Katedra Anglistiky a Amerikanistiky Bakalářská Diplomová Práce 2019 Petr Sobotka

Masarykova univerzita Filozofická fakulta

Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky

Bakalářská diplomová práce

2019 Petr Sobotka

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Petr Sobotka

Tendentious Humour in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph. D. 2019

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………..

Author’s signature

Acknowledgements

Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D. for his useful comments and

patience. I would also like to thank my family and friends for their encouragement and for

putting up with me being locked in a room barely communicating with the outside world.

Table of Contents

1. The Introduction ...... 1

2. Theoretical Approaches to Humour ...... 4

2.1. The Relevance Theoretic Approach ...... 5

2.2. The Semantic Approach ...... 8

3. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series ...... 11

3.1. The Overview of the Series ...... 11

3.2. The Analysis of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ...... 14

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ...... 14

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe ...... 28

Life, the Universe and Everything; So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish;

Mostly Harmless ...... 33

4. Conclusion ...... 36

5. Works Cited ...... 38

6. Abstract ...... 40

7. Resumé ...... 41

1. The Introduction

The genre of science fiction is a common medium for commenting on philosophical questions or social or political issues. Be it literature or film, the best works of this genre are often those dealing with topics that give the reader or the viewer something to think about. However, most of these works are set in either utopian or dystopian universes. While these universes lend themselves very well to the type of messages most science fiction authors want to convey, it does become rather stale when all the sci-fi works dealing with interesting topics are set in somewhat similar worlds.

Authors like George Orwell, Philip K. Dick or the Strugatsky brothers mostly work with similar concepts, be it evil governments exploiting people, people destroying Earth through their own doing or aliens doing so for them.

However, as Douglas Adams proves with his world building in The Hitchhiker's

Guide to the Galaxy series, not every meaningful narrative needs to happen in either a dreary or idealistic universe. Adams ignores these traditional worlds that have been used so often and creates a world that is based on chance and improbability and where most of the traditional world building techniques are replaced with absurd humour and satire.

Adams utilises humour to satirise the traditions of the genre and to convey messages that would be traditionally portrayed in a dystopian or utopian fashion. Adams proves that works of certain genres do not necessarily need to stick to the same settings that have become traditional for those genres. In this thesis, I would like to present several instances which illustrate the methods Adams uses to create such an engaging world, offer possible interpretation of those passages and discuss several theoretical approaches to humour in connection with Adams’ use of humour.

As the aim of this thesis is to analyse Adams’ use of humour, and humour is a rather vast subject, it is necessary to establish the scope of this thesis. The Hitchhiker's

Guide to the Galaxy is built almost exclusively upon humour, however, there are several types of humorous instances. This thesis will primarily focus on the more complex satirical and allegorical aspects of the series, rather than the simpler, mostly absurd jokes.

The second chapter, divided into two subchapters, therefore presents and discusses a couple of theoretical approaches to humour. It offers some general information about the theories together with some examples and thoughts on their actual usage, all with the intention to figure out which of those approaches is better suited for analysis of the chosen humorous aspects of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.

While this chapter is mostly theoretical, the ideas described in this chapter help in determining what to focus on in the various passages chosen for analysis.

The third chapter of this thesis is then dedicated to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the

Galaxy series itself, however, this thesis will only consider the five books written by

Douglas Adams himself, even though the series technically consists of six books. The first subchapter contains some general information about the series, together with a brief summary of the series’ plot, and it also presents some thoughts on the popularity of the series. The second subchapter then deals with the analysis itself. It is further divided by each novel separately. This is the most extensive part of the thesis. There are numerous passages and humorous instances from the novels, each with a possible interpretation according to the selected theoretical approach.

Since The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series has such a unique style of humour used to portray such an enticing story, I have read the series several times.

Starting with Czech translations early in my teenage years and later moving onto the 2 original English versions. However, I have always read the novels just for pleasure as a leisure activity and thus I have never dissected the books into such details as I did this time reading them, and even after the numerous readthroughs, I still managed to find new notions and new metaphors to think about.

2. Theoretical Approaches to Humour

Through thick and thin, comedy or humour in general has always been there for man to help him, at least for a while, forget about his problems or just simply when he was looking for some amusement. That is especially true for satire and parody as even when soldiers were fighting for their lives and the lives of their loved ones, satire and parody have been there to offer a welcomed distraction during those grim situations.

From the baby steps of satire in the Ancient Egypt (such as The Satire of the Trades), through the great works of literature such as Mark Twain’s The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn, to hilarious mute films of Charlie Chaplin (e.g. Shoulder Arms), satire has many forms and many ways to entertain. And because people find different humour funny and because humour spreads as far as the eye can see, its analysis is not an easy task.

However, there are several approaches to the analysis of humour and this chapter will cover and explain at least a couple of them. As the primary purpose of this chapter is to figure out the best approach to analyse the different humorous instances in Douglas

Adams’ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it will be predominantly theoretical. It will often draw from Zohra Fatima’s Humor, Satire and Verbal Parody in The

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Relevance Theoretic Approach as it provides arguably the best summary of humour analysis in relevance with the topic of this thesis.

The first subchapter will cover the relevance theoretic approach to humour analysis and the second will be interested in the semantic approach. However, for the purpose of the analysis of Adams’ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, this thesis will be focusing primarily on one of these approaches, preferably the one which turns out to be more suitable or more fitting for analysing the selected humorous cases.

2.1. The Relevance Theoretic Approach

This subchapter will cover the basic principles of the relevance theoretic approach and its use in regards of the analysis for this thesis. It will focus on the origins of the theory and it will explain its primary principles. As Zohra Fatima dedicated her work Humor, Satire and Verbal Parody in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A

Relevance Theoretic Approach to the primary source for the analysis in this thesis (as the title suggests), it will therefore be used extensively. This chapter will also include a couple of personal observations and notions which round up the whole idea of the relevance theoretic approach as well as make it more approachable for those less familiar with this theory.

The beginnings of the relevance theoretic approach date back to the late 1980’s and the theory itself was proposed by a British linguist Deirdre Susan Moir Wilson and a French cognitive scientist Dan Sperber. It is slightly difficult to precisely pinpoint the exact year in which the final theory was published or presented to the public as it has developed through several publications in 1986, 1987 and later in 1995, 1998 and

2002.1 Although there seem to be several versions of the theory, it seems that the 2002 version that was published in The Handbook of Pragmatics in 2004 is the final version, with a shortened version in the Proceedings of the Tokyo Conference on

Psycholinguistics2. The Handbook of Pragmatics version of the theory is also the version that will be referenced in this thesis. The introductory chapter of this paper gives out reasons to believe that the British/French duo inspired themselves in the works

1 Wilson, Deirdre and Sperber, Dan. "Relevance Theory." The Handbook of Pragmatics. Horn, Laurence R., and Ward, Gregory. p. 608 2 According to the version of the Relevance Theory paper by Wilson and Sperber available at UCL publications website. 5 of Herbert Paul Grice and his Co-operative Principle and maxims of Quality, Quantity,

Relation and Manner terms.

From Wilson’s and Sperber’s Relevance Theory, two primary principles of the relevance approach can be identified. Zohra Fatima promptly summarises those, with the semantic approach in mind as well:

As opposed to the predominantly semantic approaches adopted by many

linguistic theories of humor, studies conducted on humor within a Relevance

Theoretic framework entail that comprehension of humor – as any other instance

of communication – depends on the context as well as the cognitive abilities of

the reader or hearer. (Fatima 38)

Both works suggest that for the reader or hearer to successfully grasp and understand the humorous utterance, they need to comprehend the relevance of the situation and have sufficient knowledge and recognition of context, in which the situation will be amusing. If either the context or the cognitive ability to fully grasp the utterance were to be absent, the hearer or reader would have been left in a state of confusion, or less dramatically would have simply miss the intended humorous encounter or remark.

As context and cognitive ability are the two standing stones upon which the relevance theory approach is built, they most certainly deserve a deeper or more elaborate breakdown. Beginning with the contextual aspect, it is firmly connected with the background information of the hearer or reader, or with what could be called general compendium. According to Fatima, this background information – or general compendium – “… is what determines whether the reader/hearer is able to arrive at the intended humorous interpretation of the text/instance.” (Fatima 38). What Fatima wants to say with this is that when the author of an instance or a text is creating it with a

6 purpose to humour someone, they have to make it humorous in such a way that the background information required will be available to the majority of the receivers, in other words, that it will be able to entertain the majority. Majority being the key word here as these texts or instances will arguably never reach out to all of the receivers and will never reliably humour one hundred percent of them, however, when they entertain the mainstream or the typical hearer or reader, that is more than enough.

While the cognitive ability as a part of the relevance theoretic approach might seem obvious, it cannot be stressed enough how important it actually is and how difficult it sometimes is to include it in one’s work. Cognitive ability is even more so relevant to this thesis as Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy often builds its humour on parody and satire. Both of these tools of comedy work with reference, and it is therefore necessary to sufficiently stress out the humorous instances, however, the key to success is not overdoing it as, with quantity, the occasion might lose its entertaining quality. Furthermore, as Griffin mentions in his work A Critical

Reintroduction, “A work of satire is designed to attack vice or folly. To this end it uses wit or ridicule. … it seeks to persuade an audience that something or someone is reprehensible or ridiculous” (Griffin 1), the humorous instance with satire (or parody as for this part of the argument it makes no difference) is constructed on ridiculing something or someone. And in the age during which the “movement” of political correctness is on the rise, it would not do the author any good to offend the majority of their audience. Once again, the word “majority” is essential here as satiric or parodic humour will rarely work without offending at least a small group of people.

While the context and the cognitive ability conclude the relevance theoretic approach and both Fatima and the Wilson/Sperber duo would have considered them sufficient, I would dare to add one more category which arguably plays a huge role in

7 humour as well, and that is timing. Even though this is more relevant to authors themselves rather than to the relevance theory, in my opinion, the importance of timing in relation to a humorous instance should be mentioned as well. Generally speaking, timing of humour is more important in stand-up comedy or in spoken entertainment but taking timing into consideration is crucial for the authors of literature as well, including

Douglas Adams. While staying relevant to the topic of this thesis, the author should be credited for how well he works with timing and because of it, the parts that are supposed to be humorous actually are.

2.2. The Semantic Approach

There are couple of ways to analyse humour in general and many of which can be used for an analysis of humour in literary works. The semantic approach is often used in works in which the relevance theory is complicated or impossible to apply and as such represents the most often used tool for humour analysis. By looking at how it approaches the source text and which methods it uses for the said analysis, this chapter will not only serve as a theoretical background for the semantic approach, but it will also decide whether this approach is suitable for the analysis of the humour in The

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Firstly, the history of the theory – it originated in the mind of Victor Raskin, a soviet born citizen who emigrated to the United States in 1978. Two years later he became a professor of linguistics at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, and in

1985 he published a book called Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. With fields of study ranging from ontology, through linguistics and semantic theory to the theory of

8 humour3, it is therefore natural that professor Raskin’s groundwork should be used as a primary source for this theoretical background part of this thesis.

Now that the origin of the semantic approach is covered, several things should be mentioned – what does it stand for and what are its suitable applications. Arguably, this can be done most clearly and visibly when compared directly with the relevance approach. Unlike the relevance approach, semantic analysis of humour is suitable for works where the humour is based either on a punchline, narrative based humour or on what it semantically entails. To analyse humour using the method that Raskin came up with, he claims that two stipulations must be met, and specifically that "The text is compatible, fully or in part, with two different scripts” (Raskin 99) and that “The two scripts with which the text is compatible are opposite [...]. The two scripts with which the text is compatible are said to overlap fully or in part on this text” (Raskin 99). If these conditions are met, the text can be considered funny.

Based on what Raskin claims and what humorous instances can be analysed through the semantic approach, it has to be concluded that the relevance theoretic approach is much more appropriate to use in relation to the primary analysis in this thesis. This does not mean that Raskin’s approach would be generally speaking deficient, however, for the purpose of this thesis, it is less suitable. The Hitchhiker’s

Guide to the Galaxy often relies on satire and parody in its humour and in that case, the semantic theory would struggle to grasp and as a result analyse the humour properly and thoroughly. Since satire and allegory are the main means of communication in this series, the analysis will focus on the possible interpretations of those instances rather

3 Professor Raskin’s curriculum vitae 9 than focusing on their structure. However, as Adams also uses absurd humour and analysing this type of humour might require the use of both the relevance and the semantic approach or at least considering both views, the semantic approach should not be completely dismissed as it might be convenient in some cases.

3. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series

3.1. The Overview of the Series

The main analysis in this thesis is of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. The aim of this subchapter is to present the series, give some background information regarding its conception, publishing, briefly summarise the narrative and most importantly present some of the reasons for its popularity.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a science-fiction series that, as Fatima notes, “combines both the features of a satire and a parody with a story line distinctive of a science fiction” (41). Most likely thanks to this combination, the series has, over the years, become a world-wide, multi-media phenomenon.

It started as a radio broadcast in 1978 on the BBC and it was later adapted into several other media, including a theatre play, a TV series, a computer game and most notably a feature film and a series of novels. Especially the novels became hugely popular. In the BBC’s Big Read 2003 survey for the United Kingdom’s favourite books,

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was rated at number four4.

As Adams kept expanding on the original The Hitchhiker’ Guide to the Galaxy novel, he wrote several other novels that constitute the series of the same name. This series eventually ended up with six books, but only five5 of them are written by Adams himself. With later publications, the series ended up being deliberately misnamed as

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts and the naming scheme

4 2003 BBC’s Big Read survey 5 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe and Everything; So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish; Mostly Harmless 11 kept on evolving with each subsequent addition to the point where the fifth book included subtitles such as “The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named

Hitchhiker's Trilogy” or “the book that gives a whole new meaning to the word

'trilogy'”6. There is also a sixth book to the series called And Another Thing…, but this book was written by Eoin Colfer as Adams died in 2001 and did not manage to write the sixth instalment himself as he had planned so Colfer used some of Adams’ ideas to finish the series.

While there were understandably some changes to the narrative between the numerous adaptations, the basic narrative remains the same across all the versions. The basic narrative follows a human named Arthur Dent, a rather ordinary British man, on his adventures that start in a rather peculiar way. He wakes up one morning to realise that his house is about to be torn down so a road can be built in its place. While it seems that things cannot get any worse, the opposite is the truth. Aliens called Vogons arrive to the Earth so they can destroy the planet to make way for an intergalactic highway.

Arthur is luckily saved by his friend Ford Prefect, who turns out to be an alien. From that point onwards, Arthur’s life is turned upside down as he hitches a ride on an alien spaceship, meets the depressed robot Marvin, to everyone’s surprise meets again the president of the galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox, and Tricia McMillan, also known as

Trillian, who is the only other human survivor thanks to the fact that Zaphod once

“stole” her from Arthur at a party in London. This strange group of individuals then embarks on various adventures throughout the series.

6 Adams, Douglas. Mostly Harmless. New York: Ballantine Books. 1993. 12

The series became known mostly for its use of humour, comments on politics, life and death and some slightly stereotypical British imagery. The popularity of the series reached such levels that some of the quotes from the series are known even amongst people that have never read the novels or watched the movie (such as the “42” answer) and there is also a so-called “Towel Day” (named so because of the importance of a towel as explained in the novel), a tribute to Douglas Adams celebrated on 25 May every year amongst the fans.

However, the series is popular for more reasons other than just being funny because of plethora jokes. As Carl R. Kropf mentions in his article “Douglas Adams's

‘Hitchhiker’ Novels as Mock Science Fiction”, it brings something different to the science fiction genre. He sees The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series as “mock SF, standing to conventional SF in the same relation that the mock epic has to the epic”

(Kropf 61). Kropf then gives three aspects in which The Hitchhiker’s Guide differs:

First, like the mock epic, Adams's mock SF novels reverse most of the

paradigmatic expectations readers have learned to bring to the genre. Second, by

reversing the usual conventions of the genre, Adams also reverses its entire

ideological function. Finally, like the writers in other mock genres, Adams

presents his implied narrator as a bungling author whose works embody disorder

and aimlessness as opposed to the genre's usual embodiment of order and

direction (Kropf 61)

Kropf explains that the contrast between the traditional and the mock lies in the presence of an anti-hero (Arthur Dent), the depiction of a death of culture instead of its rise (destruction of Earth) (Kropf 61-62) and the way the narrator functions. Thanks to this reversal of the traditional expectations, the reader (or a consumer of any other

13 adaptation of this series) is constantly being surprised and most often in a humorous way.

3.2. The Analysis of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams filled The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series with allegory, satire and absurd humour. This subchapter will therefore try to analyse these numerous humorous instances throughout the series with the help of the theoretical approaches discussed in the previous chapter. Already the naming scheme of the series as mentioned above gives hints of the fact that this series does not take itself entirely seriously.

However, Adams does not confine the humour to just dialogues or events in the main plotline, the whole world of The Hitchhiker’s Guide is based on it. Thanks to the fact that the whole world of the series is based on humour and improbability, Adams completely breaks the “fossilized paradigms” of the science-fictions genre, which

Stanislaw Lem criticises in his book Microworlds. Lem claims that the narrative methods used in this genre have been used repeatedly for so many times that certain elements have become traditional and arguably even boring. Utopian or dystopian worlds7 and heroes saving the day against all the odds are a very common sight in the works of science-fiction. Adams breathes new life into this increasingly dull genre.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

First glimpses of the absurd nature of this universe and the whole narration appear in the introduction in the first book of the series. Adams goes on to introduce the

7 e.g. 1984; Brave New World; Do Androids Dream of Electrical Sheep; Roadside Picnic; The Road and many more 14 story of the novel, however, he starts with a narration of what the story is not about.

After describing Earth as populated with constantly unhappy people, he says that there was a chance for Earth to be a happier place, however, the man “was nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change” (Adams, “Hitchhikers”

Introduction). But Earth was luckily given another chance at becoming a happier place

– a girl with an idea on how to solve this unhappiness problem. That’s where the actual story of the book starts:

Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a

terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost for ever. This is not

her story. But it is the story of that terrible, stupid catastrophe and some of its

consequences. (Adams, “Hitchhikers” Introduction)

Adams tells a story of an idea that would make people happier, but immediately says that it is “lost for ever”. This is not exactly the most uplifting beginning of a story, especially regarding the fact that it was lost due to a “stupid catastrophe” yet it still delivered in a humorous way rather being depressing. Not only is the world an unhappy place to live in, it will stay unhappy for stupid reasons. This is what sets up the whole universe of the series – random things happen for no or strange reasons.

Following this absurd introduction to this unhappy and random universe, in the first chapter, when Arthur is trying to stop the demolition of his house, the reader encounters a brilliant piece of rather absurd humour and is also introduced to one of the main themes that Adams discusses – bureaucracy. Arthur argues with the construction manager Mr. Prosser about the lack of notice regarding the demolition:

“But the plans were on display …” / “On display? I eventually had to go down to

the cellar to find them.” / “That’s the display department.” / “With a flashlight.”

/ “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” / “So had the stairs.” / “But look, you 15

found the notice, didn’t you?” / “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display

in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on

the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’” (Adams, “Hitchhikers” ch. 1)

This conversation and its humorous contents achieve two important things in regard to the theoretical approaches mentioned in the second chapter of this thesis. It can be analysed with both points of view – both the reference and the semantic. The lines themselves are humorous. Without needing any reference and background information, hearing this conversation would probably make most people laugh or at least chuckle because of its absurdity (similarly to some absurd plays by H. Pinter or V. Havel), thus fulfilling more or less the narrative based humour aspect of the semantic approach.

But with regards to the previously mentioned theme of bureaucracy, the reference approach becomes valid as well. For those readers or hearers that are older, those that already have to deal with paperwork in their lives, this conversation gains another meaning. It is no longer just a funny and absurd conversation about some crazy office with a wild animal warning - it is an image, albeit exaggerated, of the struggles adults deal with when managing their lives. Sorting out new identification documents or registering a car or anything similar is often a very tedious process and might as well be something similar to the situation discussed and arguably, searching in a cellar without lights might be even easier sometimes.

This situation is then basically completely mirrored when Vogons arrive to

Earth. Not only are the Vogon spaceships yellow like the bulldozer that threatened

Arthur’s house, the reason for the destruction is the same and the troubles with paperwork are very similar. When Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz addresses humans, he says:

There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and

demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in

Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to

lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it

now. (Adams, “Hitchhikers” ch. 3)

This passage is very similar to the conversation Prosser had with Arthur. Jeltz blames humanity for not visiting Alpha Centauri even though it is only four light-years away the same way Prosser blames Arthur for not visiting the display department. Arthur’s house was to be demolished because of a highway and the notice was in a cellar without stairs or lights; Earth was to be demolished because of an intergalactic highway and the notice was in a different star system. This mirrored situation with the added “galactic scope” only accentuates the inaccessibility problem regarding bureaucracy.

The topic of bureaucracy is discussed again in chapter five, where the character of Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, the one Vogon who supervised the destruction of Earth, and the race of Vogons in general are described. And from their description in the in-book book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, they are not the most pleasant races to deal with:

They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy—not actually evil, but

bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn’t even lift a

finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of

Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found,

subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three

months and recycled as firelighters. (Adams, “Hitchhikers” ch. 5)

Not only are they nasty in appearance, they are also nasty in behaviour. However,

Vogons appear to be more of a parody of a villain rather than a traditional villain. They are not evil because they want some sort of revenge or because they are insane, and they would not cause harm or any violence just for fun or to make a statement. Everything they do is because of rules and orders and only with the necessary paperwork. Vogons will not help anyone if there is no order to do so, but they will not kill anyone either, unless it is backed up by paperwork.

When Vogons destroy Earth, they do it simply because it is their job. They are not destroying planets or waging wars against whole civilisations because they want to spread fear or gain control over a territory as some aliens in other works of science fiction do, they just want to build a highway after being ordered to do so. Vogons are not some evil aliens invading the galaxy nor are they an evil empire trying to conquer everyone or something similar - themes rather common in science-fiction film and literature. They are simply an irritable unfriendly bureaucratic and rather dumb race which is managing the galaxy and unfortunately, while doing so, commits genocides and other acts of violence. In this sense, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz is similar to the construction manager Prosser who leads the demolition of Arthur’s house. He is just doing his job; he is not really a villain in the traditional sense, but he is definitely not a friendly being either and is largely disliked by others and quite possibly the readers as well.

This frankly absurd and ridiculous description of Vogons again pokes at the issues of bureaucracy. The need for having the orders signed multiple times in numerous copies etc. reflects on some of the real-life troubles when dealing with paperwork. As with the previous example, this conversation gains a new meaning with some additional knowledge – reference – while still being funny on its own. A teenager

18 reading this part might laugh at the absurdity of the words, but an adult would most likely know that as much as it sounds absolutely ridiculous, it is not that far from the real-life experience that is often more sad than funny.

However, the theme of bureaucracy is far from being the only theme Adams ridicules in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Adams also pokes at politics, a topic rather closely connected to the bureaucracy aspect of the series.

In chapter 4 where Zaphod Beeblebrox’s background story is told, the reader learns why and how he became the president of the Galaxy. The reader learns that he wants to become the president just for the sole purpose of stealing the Heart of Gold spaceship. The narrator explains that “Only six people in the entire Galaxy understood the principle on which the Galaxy was governed” (Adams, “Hitchhikers” ch. 4), and that they knew that Zaphod would be ideal for the presidency as he is the ideal candidate (even though they did not know about the real reasons Zaphod applied for this position). The reasons for which they thought he would be ideal are that Zaphod is an

“adventurer, ex-hippie, good-timer (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publicist, terrible bad at personal relationships” (Adams, “Hitchhikers” ch. 4) and seemed completely mad. But at first glance, these traits do not seem to be exactly ideal for a politician, at least not in the ideal situation. Having a mad self-centred politician does not seem exactly desirable. But as the narrator points out in the footnote of the chapter, these characteristics are exactly the desired characteristics for the presidency as the few knowledgeable people want it to be:

The President in particular is very much a figurehead—he wields no real power

whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is

required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage.

[. . .] His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.

(Adams, “Hitchhikers” ch. 4)

No one really knows who really holds the power and how exactly the galaxy is governed, but those six who know how it works need a fodder to distract from the real power. That’s why the wildly eccentric Zaphod is the ideal candidate.

While this passage or aspect of the book might not seem as something that would necessarily make people laugh out right (thus partly failing to adhere to the semantic type of analysis as there is no joke hidden in the structure), it is still a humorous passage that mirrors and parodies some real-life situations in a very straightforward way (the humour comes from the knowledge of the reader). Many countries have presidents / royal members who, although they have theoretically the ultimate decisive power, in reality, they rarely get to use this power and the true decision making is done by various members of the government. Adams points at these representatives as being almost useless even though they have technically the highest political status and at the fact that thanks to this political fodder, the true holder of power can sometimes hide in plain sight.

Although The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy both as the first novel and as a series is largely focused on politics and society, those are not the only topics Adams discusses and often ridicules. As this series is a science fiction story, it understandably contains various “futuristic” technological advancements.

Probably the most notable technological example is the Heart of Gold spaceship that Zaphod steals. This is the first spaceship powered by the newly developed Infinite

Improbability Drive. And as the name of the technology suggests, it fits very well to the overall theme or setting of the series – randomness. As previously mentioned, in the

20 introduction to the book, the universe of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is based on the fact that nothing is certain, usually nothing works out as intended and that random things happen for whatever reasons.

The Infinite Improbability Drive tries to capitalise on this randomness of events and use it for transportation. “As soon as the ship’s drive reaches Infinite Improbability it passes through every point in the Universe” simultaneously (Adams, “Hitchhikers” ch. 11). An incredible range of highly improbable things can happen due to the side- effects of the Infinite Improbability Drive, e.g. missiles turned “into a bowl of petunias and a very surprised-looking whale” (Adams, “Hitchhikers” ch. 18).

In the description of the origins of the drive, the reader learns that “It was discovered by a lucky chance, and then developed into a governable form of propulsion” (Adams, “Hitchhikers” ch. 10) and that it first started as finite improbability generator:

The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply

hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic

vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot

cup of tea) were of course well understood—and such generators were often

used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess’s

undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the

Theory of Indeterminacy. (Adams, “Hitchhikers” ch. 10)

Adams uses known theories such as the Brownian motion (random motion of particles8) and the theory of Indeterminacy (concepts of uncertainty9) to make the technology at least somewhat believable and grounded in something realistic and then he adds the made-up technologies to make it more of a fiction and ends up with a ridiculous propulsion method harnessing improbability and randomness, only underlining the absurdity of this universe.

But more importantly, Adams describes the use of this finite improbability technology. It is instantly used as a party trick before eventually being developed into the Infinite Improbability Drive. This mention of technology misuse parodies the real- life issues with this malady. Although in the book, the improbability technology is luckily used for comedy purposes, outside the book, technology is often misused in negative sense rather than for removing someone’s underwear. For example, while nuclear fusion is a great source of energy that can be used to power our lives with arguably very little impact on the environment, it turns out to be an immensely powerful weapon as well, with a huge impact on our environment. Dynamite is another such invention that despite its benefits in industry is to a great extent weaponised. Or something less of a weapon – smartphones. Smartphones are great companions to our everyday lives, however, due to their availability and ease of use, they also make addictions to social media and/or games a hugely “accessible” problem.

This imagery, while humorous in the book, depicts a mostly grim image connected with technology. Arguably any piece of technology can be misused, it is therefore nice to see that the people of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy can use

8 Wikipedia entry on Brownian motion 9 Wikipedia entry on Indeterminacy 22 new technology for fun rather than harming. This humorous instance again gains more

“weight” when the reader connects it with a real-life problem. While removing someone’s underwear can certainly be fun, when the reader realises the allegorical interpretation of this instance, it becomes slightly alarming.

The Infinite Improbability Drive is overall a troublesome piece of technology. It is the cutting-edge new technology, it has been discovered by chance, it basically works on chance, and the use of this drive is accompanied by various incomprehensible side- effects. And since it is such a big leap forward in technology, the rest of the universe has not yet adapted to it. With all the misfortune that has befallen Earth, it turns out that the destruction of Earth was completely unnecessary. Earth was demolished to make way for an intergalactic highway, but the need for such highway was completely eliminated by the discovery of the Infinite Improbability Drive:

The report was an official release which said that a wonderful new form of

spaceship drive was at this moment being unveiled at a Government research

base on Damogran which would henceforth make all hyperspatial express routes

unnecessary. (Adams, “Hitchhikers” ch. 12)

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was about to receive this report and if it got to him, Earth would not have to be destroyed. But as it is with most things in this Universe, things do not work out as one might want them to or expect them to.

In the world of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, there appears to be a strange phenomenon regarding technology – the newer and more advanced a piece of technology is, the more random its behaviour is and the rarer it is for things to go as planned or at all.

Infinite Improbability Drive is a great example of such technology. But even much simpler devices suffer from this phenomenon. For example, when Zaphod is operating a radio inside the Heart of Gold spaceship:

The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated

by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became

more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive—you merely had to

brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in

the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular

expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you

wanted to keep listening to the same program. (Adams, “Hitchhikers” ch. 12)

Adams appears to be rather forward thinking with this passage. Even though The

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy dates back to the 1970s, namely this problem Zaphod is dealing with appears to be very contemporary. As technology and science progress, there are inevitable changes to some older aspects of our lives. But changes do not always mean progress in the good way. Zaphod is dealing with a problem similar to one an owner of a car in the twenty first century can have for instance. Nowadays, in order to offer drivers a way to control their cars, media and phone while driving without the need to stop paying attention to the road ahead, car manufacturers include technologies such as voice control and gesture control into their cars. While these new technologies appear to be a great step forward, in reality, they rarely work properly. So while in order to change a radio station, it used to be enough to turn a dial which would achieve the desired goal, nowadays, using for example voice control, one might end up calling their mother instead; or with gesture control, end up maximising the volume ending up almost deaf. So here, Adams points at the fact that change is not always progress, and it does not necessarily mean in technology and science only.

Connected to science, though more focused on philosophy in general, is the part of the novel dealing with Deep Thought super-computer. This part of the novel is largely focused on philosophical questions about life and death and also brings probably the most memorable passage from this series. When Arthur is learning about the history of the galaxy, he learns that “a race of hyperintelligent pandimensional beings […] got so fed up with the constant bickering about the meaning of life […] that they decided to sit down and solve their problems once and for all. (Adams, “Hitchhikers” ch. 25) That is why these beings decided to create a super-computer called Deep Thought.

Deep Thought is a city-sized computer tasked with coming up with the Answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything. Deep Thought agreed to come up with the

Answer, however everyone involved was deeply displeased when Deep Thought told them that he (the computer) will need seven and a half million years to compute the

Answer. But as they had no other choice, they came back those seven and half million years later for their Answer. With high expectations, the Answer was revealed to the crowds waiting for it:

“You’re really not going to like it,” observed Deep Thought.

“Tell us!”

“All right,” said Deep Thought. “The Answer to the Great Question …”

“Yes …!”

“Of Life, the Universe and Everything …” said Deep Thought.

“Yes …!”

“Is …” said Deep Thought, and paused.

“Yes …!”

“Is …”

“Yes …!!! …?”

“Forty-two,” said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

(Adams, “Hitchhikers” ch. 27)

This passage is sort of an embodiment of the series. It encompasses a huge lead-up, big hopes and a huge disappointment all in an utterly absurd nature. And due to the overall theme of the Universe of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – things do not work out as they are supposed to or are expected to – not even this super intelligent race of beings which built a super-computer cannot reach the desired target.

And as Deep Thought notes later, this disappointment is understandable as the question to this answer is the issue. After seven and half million years, all they have got as an answer is “Forty-two” and everyone is displeased, but they simply do not understand the answer. Deep Thought argues that “once you do know what the question actually is, you’ll know what the answer means” (Adams, “Hitchhikers” ch. 28) and then offers to build a new super-computer to come up with that question – the supercomputer called the Earth.

And to top off all this absurdity, when Arthur visits planet Magrathea and meets

Slartibartfast, the creator of planets, Arthur learns that “the planet you [Arthur] lived on was commissioned, paid for, and run by mice. It was destroyed five minutes before the completion of the purpose for which it was built” (Adams, “Hitchhikers” ch. 24). As it turns out, our mice “are merely the protrusion into our dimension of vastly hyperintelligent pandimensional beings. The whole business with the cheese and the squeaking is just a front” (Adams, “Hitchhikers” ch. 24). Not only did the beings get an answer for non-existent question, just before getting the Question, the computer was destroyed so all the waiting for millions of years and building of computers and planets was completely pointless.

In this anti-climactic absurdity concerning Deep Thought and the Answer to

Life, the Universe, and Everything, Adams seems to completely ridicule questions regarding existence. Questions like “What is the meaning of life?”, “Why are we here?”

What is our purpose?” are some of the questions that are discussed by philosophy and theology and people in general and all are without any unified meaningful answer. With the “forty-two” answer, Adams seems to claim that these questions are pointless as there is no definitive answer to them. No branch of science or philosophy or any other discourse, from Sartre and Kierkegaard, through Schopenhauer and Nietzsche to anyone who even thinks about these questions, be it because of simple curiosity, various mental states or because of a drunk conversation, no one seems to be able to come with proper unified answers to these vague questions, so even the “forty-two” answer might be very much true. Yet Adams discusses these existential questions in a humorous nature, as with almost everything else in this series.

Throughout the series, Adams also comments on religion and the existence of a god/gods. Early on in the book, in the entry in the in-book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for the Babel fish – a leechlike small animal that instantly translates any language –, an argument regarding the existence of god is presented:

The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God,

‘for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’ “ ‘But,’ says Man, ‘the

Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It

proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’

“ ‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff

of logic.

The Babel fish is an obvious call back to the biblical story of Babel mentioned in

Genesis 1110, the city in which a united human race speaking one language resided. The argument presented is utterly absurd – proof of existence of God means that God does not exist. With the absurd way the argument is structured, Adams pokes at the ridiculousness of religious believe. Adams described himself as a “radical Atheist” 11 - he truly believed there is no god, it is therefore understandable the he would criticise religion, yet even then, he does it with humour.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is the second book of The

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series and it continues Adams’ theme of absurdity and randomness and further discusses the various topics that are present in the first novel.

The book opens with “The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move” (Adams, “Restaurant” ch. 1). A very brief summary of the actual story of the series follows, together with the claim that “Many races believe that it [the Universe] was created by some sort of god […] However, […] the Universe being the puzzling place it is, other explanations are constantly being sought.” (Adams, “Restaurant” ch.

1). Adams puts a humorous and rather absurd comment right at the beginning of the book just so the reader is instantly reminded of the nature of the world the story is set in.

However, not all absurd situations are caused by the randomness of the universe, some come from the characters. As was mentioned in the overview subchapter, Adams

10 The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Crossway Bibles. 2016. 11 Adams, Douglas. “Interview: Douglas Adams.” American Atheist, by Dave Silverman. 28 also depicts some stereotypes, and mainly the one regarding the connection between the

British people and tea. Arthur learns that his friend is an alien, he hitches a ride on a spaceship, his house gets knocked down and his home planet gets destroyed, his whole life is turned upside down, yet the one thing he truly desires is a cup of tea. His quest for tea starts shortly after he gets on the Heart of Gold spaceship in the first novel, however, this quest climaxes in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe novel. The crew has just left Magrathea and they are about to be attacked by a Vogon ship. Unaware of the imminent danger, Arthur argues with the on-board food services about tea. He wants the self-proclaimed “almighty” Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer to make him a nice cup of tea. As it turns out, the machine has no idea what a tea is nor how to prepare it:

It claimed to produce the widest possible range of drinks personally matched to

the tastes and metabolism of whoever cared to use it. When put to the test,

however, it invariably produced a plastic cup filled with a liquid which was

almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. (Adams, “Restaurant” ch. 2)

After several more attempts, Arthur explains to the machine what a tea is and how to prepare it. After some discussion, the Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer decides to call in for backup – it calls the ship’s main computer for help with tea. This task of making tea then results in further troubles.

When Arthur gives up on the machines and computers to make him a cup of tea, he decides to search for a kettle and then notices that everyone is preoccupied with the ship. It turns out that the creation of a nice cup of tea is a hugely complex and difficult task:

“Vogons!” snapped Ford. “We’re under attack!” / Arthur gibbered.

“Well, what are you doing? Let’s get out of here!”

“Can’t. Computer’s jammed.”

“Jammed?”

“It says all its circuits are occupied. There’s no power anywhere in the ship.”

(Adams, “Restaurant” ch. 3)

The crew then questions Arthur about what he has done to the ship. And he defends himself that nothing really, just how to make a tea (Adams, “Restaurant” ch. 3). The ship’s computer is so overburdened with figuring out the tea that it completely ignores the imminent danger and ignores the crew’s requests. The Heart of Gold is no battleship, so they understandably want to run away with the use of the Infinite

Improbability Drive, but as the ship is dead, they are just a big stable target for the attacking Vogon ship.

With all the troubles with tea Arthur and eventually the rest of the crew have to deal with, Adams makes fun of the stereotypical British fondness for tea. A nice cup of tea with milk is at the utmost importance. This is one of the many humorous instances where while it is a rather absurd and humorous situation in the scope of the whole story, for the reader with enough knowledge, the situation gains a new meaning. I personally read the books for the first time sometime at secondary school, and I do not think I had any idea about the importance of tea for the British. But as I read the books sometime later, the whole quest for tea that culminates in near-death situation became more humorous. And I can imagine that for many other readers who returned to the books at different ages, the situation would be similar. It is no longer just a silly issue of unavailability of tea in the galaxy, it is the fact that for the Briton, getting a nice cup of tea is seemingly more important than the fact that his house and planet were destroyed

30 and that he and Trillian are the two last remaining humans from Earth. Adams mocks this British stereotype and pushes it to some absurd boundaries.

But the second novel is not just about “jokes”, Adams also continues some of the more serious topics from the first novel. It is after all a direct continuation of the story.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is largely focused on Zaphod Beeblebrox.

Zaphod is separated from the rest of the crew and meets Zarniwoop, an executive of the in-book Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Zarniwoop tells Zaphod that he had the Heart of Gold with the rest of the crew shrunk in the pocket of his jacket and after they are returned to normal, Zarniwoop recruits the crew on a quest to discover the true ruler of the Universe. When they find the man in a shack on a “small obscure world somewhere in the middle of nowhere in particular” (Adams, “Restaurant” ch. 29), they question the man whether he is the one ruling the Universe and how does he decide on things.

Zarniwoop asks him how he makes decision for people, how does he decide:

About people’s lives, about worlds, about economies, about wars, about

everything going on out there in the Universe?”

“Out there?” said the man. “Out where?” / “Out there!” said Zarniwoop,

pointing at the door.

“How can you tell there’s anything out there?” said the man politely. “The

door’s closed.” / […]

“But you know there’s a whole Universe out there!” cried Zarniwoop. “You

can’t dodge your responsibilities by saying they don’t exist!”

(Adams, “Restaurant” ch. 29)

The man’s answer is frankly scary. The ruler of the Universe does not care about the

Universe. He only decides about himself, “My Universe is my eyes and my ears.

Anything else is hearsay” (Adams, “Restaurant” ch. 29). He claims that all the rest of the world, all the people outside his immediate reach, are only words; there is no reason to believe there is anyone. He does not care that whatever he decides in his shack

Universe influences millions of people, because he has never met those people, he does not believe in them. Adams paints a seriously disturbing image of a heartless ruler. It is again one of the situations when older readers might interpret this instance differently.

With this rather dark humour, Adams expresses some of the feelings people can have about politics and satirises these feelings about politics and politicians. Some of the political decisions or laws can often feel like they have been decided with no common sense, with no regards to the ordinary people. That is what this leader of the Universe represents. He only cares about himself, in his little shack without ever considering anyone outside, when he decides their fate.

At the end of this book, the story returns to the plotline of the Answer “Forty- two” and Deep Thought’s plans on coming up with the Question to this Answer. Arthur and Ford travel through time and eventually end up on a pre-historic Earth. While they are on Earth, Arthur tries to solve the Question to the Answer of Life, the Universe and

Everything since that was the purpose for which Earth and its population were created by the Deep Thought super-computer. He creates a makeshift Scrabble with the hope that his subconscious could reveal the Question to the Answer. One of the Neanderthals he plays the Scrabble with spells amongst some jumbled letters the words “Forty-two”.

This only confirms Arthur’s idea that Deep Thought’s plan is embedded in the subconscious of the people living on Earth. Arthur then plays himself and eventually ends up with:

[…] what do you get if you multiply six by […] six by nine …” He paused.

“Come on, where’s the next one?”

“Er, that’s the lot,” said Arthur, “that’s all there were.”

[…]

“You mean that’s it?” said Ford. / “That’s it.”

“Six by nine. Forty-two.” / “That’s it. That’s all there is.”

(Adams, “Restaurant” ch. 33)

After all the effort that the ancient beings went through to get the Answer to Life, the

Universe, and Everything and then the waiting for the next super-computer to come up with the Question for this Answer, it turns out to be completely useless and meaningless. Arthur realises that the people on Earth at this stage are useless in regard to this task and that the Earth as a whole will never come-up with a more meaningful

Question since Earth gets later destroyed thus ending all hopes for ever finding it.

In this book, Adams returns to the mockery of existential questions he started in the first book. As discussed previously, with the nonsensical Answer, he mocks the fact that there is no definitive answer to questions like “What is the meaning of life?”. Here, he mocks the fact that such questions are so vague that they are in fact meaningless.

Adams’ critique of existentialism comes full circle in this book. Firstly, he critiques the various answers, then the vagueness of the questions themselves.

Life, the Universe and Everything; So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish;

Mostly Harmless

Unfortunately, with the later books, it seems that Adams slightly changed his style of writing and focused more on time travel and absurdity, rather than allegory, and that becomes an issue in regard to this thesis. While absurd humour is definitely a great and important part of the whole series, and it certainly provides numerous humorous

33 instances, it is out of the scope of this thesis, as that is primarily focused on analysing the satirical humour Adams uses. While in the Life, the Universe and Everything, there still are a few passages to be discussed in this regard, the following two books So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless are quite different to the rest of the series. While definitely not being boring or exactly bad, they are simply different concerning their humorous content and therefore are mostly outside the scope of this thesis.

Life, the Universe and Everything is the third book of the series and as was mentioned in the previous paragraph, it is probably the last book of the series with some noteworthy satire, therefore it will be at least shortly discussed. Like The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, it starts right after the ending of the previous book. While the book seems to lack the elaborate satire, the absurdity of the story and of the events is no different to the rest of the series. The story of Life, the Universe and Everything evolves mainly around the Krikkit Wars – the war that the population of the planet of Krikkit waged against the rest of the universe using robots – with numerous references to cricket.

The book starts with Arthur being still stranded on the pre-historic Earth, when an alien called Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged arrives to Earth in his spaceship, comes to Arthur and says “You’re a jerk, Dent” (Adams, “Life” ch. 1) and after calling him a jerk one more time, flies away. Like before, the book starts with a ridiculous comment/event – in this case and alien coming, calling Arthur names, and flying away – just to remind the reader what kind of world they are dealing with.

In this book, Adams again comments on religious believes. During their travels,

Arthur and Ford end up at a massive, multi-generational party floating through the universe (Adams, “Life” ch. 19). At this party, they find Trillian and Arthur meets Thor, 34 the Thunder God. While in the previous books, Adams usually references and mocks

God (with connection to the mention of Garden of Eden (Adams, “Restaurant” ch. 30), most likely referencing the Christian God) here he uses Thor from the Germanic mythology. Thor wants to take Trillian from this party to Valhalla because there is another great party happening, however, Arthur wants Trillian to go with him, so he almost gets into a fight with the God of Thunder (Adams, “Life” ch. 20). Adams portrays Thor as a drinking partying thug, ridiculing another mythological system like he did with the Christian God and the absurd “proof of existence means non-existence” argument in the first book.

Frankly, this is where any noteworthy satire ends for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the

Galaxy series. While the story of Arthur Dent continues through this and the two following books, and it continues to be an interesting story full of absurd situations, it simply is not containing enough satirical instances to be explored in this thesis.

4. Conclusion

As can be observed from the selected passages of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the

Galaxy series, the situations, the narration and dialogues are often absurd, sometimes dark, but always humorous. But even when discussing a serious topic like politics or religion, Adams sticks to satire and allegory rather than being serious. Rarely anything in the series is serious without a humorous aspect to it. Yet everything still matters, all the metaphors are still there, every joke or humorous comment has its place and makes sense in a way even though the world of the series is utterly insane. This thesis hopefully manages to prove that Douglas Adams managed to create a different, yet still meaningful world bundled with an enticing story.

As Kropf mentioned, this is a mock science fiction. The series includes more of an anti-hero in the form of Arthur Dent, whose seemingly only true desire is a nice cup of tea rather than saving humanity or changing the world. In the grand scheme of things, he appears to stumble upon all his achievements rather than achieve anything through his efforts. The question of a true villain is also rather ambiguous. While Vogons are definitely an evil race and are probably the first pick if we were to point at a villain in this series, they are not the typical villains. They are just following orders and doing their jobs, not destroying humanity for some self-centred reasons.

It is refreshing to see someone bring something new to the genre. The goal of this thesis is not in any way devaluate for example short stories by Philip K. Dick or novels by brothers Strugatsky or suggest that traditional pieces of science fiction like

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell or Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card are bad in one way or another. They all have their well-deserved places in the science fiction genre. The goal is to show that similar ideas and messages that these serious and often

36 depressing stories convey can also be told in a different manner, yet with similar effect on the audience. However, when almost every science fiction book or film is almost the same, just with a differently named hero and a different entity causing the havoc, it does get a bit stale.

Science fiction in general also seems often disregarded for these exact reasons.

During my high school education, barely any science fiction work was being mentioned during the literature classes, except for Nineteen Eighty-Four maybe. From personal experience, when recommending a book to my friends, they will very often not touch it because it is science fiction and they do not like SF as they have grown to expect a depressing serious narrative. With The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I can start by saying that it is a comedy and that usually brings better results in regards to “successful” recommendations. Thanks to being completely different to the other works in the science fiction genre, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy gained enormous popularity, and rightfully so.

This thesis however only covers some of the satire that Douglas Adams included into this series, so there is still space for further analysis. There are probably even more satirical instances to be found and interpreted and even more notably, a vast number of absurd jokes that this thesis barely touched upon as it focused on using the reference approach for interpretation rather than the semantic approach.

5. Works Cited

Adams, Douglas. “Interview: Douglas Adams.” American Atheist, by Dave Silverman.

Archived 2011. Web.

www.atheists.org/Interview:__Douglas_Adams

---. Mostly Harmless. New York: Ballantine Books. 1993. Print.

---. The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. New York, NY: Del Rey. Web.

BBC.“The Big Read”. Survey. April. 2003. Web.

2003 BBC’s Big Read survey

“Brownian Motion.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Apr. 2019. Web.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion

Fatima, Zohra. Humor , Satire and Verbal Parody in The Hitchhiker ’ s Guide to the

Galaxy : A Relevance Theoretic Approach. NUML Journal of Critical Inquiry 14. 2

(2016): 38-53. Web.

Griffin, Dustin. Satire: “A Critical Reintroduction”. 1st ed., University Press of

Kentucky, 1994. Pp. 1, 8, 10. Google Books. Web.

“Indeterminacy (Philosophy).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 6 Mar. 2019. Web.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminacy_(philosophy)

Kropf, Carl R. “Douglas Adams’ ‘Hitchhiker’ Novels as Mock Science Fiction (Les

Romans Du ‘Hitchhiker’ de Douglas Adams Consideres Comme de La Science-

Fiction Burlesque).” Science Fiction Studies, 15. 1 (1988): 61–70. Web.

Lem, Stanislaw. Microworlds, ed. Franz Rottensteiner. HMH, 2012. Web.

Mark, Joshua J. “The Satire of the Trades.” Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient

History Encyclopedia. 29 May 2017. Web.

www.ancient.eu/article/1074/the-satire-of-the-trades/#citation_info.

Raskin, Victor. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. D. Reidel, 1985. Web.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Crossway Bibles. 2016. Web.

biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+11

“Victor Raskin.” Purdue, web.ics.purdue.edu/~vraskin/Raskin. Curriculum vitae.

Wilson, Deirdre and Sperber, Dan. "Relevance Theory." The Handbook of Pragmatics.

Horn, Laurence R., and Ward, Gregory, eds. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. Web.

---. "Relevance Theory." UCL publications. Web.

www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/publications/WPL/02papers/wilson_sperber.pdf

6. Abstract

This thesis is an analysis of elements of satire and allegory in The Hitchhiker’s

Guide to the Galaxy series written by Douglas Adams. The thesis contains a chapter focused on theory, in which several theoretical approaches to the analysis of humour are presented. In this chapter, it is also decided which of the approaches is better suited for the analysis in this thesis. The work also includes a chapter containing a brief summary of the series and discusses its history and popularity. The analysis itself focuses on providing possible interpretations of the selected instances of satire and allegory and also offers explanation on how these elements make this series different from others in regard to the science fiction genre.

7. Resumé

Cílem této práce je analýza prvků satiry a alegorie v sérii The Hitchhiker’s

Guide to the Galaxy, kterou napsal Douglas Adams. Práce obsahuje kapitolu zaměřenou na teorii, v níž je představeno několik teoretických přístupů k analýze humoru. V této kapitole je také rozhodnuto, který z přístupů je vhodnější k vlastní analýze. Součástí této práce je také kapitola, která obsahuje stručné shrnutí série a pojednává o její historii a popularitě. Samotná analýza se zaměřuje na poskytnutí možných interpretací vybraných příkladů satiry a alegorie a rovněž zmiňuje to, jak se díky těmto prvkům tato série liší od ostatních v rámci žánru sci-fi.