Piter de Vries - Character

Character

In the service of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, De Vries is a Mentat — a human specially trained to perform mental functions rivaling computers (which are forbidden universe-wide). De Vries has been "twisted" — made into an amoral sadist by his Tleilaxu creators. This makes him an ideal candidate to be the Baron's Mentat.

De Vries' loyalty to his master is unusual in that he continues to serve the Baron with great enthusiasm even though his Mentat abilities and great intelligence confirm his suspicions that his master plans to eventually kill him. As he says in Dune:

But you see, Baron, I know as a Mentat when you will send the executioner. You will hold back just so long as I am useful. To move sooner would be wasteful and I'm yet of much use.

Read more about this topic:  Piter De Vries

Famous quotes containing the word character:

    “Giving presents is a talent; to know what a person wants, to know when and how to get it, to give it lovingly and well. Unless a character possesses this talent there is no moment more annihilating to ease than that in which a present is received and given.”
    —Pamela Glenconner (1871–1928)

    “A faithful lover is a character greatly out of date, and rarely now used but to adorn some romantic novel, or for a flourish on the stage. He passes now for a man of little merit, or one who knows nothing of the world.”
    —Anonymous, U.S. women’s magazine contributor. Weekly Visitor or Ladies Miscellany, p. 20 (April 1803)

    “Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour’s household, and, underneath, another—secret and passionate and intense—which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him.”
    —Willa Cather (1873–1947)