Spencer White

10/4/20

Hello Ms. Gibson

Dune

Frank Herbert

Page 1-99

The main character Paul, is tasked to seek out a valuable resource called melange, often referred to in the book as “the spice”, which extends life spans and increases mental capabilities. Paul was trained by elite soldiers and assassins, but before he’s able to hunt for the spice, he needs to take a test of endurance called the “gom jabbar”, in which he is forced to feel blinding pain to judge his humanity.

I am not entirely sure whether I like this book or not. There are so many words that the author made up and requires you to look into the back of the book in the dictionary of all of these words or use context clues to figure out what they are, and it all adds up to a book that is very cumbersome and difficult to read. However, I like how the main character must go through many hardships to prove himself. This aside, I do not necessarily like Paul himself, as I think his personality feels very generic, and is only doing the things he does to prove himself to his mother and not really thinking about a motive besides that. I’m having a hard time understanding some things in the book and am most likely going to read the first section of the book over again and really try to focus in on the book and story.