Stilgar’s sietch, they are exposed to stillsuits and reclamation chambers where a body’s moisture in the form of sweat, urine, or feces can be recycled. That same day Paul is also confronted with the new responsibility of caring for the widow and children of Jamis, a Fremen Paul has defeated in mortal combat. If Paul and Jessica are to be accepted among the Fremen, they have to overcome their culture shock and adapt quickly to a new and different society (Dune 341–347).
In Dune , Herbert quickly draws upon several important concepts from anthropology, including culture, the symbolism of language, and holism. When the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam tests Paul to see if he is human, that is a microcosm of anthropology’s concept of culture. According to anthropologist L.A. White, culture is a uniquely human trait best illustrated by humanity’s ability to ascribe symbolic, non-inherent meanings to things, events, and ideas. Language is the proof that someone possesses culture in the form of symbolic thought.
An early example of the symbolism of language is Herbert’s introduction of the word kanly . In telling the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen that “‘the art of kanly still has admirers,’” the Duke has chooses a word that conveys a precise meaning. As the Baron says, “‘Kanly, is it? … Vendetta, heh? And he uses the nice old word so rich in tradition to be sure I know he means it’” (Dune 15).
Anthropology prides itself on being the most holistic of all the disciplines that study people. That means, in being trained as an anthropologist, one studies topics as diverse as ecology, forensics, family life, and archaeology with the assumption that every category of knowledge affects every other category. That holistic point of view is central to Dune . Herbert refers to the interconnectedness of everything as a “world’s language” and talks of “a world being the sum of many things” (Dune 32–33).
The influence of anthropology is obvious in Herbert’s creation of the Fremen, a tribal people in danger of being destroyed by a technologically superior society bent on getting at Fremen natural resources. It is a story often told in anthropology. In the case of the fictional Fremen, that natural resource is melange, the geriatric spice, found only on Arrakis. Historically, native peoples have been attacked and displaced to get at natural resources as diverse as gold, silver, rubber, timber, fish, oil, coal, natural gas, uranium, and even water.
The story of the Fremen is not unlike that of the real-life Cherokees, who were forced off their traditional lands in the southern Appalachians by a larger white American society out to get the gold discovered there. At the time of European contact, the Cherokees were the largest tribal population in what is now the United States and initially survived better than smaller groups swept away in the flood of Manifest Destiny. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, the westward expansion flowed first around the Cherokees and then began to erode the fringes of tribal territory. Cherokee lands were agriculturally superior, and white farmers wanted the Cherokees removed. The fate of this Native American group was sealed, however, when gold was discovered on Cherokee land. When removal ultimately became a reality, many Cherokees fled to the sanctuary of remote caves as the Fremen do in Dune .
The main reason the Fremen survive is the emergence of a new leader, Paul Atreides in the form of Muad’Dib. The step-by-step process by which Paul comes to lead the Fremen is straight out of the revitalization movement theory of anthropologist A. F. C. Wallace. A society under attack can spiral down to cultural death or reincarnate itself through a revitalization movement. Such movements are typically part religious and part political, as with the Fremen. They usually start with one visionary, like Paul, who through a trance-like state realizes how his group can survive and flourish. The visionary then goes on to become a prophet, communicating his message to larger and larger segments of his society.
If successful, a revitalization movement ultimately transforms itself into a religion and/or political entity, which is what happens in the sequels to Dune . Real-life examples include the Longhouse Religion of the Iroquois, begun under the visionary Handsome Lake in the late eighteenth century; the Native American Church, begun under Cheyenne visionaries in the late nineteenth century; and the American Indian Movement, begun under visionaries like Dennis Banks, a Chippewa, in 1968.
The revitalization movement that most influenced Frank Herbert, however, has to be that of the Prophet Mohammed and the origins and spread of Islam. Herbert set his revitalization movement in the same physical environment in which Islam began. He also used terms like mahdi , the word for the prophesied redeemer of Islam, for the Fremen visionary, Paul Muad’Dib. At the end of Dune , when the Fremen are ready to sweep throughout the known universe, the scene is reminiscent of Islam’s spread by the sword throughout the known world.
I think the reason I, as an anthropologist, was drawn to Dune and all its sequels was the story of the Fremen. It is an archetypal story of tribal survival in the face of conquest. I often joke that my specialty within anthropology is more specific than politics, social organization, and adaptation, that what I really study is adaptive survival strategies of small groups, or how to win when winning is impossible. The Cherokees, with whom I have lived and worked, were depopulated through disease, warfare, and forced removal. At times they seemed to be on the road to extinction. Like the Fremen, however, they have a knack for survival. In Dune , Frank Herbert created a world as complex and intricate as any real culture, and the Fremen are at the heart of his book.
SHARLOTTE NEELY, Ph.D. , is an award-winning professor of anthropology at Northern Kentucky University. A native of Savannah, GA, she holds degrees in anthropology from both Georgia State University in Atlanta and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of the well-reviewed book Snowbird Cherokees and a consultant on the award-winning documentary film of the same title. Dr. Neely has a lifelong love of science fiction and is the author, as Sharlotte Donnelly, of Kasker , a novel of anthropological science fiction. She thinks Dune is the greatest SF novel of all time.