Tuesday, February 27, 2018

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Absurdity

In Douglas Adams' book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" he piles insane events and circumstances on top of each other in order to show the way that life sometimes just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. No matter how much the straight-man lead character, Arthur Dent, tries to make sense of it, he just can't. Especially when his day just gets weirder and weirder.

At the start for example, Arthur is about to have his house demolished without warning. The plans for demolishment had been "official" for months, but nobody had actually considered asking or telling him. They had been on "display" for months in a basement with no stairs locked in a filing cabinet in a room with a "Beware of leopard" sign on it. This absurd situation escalates with aliens come to demolish Earth, feeling no sympathy since the plans had been on display light years away. A direct mirror of Arthur's situation.

Luckily for Arthur, he's saved by his friend Ford Prefect, who was actually an alien stranded on Earth. From there, their adventures get more insane each passing page. The book takes expectations that the reader might have and slams them on the ground in the most absurd ways possible. Perhaps the greatest example of absurdity in the book though, is the famous supercomputer scene. The greatest supercomputer in history had been built, said to be able to answer anything. When asked the meaning of life, the supercomputer needed millions of years to figure it out. And after millions of years, everyone crowds around in anticipation, to learn to meaning of life, the universe, and of course everything, the computer simply says 42. That is to say, there is no meaning. There is no grander purpose behind everything. The world is just insanity, and it's up to everyone to find their own meaning.

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