Drowningworms - Drowning Worms

Why the Northern Fremen don't believe in the Prophecy

The reason is just an incredibly simple, sociological reason. What do they keep pointing out about Arrakis? That the south is harsh and uninhabitable... to outworlders. We know this harsh environment increases religious fervour to bolster survival, but what does this mean for the north? Why did they lose their faith?

The settler's cities, Arrakeen and Carthag, are situated in the north. The Harkonnens don't believe the south is habitable so they only mine spice in the north. Their brutal suppression of the Fremen are only in the north.

So imagine you are one of the Northern Fremen. You know there's a prophecy about the Lisan al-Gaib, the Voice from the Outer World that would save your people. But here are these outworlders, who rampage your planet, who enslave and brutalize your people, who only see Arrakis as a resource, and its inhabitants as a means to an end, or "rats" that are in the way of their bottom line. Rats to be exterminated. Seeing all of this, of course you would start to doubt the prophecy. If this is how real outworlders are, why would the Lisan al-Gaib be any different from them?

And this is why Chani and the other Northern Fremen stop believing. They see through its manipulation of the Fremen. But they also understand that if the Fremen band together and fight back, they can win battles on their own. The Southern Fremen don't see any of this, because they're essentially protected from the violence of the colonizers by the dust storms near the equator. They might hear stories about the Harkonnens, but that wouldn't shake their faith in the Lisan al-Gaib. They are willing to simply wait for the "right" kind of outworlder, which does come along in the form of Paul and Jessica.

I think this is a really clever explanation of this divide in the thinking of the Northern and Southern Fremen, which is also related to the idea of how the environment that people grow up in shape their beliefs and their culture. Even though this is a departure from the first novel, this change is still true to the spirit of Frank Herbert's Dune.

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drowningworms

8 months ago

Every mosquito bite is an itchy way of joining yourself with nature.

A little bit of you becomes mosquito.

And then becomes a hundred mosquitoes.

A little bit of you then becomes fish and dragonfly, bluebird and bat.

A little bit of you will become grass and trees after that.

That itch is the itch of becoming one with Creation.