agentblack

Paul Atreides, as the son of the Duke, is relentlessly trained to fight and kill, his relexes supremely honed, his body conditioned like an athletes. His tutors are some of the most dangerous and gifted men alive.

For me, this was the coolest thing I could imagine, especially as the catastrophic amount of androgens dumped into my blood stream had turned me from a playful boy who liked star wars into a quiet intense young man who liked games that were SYSTEMS with RULES and PROCEDURES that were LOGICAL and could be LEARNT and MEMORISED and EXPLOITED to BEAT and DOMINATE your OPPONENT.

I liked them. I could understand them. Unlike girls - they confused me, and made my head feel weird.

But wait! It gets better! Paul Atreides learns that he could possibly the Kwisatz Haderach, the culmination of thousands of years of selective breeding of human bloodlines to create a superbeing.

The moment this secret becomes uncovered in the book, I was instantly hooked - The idea resonated with me, it felt powerful and intriguing and awesome.
It makes sense, with hindsight, that I would find the idea so arresting, as I was already deep in the clutches of a process that was making me stronger, taller, more aggressive, and just MORE all round.

I remember walking around feeling amplified, my fists balled up tight in my pockets, feeling this weird elastic power in my arms and legs, things which before just made me walk and move and stuff, but now made me feel like a weapon. It was this amazing secret that I kept to myself - that I felt like this terrible animal machine, that could run for weeks and punch through concrete and tear through flesh and bone.

The idea of the Kwisatz Haderach struck just the right chord in me - the one that went "FUCK YES".

But wait, there's more!

The House Atreides is betrayed, and Paul Atreides is stranded in the deep desert. His mother reveals to him that he has been trained from a young age as a Mentat - a human computer - And that soon, these abilities will reveal themselves.
I was a boy that liked SYSTEMS and RULES and PROCEDURES. When I was younger, before all those hormones turned me into a seething mass of biceps and bad attitude, I probably came across as bordeline autistic. The idea of a human computer, a cultivated and trained genius able to apply terrifying amounts of intelligence to any situation made me sweat.

What if I could be a Mentat? I might finally beat Dad at chess! No one would ever be able to beat me at Magic the Gathering ever again!

But this, combined with the Kwisatz Haderach concept, is what made Paul Atreides such an awesome character to me. There is a wealth of expectation heaped upon Paul Atreides, as the son of the Duke Atreides, as the possible Kwisatz Haderach, as a Mentat.
A phrase which often crops up in relation to Paul Atreides in the book is "The Sleeper Must Awaken".

I'd spent most of my time in school being told that I was intelligent and bright and capable, but that I must try harder. I knew that I should, and that I was able to, but nothing ever grabbed my attention for long enough, or was exciting enough to make it worthwhile.
Throughout the book, Paul Atreides often 'fails' to live up to the expectations of those around him, who want to him to take other, more obvious courses of action. Eventually, he brings the universe to its knees.

This was the most important thing in Dune for me, that Paul Atriedes could trust his own judgement and effectively defy the expectaction other held in him, and still WIN.

And then there were the Fremen.

The Fremen are the inhabitants of Dune, a planet that is total desert, a world so dry and dessicated that they were special 'stillsuits' to prevent the moisture within their own bodies becoming evaporated. The extreme enviroment has produced a hardy and tough people, used to thinking in the harsh absolutes that assure survival in such conditions. All Fremen are adept and capable killers, who follow a harsh desert religion, that predicts the arrival of the Lisan al'Gaib, a messiah figure that will unite the feuding tribes.

Paul Atreides assumes the role of Lisan al'Gaib, and forges the Fremen into an unbeatable fighting force that wages and bloody and merciless guerilla war against the House Harkonnen.

Hnnnngh. Gnnnngh. I think I'm going to have to do some chin ups or something. Dune is ace. Unnnnngh.