Dune | Why Paul’s visions don’t always come true

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Reader Interactions

Discussion

  1. Thank you for this write-up! the ending definitely caught me off guard. It’s nice you linked together all those dream sequences – as you said they went over my head during the first viewing.

  2. I read into that Jamis vision differently. It isn’t that his dreams don’t come try, it’s that his dreams don’t “exactly” come true.

    Jamis told him in his dream that he would show him the ways of the desert, and that Paul had to let go and go with the flow basically.

    Jamis did show him the ways of the desert, just not in the way that Paul dreamed it. No surrender in ritual duels, a life for a life. Paul followed the “Friend’s” lead, by fighting him to the death. He let go and flowed with the experience, by letting himself kill for the first time. In the end, the vision came true, he was initiated into Fremen society, but through Jamis’ death not friendship.

    Just my take.

    • Also, like to add on this point, In one of the vision’s when Jamis killed Paul, in the background narrator said, “Don’t be frightened, you take your own life when you take someone’s else life”. Also look in the same scene how Jamis holds Paul’s hands after he stabs him. The same way Paul also hold the hands of Jamis when he stabbed him. In an indirect way Jamis did helped Paul.

  3. Thanks! This has been bugging me for days and I finally decided to look and see if someone could explain it. Very appreciated!

  4. Well, I’m thinking it might twist another… we are told from Paul’s mother earlier on, Kwisatz Haderach would be a male Bene Gesserit who would have access to the memories of both his male and female ancestors as well as an ability to bridge space and time with prescient ability. Maybe it’s these abilities beginning to take form. It’s all about information. Paul can look to the future, past, as well as the present to make decisions. It was something Jamis told him from the future that had him release control of the thopter and survive..

    Again, just another thought…

    -B

    • You’re right, that’s definitely part of it! He’s starting to manifest those abilities. But the issue is that he killed Jamis in the duel. Meaning there’s no Jamis in the future to tell him that. Paul’s actually seeing multiple futures. Potential realities based on his choices. So there was a future in which Jamis said that. But that future is now impossible.

      • maybe he has learned these in his dream already. it was noted he knew thinks he shouldn’t know.

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