Gom Jabbar Test
The Gom Jabbar Test is the pivotal ordeal in Frank Herbert's Dune in which the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, the Emperor's Truthsayer, subjects the fifteen-year-old Paul Atreides to a test of his humanity. The test, conducted in his mother's morning room at Castle Caladan, requires Paul to keep his right hand inside a mysterious box that induces excruciating pain while a poisoned needle, the gom jabbar, is held at his neck. His survival and his ability to withstand the pain without withdrawing his hand prove him human and mark him as a potential Kwisatz Haderach, setting the course for his entire future.
The Arrival of the Reverend Mother
The test is set in motion a week before the Atreides family's departure for Arrakis, when an old crone comes to visit Paul's mother, Lady Jessica, at Castle Caladan. The old woman, who is the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, is let in by the side door and allowed a moment to peer in at Paul where he lies in his bed. Paul, awakened by the intrusion, sees a bulky female shape, a witch shadow with hair like matted spiderwebs and eyes like glittering jewels. The Reverend Mother's voice wheezes and twangs like an untuned baliset as she remarks on Paul's size, noting that he is already fifteen. She calls him a sly little rascal, and before leaving, she warns him, "Sleep well, you sly little rascal. Tomorrow you'll need all your faculties to meet my gom jabbar." Paul, left alone, wonders what a gom jabbar is, and the strange encounter becomes the strangest thing he has seen in all the upset of the time of change.
The next morning, Paul's mother tells him that the Reverend Mother is waiting and that he must tell her about his dreams. She also reveals that the old woman was her teacher at the Bene Gesserit school and is now the Emperor's Truthsayer. When Paul asks if she is the reason they got Arrakis, Jessica corrects him, saying, "We did not get Arrakis." Paul senses his mother's fear when he asks about the gom jabbar, a nervous betrayal he feels as fear.
The Test of Humanity
In the morning room, the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam sits in a tapestried chair, feeling her age and petulance, blaming space travel and the Spacing Guild for her discomfort. She is on a mission that requires personal attention from a Bene Gesserit with the Sight, and she inwardly curses Jessica for bearing a son instead of the daughter she was ordered to produce. When Paul and Jessica approach, Paul gives the short bow his dancing master taught for use "when in doubt of another's station." The Reverend Mother notes his caution, and after a tense exchange, she commands Jessica to leave, saying, "Leave us. I enjoin you to practice the meditation of peace." Jessica, despite her fear, obeys, reminding Paul to remember that he is a duke's son.
Alone with Paul, the Reverend Mother uses the Voice to command him to come to her. She then produces a green metal cube about fifteen centimeters on a side, with one side open to a black and oddly frightening darkness. She orders Paul to put his right hand in the box. Fear shoots through him, but the compulsion of her Voice makes him obey. As his hand enters the blackness, he feels cold, then slick metal, and a prickling sensation. The Reverend Mother lifts her right hand, poised near his neck, revealing a glint of metal. She explains that she holds the gom jabbar, the high-handed enemy, a needle with a drop of poison on its tip. She warns him not to pull away, and she tells him that the gom jabbar kills only animals. Paul, his pride overcoming his fear, demands, "You dare suggest a duke's son is an animal?" She replies, "Let us say I suggest you may be human."
The Reverend Mother explains the only rule of the test: "If you withdraw your hand from the box you die. This is the only rule. Keep your hand in the box and live. Withdraw it and die." Paul, realizing he is trapped, recalls the Litany against Fear his mother taught him: "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." Calmness returns, and he tells the old woman to get on with it.
The Ordeal and Its Aftermath
The pain begins as a faint burning in his hand, mounting slowly, heat upon heat. Paul clenches his left hand into a fist, feeling his fingernails bite into his palm. The pain throbs up his arm, sweat stands out on his forehead, and every fiber of his being cries out to withdraw his hand. He imagines his skin curling black, his flesh crisping and dropping away until only charred bones remain. Then, as though a switch had been turned off, the pain stops. The Reverend Mother mutters, "Enough. Kull wahad! No woman child ever withstood that much. I must've wanted you to fail." She withdraws the gom jabbar and tells him to take his hand from the box. Paul, astonished, finds his hand unmarked. The Reverend Mother explains that the pain was by nerve induction, and that the test was one of crisis and observation.
Paul, looking at the four bloody marks where his fingernails bit his palm, asks, "You did that to my mother once?" The Reverend Mother replies with a question, "Ever sift sand through a screen?" and explains that the Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans. She tells him that pain is merely the axis of the test, and that she observed him in pain. Paul, sensing the truth in her words, says, "It's truth!" The Reverend Mother, startled by his ability to sense truth, wonders if he could be the Kwisatz Haderach. She tells him to sit at her feet, but he refuses, saying, "I'm not my mother." She calls Jessica back into the room, and Jessica, seeing Paul alive and human, feels a profound relief.
The Reverend Mother then explains the purpose of the test, telling Paul that the Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans, and that the test is to determine if he is human. She speaks of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible, and of the two chief survivors of the ancient schools: the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild. She reveals that the Bene Gesserit's function is politics, and that they separate human stock from animal stock for breeding purposes. Paul, feeling an offense against his instinct for rightness, questions their methods. The Reverend Mother tells him about the Truthsayer drug and the place where no Truthsayer can see, a place that is said a man will one day come to find. She tells him that many men have tried the drug, but they tried and died. Paul, realizing the implications, asks if she thinks he could be the Kwisatz Haderach. She says, "Perhaps you are the Kwisatz Haderach."
The test leaves a profound mark on Paul. He feels that he has been infected with terrible purpose, a sense of destiny he does not yet understand. The Reverend Mother's words, "To set you free," echo in his mind as she explains that once men turned their thinking over to machines, but that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. She quotes the Butlerian Jihad commandment, "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind," and tells him that the Great Revolt forced human minds to develop. Paul, feeling the weight of his new awareness, realizes that his entire past training has been leading to this moment. The test, and the Reverend Mother's revelations, set him on a path that will lead him to become Muad'Dib, the Kwisatz Haderach, and the leader of the Fremen.
