Jared Jacobson 1/28/12 Mrs.

Vernola AP English 11

A Study in Absurdity The word mock is defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary as a transitive verb meaning to mimic in sport or derision1. Carl R. Kropf, in his essay entitled Douglas Adamss Hitchhiker Novels as Mock Science Fiction, aims to show how the novels written by Douglas Adams have the intention of mocking the genre of science fiction as a whole. Kropf first discusses the way a mock genre functions2 by using the example of Alexander Popes Dunciad, a mocking of the epic genre. He explains that the mock genre typically makes use of all the conventions of the actual genre, but the conventions serve the opposite of their usual function3; in the case of Dunciad, this involves making the protagonist look like a dunce instead of like a glorious hero. The true purpose of reversing the conventions, though, comes from Popes desire to spin the purpose of the epic, which is to show the fall of barbarism to sophisticated society4, into a tale about the rise of barbarism. Through this, Kropf shows that the purpose of any mock genre is to show the faults and twist the ideology behind the original genre5. With this explanation as a lens, Kropf moves on to define what the conventions of the science fiction genre areand what its purpose as a genre is. He states that SF [Science Fiction] frequently celebrates the triumph of the human spirit, as personified by a hero of epic proportions, over seemingly impossible odds6. He goes on to say that Conventional SF depicts the Earths discovery of or return to its rightful place as first among equals in the galactic

community7 and quotes Asimov, who observed that science fiction can be defined as that branch of literature which deals with the reaction of human beings to changes in science and technology8. However, Kropfs major arguments deal with the concept of closure in fiction. He introduces the historical context of closure with Aristotle, who declared that an aesthetically pleasing work must have a beginning, middle, and end9, and then goes on to discuss several studies done in the late 60s and early 70s which proves that ending in fiction reflect the universal human urge to impose patterns of order and meaning on experience by determining how it all turns out10. Kropf continues to explain that even though contemporary SF authors like to stray away from having a neatly closed ending, the genre of SF, by definition, will always provide what we might call ideational closure. That is, it will always provide a kind of ideogram of the future towards which the present is moving11. What Kropf is saying here is that because SF shows us a future that is possible (and this is where, incidentally, the line between fantasy and SF is drawn), no matter what the outcome of the story it proposes some kind of ending for the human race. At this point, Kropf changes gears to focus on Adamss novel. He discusses how, in comparison to the epic hero of tradition SF, Arthur Dent is a bungling British Everyman whose heroic quest is confined to the search for a drinkable cup of tea12. Like the typical SF circumstances where the Earth has been destroyed, the two humans to escape are a man and a woman, and, one naturally expects, the two will eventually settle on some edenic planet13. However, Arthur remains indifferent to her [Trillian] and sex through the first three novels of the series14. His most important point, though, coincides with the concept of closure he explained at length. Kropf states how Adams seems to make a conscious effort to make the story a chronicle of aborted endings and inconclusive conclusions in the course of which [he] does

everything possible to outrage verisimilitude15. In other words, the navigating course of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (which, for conveniences sake, shall be referred to henceforth as H2G2, its typical shortening) is one of intentional disarray and purposeful misleading. This takes the very epitome of SF conventions, ideational closure, and entirely gets rid of it, for in a setting like this, of course, absolutely anything can happen, and the supposedly orderly march of fictional events as well as our expectations about reasonable extrapolation and ideational closure simply evaporate16. Kropf postulates that Douglas achieves this through an array of methods: destroying the Earth at the very beginning of the novel and having its sole legacy be the bumbling Englishman Arthur Dent, for instance, deliberately ruins all possibility of a future for the human race. Before the end of the first quarter of the novel, the SF convention has been not only broken but obliterated with all the bureaucratic ruthlessness with which the Vogons destroyed the Earth. He then moves on to explain how Adams uses series of events which lead the reader to believe something big is going to happenwhich all invariably end without a quality pay-off to further remove closure. His example from H2G2 is that of the computer Deep Thoughts task to answer the question to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything17. Millions and millions of years are spent in the build-up to the computer finally speaking the answer, and when it is given, it is not only highly unexpected but highly disappointing. 4218 seems to come from left field, throwing the reader entirely off-track. Kropfs actual intention of his essay, and how he draws countless pages of analysis together, is actually the weakest part of the entire thing. He pontificates that SF confirms our faith in an orderly universe19 and because H2G2 do not show a world without chaosonly he ends there. He does not explain what Adamss true purpose in showing the fallacies of the SF genre is. Perhaps this is on purpose, for his final lines comments

on the inconclusive20 nature of Adamss novels. It makes, though, for a disappointing conclusion. One word that Kropf never mentions is existentialism. However, the denial of closure and the denial of an order or meaning to life in the universeclosely parallel the ideas of existentialism. In fact, looking at the way existentialism plays a role throughout H2G2 helps to affirm Kropfs overlying statement that Adamss purports a universe without meaning. Existentialist themes manifest in three separate ways throughout the novel; Adamss narrator and characters consistently and frequently comment on how utterly insignificant the Earth (and humans) is to the grand scheme of the universe, the characters who try to impose meaning upon their lives tend to fail miserably while those who do not search for any significance are met with success with their endeavors, and a series of events (coincidences and otherwise) occur throughout the piece that hint at some greater meaning without ever offering what that may be. One the very first page of the novel, Adamss narrator describes the universe, going from big to small and finally getting to our sun and solar system, where orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose apedescended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea21. Right there, in plain text, it is stated that in comparison to the rest of the universe, Earth is unimportant. If the audience of this text was, let us say, an alien living fifty-thousand life-years away, then this might not be read as a statement of pointlessness in human life. However, the target audience is human beings, and giving the scope of importance on the Earth in comparison to the vastly huge universeas the eponymous Hitchhikers Guide says within the novel, Space is big. Really big. You just wont believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is22delivers a sense of futility and, yes, impotency at making any sort of impact on

anything whatsoever. To simply give a sense of perspective is not enough, however. For merely thirty pages later, the Earth is destroyed five minutes before the completion of the purpose for which it was built23. In conventional SF, perhaps, the destruction of the Earth would be a momentous occasion, filled with lavish descriptions of battles and smoke and explosions. Adams gives this scene three succinct sentences: There was a terrible ghastly silence. There was a terrible ghastly noise. There was a terrible ghastly silence24. There is an obvious sense that the Earth is not important enough to even deserve a proper death. The most evident way, though, in which Adams gives the reader a perception that Earthand life on Earthis meaningless and pointless is the perception of the planet from characters out in the universe. Before moving on to these perceptions, though, a particular line stands out in the time before Earth is demolished. In introducing a minor character, the narrator says Mr. L. Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based bipedal life form descended from an ape25. The connotation for the aphorism only human involves emotions and the capacity to make mistakes and learn from them, but Adams reverses this trope and takes it to a literal level, taking away the humanity of Prosser and describing him almost as an animal. To take this one step further: emotions are what give life meaning. When those are stripped away, life simply becomes existingi.e., the basic foundation of existentialism. By denying Prosser the ability to feel, Adams makes him the epitome of existentialism. The opinions of other life forms on the planet Earth, though, truly help to display how unimportant it is to the grand scheme of the Universe. Zaphod Beeblebrox, the President of the Galaxy, upon learning his ship had passed through the location of where Earth was, says How did we come to be there? I mean, thats nowhere26. Although this remark is not meant to be rude, it is highly telling. The President of the Galaxy does not consider the Earth to be of note. It

is the equivalent of a world leader today publicly stating that a portion of their country does not matter. It amply puts Earth in its place in a galactic scale, but the abuses towards the planet do not end there. Ford reprimands Arthur for being despondent about the Earths destruction, saying I wish youd stop sulking about that bloody planet27, implying that the place was not worth getting upset over. When Deep Thought announces that the computer it will design is to be called Earth, one of the technicians remarks What a dull name,28. The final blow, however, comes from Earths entry in The Hitchhikers Guide. Arthur, still shell-shocked from loses his home, is appalled at discovering its one-word blurb: Harmless? Is that all its got to say? Harmless!29. Fords rectification of this into two words (Mostly harmless30) hardly does much to placate Arthur, and it is not difficult to see why. The entirety of his entire world, his entire life, has been reduced to an undescriptive and shallow pairing of two two-syllable words; the other entries the narrator introduces to the reader are lengthy and descriptive, so in comparison to those, Mostly harmless seems nearly to be an insult, and is most definitely a comment on how significant the humans and human life are on the Universe at large. Characters throughout the course of the novel have the tendency to impose some sort of meaning on what is happening around them. This over-analyzing of life tends to cause these characters more pain and unhappiness than any feelings of fulfillment. The first character to look at is Arthur. He is a person who is consistently looking to connect with other people. In fact, one of his major problemsaccording to himselfis that He wasnt ever aware of ever having felt an organic part of anything31. When Ford obliquely talks of death and destruction in the pub, Arthur turned and smiled wanly at the rest of the pub just in case any of them had heard what was going on. None of them had, and none of them could understand what he was smiling at them for32. This connection Arthur craves is routinely denied until Arthurs quest for connection

becomes debased into a quest for a cup of tea33. A better perspective to look at, though, are the pandimensional mice searching for the Ultimate Question. Their species has spent an almost inane amount of time attempting to find some pattern of meaning to superimpose over the Universe. However, when questioned as to exactly why they have been searching for it, they are at a loss, saying Well, eventually just habit, I think, to be brutally honest34. If the search for the meaning is meaningless in itself, what sort of commentary does that provide on those who are searching for meaning? That it is just rote and habit instead of a pulling desire to understand displays to the reader that searching for a pattern is pointless. The beings even say that there comes a point Im afraid where you begin to suspect that if theres any real truth, its that the entire infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs35. If that is the truth, which certainly seems to be postulated by the footnote earlier in the novel denoting how the structure of power in the galaxy is actually entirely unknown36, then the search for meaning seems even more foolish. However, the character who characterizes this belief to the utmost is Zaphod Beeblebrox. Time and again the reader is reminded that Beeblebrox rarely seems to do anything for any reason, and his girlfriend had come to suspect that the main reason he had led such a wild and successful life was that he never really understood the significance of anything he did37. In comparison to someone like Arthur, who is searching for some sort of meaning or connection and typically ends up feeling miserable and extraordinarily lonely38, the difference in lifestyles and the reflective success is obvious. Zaphod had turned unfathomability into an art form39, but not even he himself understood his success. In one of his larger sections of dialogue, he explains this:
I freewheel a lot. I get an idea to do something, and, hey, why not, I do it. I reckon Ill become President of the Galaxy, and it just happens, its easy. I decide to steal this ship. I decide to look for Magrathea, and it all just happens. Yeah, I work out how it can best be done, right, but

it always works out. And then whenever I stop and thinkwhy did I want to do something?I get a very strong desire to stop thinking about it40.

Zaphod is the only character in the novel whose desires turn to fruition, and he is, in turn, the only character who does not try to understand why he wants these things. What this says about the nature of the Universe is paramount: there is no meaning, and you will be punished for trying to find it. Another character worth looking at is the aforementioned L. Prosser. Although his tenure in the novel is short, the narrator gives us good chance to see into the way his brain works. Prosser comments that he felt his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it41. Theoretically, Adams could have taken this somewhere. There could have been a big reveal as to who this enigmatic dreamer is and, in fact, a short conversation between Arthur and Slartibartfast later in the book does touch upon this:
All through my life Ive had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it is. No, said the old man, thats just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that. 42

In both occasions, though, any further development of this idea is shot down. Prosser does not mention this feeling again, and once Slartibartfast dismisses Arthurs intuition as paranoia, Arthur drops the subject as well. This ties in, of course, to the denial of any sort of meaning throughout the novels. For instance, there is the odd coincidence involving, and explained at great detail, Mr. Prosser, who was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan whose only vestiges of his mighty ancestry were a pronounced stoutness about the tum and a predilection for little fur hats43. This is something brought back again and again throughout

Prossers time in the storyhis inexplicable love for axes44, his strange but desirable images of death and destruction45, and phantasmal hauntings of hairy horsemen46but nothing ever comes of this. There is no dramatic turn of events swung around it, there is no plot twist; it is mentioned almost in passing detail, and despite his heritage, Prosser dies like everyone else when the Earth is destroyed. Adamss narrator sets the reader up to believe this coincidence is something of important, for why else would it be discussed at veritable length, but gives the reader no sort of conclusion to this. The pattern of build-up and disappointment is constant throughout the novel. It appears mainly in the vast amount of random coincidences which occur when involved with the Heart of Gold47. For instance, Zaphod Beeblebrox was on his way from the tiny spaceport on Easter Island (the name was an entirely meaningless coincidencein Galactispeke, easter means small, flat, and light-brown) to the Heart of Gold island, which by another meaningless coincidence was called France48. This once sentence is all that is spent on this; there literally is no meaning for this coincidence whatsoever. It just exists, perhaps as proof of the thoroughly random nature of the Universe. Similarly, a coincidence occurs a little while later:
What with space being the mind-boggling size it is the chances of getting picked up by another ship within those thirty seconds [the estimated time of survival in the vacuum of space] are two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand, seven hundred and nine to one against. By a totally staggering coincidence, that is also the telephone number of an Islington flat where Arthur once went to a very good party and met a very nice girl whom he totally failed to get off with49.

The true coincidence, though, is that twenty-nine seconds later, Arthur and Ford are rescued by a ship bearing that very girl. The ships aphorism about how lives are dominated by telephone

numbers50 could make an interesting route to travelbut neither Adams nor his narrator does so. It is dropped into the fabric of the novel and left there, undeveloped and not pursued. To move away from coincidences, Adams often drops little bits in the novel that, as with the telephone number statement, have the potential to lead somewhere with meaning, but purposely does not follow them through. For instance, when the millions of years of waiting for the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is over, the moment is anticlimactic for all the computer has to say on the matter is Forty-two51 and Youve never actually know what the question is52. From that point on, Adams builds up to the reveal of what this question is, but no one seems to know it and the pandimensional beings finally opt to simply make one up before returning home53. Another moment of denied closure is a simple one: Arthur is travelling down a tunnel and sees some light, and the narrator tells us that he guessed (quite wrongly) that it might be ultraviolet54. But what is this light, then? If the narrator knows, they do not share it with the reader, who is left to wonder what the purpose of including this information is in the first place. Finally, and perhaps the most humorous of the examples, is the Nutri-O-Matic drink machine, which, when the drink button was pressed made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subjects taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subjects metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subjects brain to see what was likely to go down well55all, though, for absolutely no reason since it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea56. There is, then, absolutely no purpose to the high-tech analysis of the drinker. These functions are in excess, and are never given any meaning or explanation; the reader is simply left to wonder. The denial of meaning concurrent throughout the novel together do what the individuals examples fail to do on their own: provide some sort of purpose or even, if taken that far, some

sort of meaning. It boils down to the fact, though, that the Universe is a meaningless place. Random things, such as a bowl of petunias falling from space and thinking Oh no, not again57 as it does, which remain unexplained prove this. Most occurrences in the Universe are truly random, with no underlying pattern or purpose or great meaning underneath them. Coincidences are only coincidental, after all. Overall, H2G2 spins the Universe as a rather pointless place. Its tone is not dark, and does not go as far as to touch the themes of nothingness in existential thought, but absolutely follows the tropes of the absurd. It is a book which is all over the place, sporadic and random but a thoroughly fun ride, affirming from its first page to its last that the world the charactersand the readerlive in is wonderfully absurd and to try and impose meaning upon an order-less chaos leads to nothing more than heartbreak and disappointment; to not appreciate the absurdity is to do it a disservice.

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