1

國立政治大學英國語文學系
碩士學位論文

大材小用:《銀河便車指南》中的無趣和創意
Wasted Talent: Boredom and Creativity in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to
the Galaxy

指導教授：施堂模 博士
研究生：邱郁純 撰

中華民國 111 年 6 月
Wasted Talent: Boredom and Creativity in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the

Galaxy
 A Master Thesis

Presented to

Department of English,

National Chengchi University

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

by

Yu-Chun Chiu

June, 2022

ii

Acknowledgement
 I would like to express my deep gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Thomas J. Sellari, who

has offered constructive advice, careful instructions, and continual calm reassurance

throughout my research for this work. I appreciate Dr. Sellari’s guidance in the helpful and

friendly moments of the supervisory meetings. Dr. Sellari’s assistance has been invaluable to

the completion of this thesis.

I would also like to express my heartfelt appreciation to my friends. During my

graduate study, Tsai-Ying Fang and Yen-Hao Huang were my best teammates, who always

supported me. I am grateful for Yong-Ling Peng’s care and comfort. I should thank Chen-

Yang Lin, who had confidence in me and waited for good news from me. I must also thank

Amos Wu, who gave me words of encouragement when I needed them most. My special

thanks also go to Bing-Tsung Chiang and his family, who showed a touching faith in my

ability to resolve any and every difficulty.

Finally, my warmest thanks go to my family. The wholehearted support and blessing

provided by my father, my mother, and my brothers were and are greatly appreciated. I wish

to acknowledge the financial aid from Jennifer Chang, my godmother, who played a

significant role in my life. Her kindness and backing have allowed this work to be completed.

I would like to thank the people who helped me to finalize the project during my academic

pursuits. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

iii
 Table of Contents

Acknowledgment……………………………………………………………………………..iii

Chinese Abstract………………………………………………………………………….…...v

English Abstract………………………………………………………………………………vi

Chapter One: Introduction……………………………………………………………………..1

Chapter Two: Absurdity and the Boredom of Labor…………………………………………

15

Chapter Three: Creativity and Comedy……………………………………………………...38

Chapter Four: Conclusion……………………………………………………………………62

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………..66
 5

國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班

碩士論文提要

論文名稱: 大材小用：《銀河便車指南》中的無趣與創意

指導教授: 施堂模

研究生: 邱郁純

論文提要內容:

本論文探討道格拉斯·亞當斯 (Douglas Adams) 的《銀河便車指南》中無趣的勞動和創

意的追求。生命的意義與小說中機器人角色與無聊的衝突以及藝術創作的潛能密切相

關。如同卡繆的薛西弗斯，許多人發現他們的工作和生活毫無意義。要真正面對荒謬，

一個人必須意識到自己的處境並從事創造。本論文認為，亞當斯對荒謬的刻畫是不可

避免且洞察入微的，他筆下帶有缺陷的角色被詼諧而細膩地描繪出來。亞當斯以幽默

反映出社會的通病和人性的弱點，饒富生趣亦發人深省。

關鍵詞：道格拉斯·亞當斯，《銀河便車指南》，人生哲學，荒誕主義，無趣，創意
 v

Abstract

This thesis explores the boredom of labor and the pursuit of creativity in Douglas

Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The meaning of life is closely involved in the

robotic character’s conflict with boredom and the creative power shown in the artistic

process. Like Camus’s Sisyphus, many people find their work and life meaningless. To

authentically face absurdity, a person must become aware of his or her situation and engage

in creation. The thesis argues that Adams’s portrayal of unavoidable absurdity is insightful,

and his flawed characters are comically and sensitively depicted. Reflecting the common

social problems of the world and human weakness, Adams’s humor is both entertaining and

enlightening.

Key Words: Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Life philosophy,

Absurdism, Boredom, Creativity

 vi

Chapter One

Introduction

It would be overstating the case to ascribe to this novel profundities that simply do not

exist. Rather, it is more to the point to see, in the way Adams can make the reader

dismiss the universe with a laugh and a shrug, how he can also lure the reader into

looking into a dark mirror.

—Thomas. R. Whissen, Classic Cult Fiction: A Companion to Popular Cult Literature

I. Introduction to the Text

Douglas Adams’s serial novel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979-1992), is

well-known for its humorous depiction of the human world. It tells a story of a space voyage

led by the last earthlings and an alien crew to find out the ultimate meaning of life. Reflecting

the reader’s social reality, Adams’s universe mocks the silliness and absurdity of the human

world in chaos. Adapted from a radio program for BBC, the original story was expanded to

five sequential novels, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979), The Restaurant at the

End of the Universe (1980), Life, the Universe and Everything (1982), So Long, and Thanks

for all the Fish (1984) and Mostly Harmless (1992). Over the last forty years, the five novels

have been translated into many languages and are all best-sellers. A triumphant success, the

Hitchhiker series has been adapted into a TV show, a play, a record album, a computer game,

and a Hollywood movie.

II. Literature Review: The Research Problem

 Although Adams has earned his place in popular culture, academic research on The

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is still not very abundant. In the last ten years of research,

scholars have focused on either its genre or its philosophical inquiry. Some scholars attempt

to define what category the Hitchhiker series fits into best by labeling the novels as a cosmic

horror subgenre, a postmodern science fiction parody, or an invention elevated parody. Dina

Šoštarec, in her BA thesis, Douglas Adams’s “[The] Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” as a

Representative of Cosmic Horror, discusses the similarities and differences between H.P.

Lovecraft’s and Douglas Adams’s work to point out the same horror effect they achieved in

the setting of a fictional universe (14). Çelik Ekmekçi’s MA thesis finds Postmodern

elements structured in Adams’s literary expression of parody, irony, satire, and laughter to

define the series as a “postmodern-parodic-SF text” (53). In his BA thesis, Michal Horák

compares Adams’s use of parody to Arthur C. Clarke’s narrative strategy to indicate Adams’s

contribution of making the status of parody more important (43).

In fact, it is hard to pin down what category the novels only belong to. The

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a mixture of science fiction, comedy, satire, parody, and

philosophy. With so many features at the same time, the novels are well rounded, with

elements from each particular genre. Instead of using different approaches to define its genre,

I argue that to specifically classify the novels as sci-fi, satire, parody or not does not help to

understand their main themes, but leads the reader to overlook the whole picture. In his

investigation of genre, Kinds of Literature (1982), Fowler argues that genre functions as

description rather than as a list of requirements, criticizes the overly narrow use of concepts

of genre, and looks forward to witnessing the coming of style changes in various literary

forms (1). Adams’s work exemplifies the concept of literature in variety, and his witty and

ironic humor blends these elements to offer critical insight into the mundane human world.
 Besides, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was written from 19771, and it may be

influenced by concepts that changed in the decade from 1960 to 1970, a time during which a

development in science fiction known as the New Wave was heading towards a revolution:

While this period certainly saw a broadening of the style, themes, and tropes typical

of [SF], fears about the demise of “old style” [SF] were by the 1970s already shown

to be unfounded. In retrospect, what the “battle” of the New Wave most obviously

highlighted was an ongoing professional and critical anxiety over the cultural

positioning of the genre. (Merrick 102)

Adams’s work followed the trend to change what people imagined typical science fiction

could be, and Merrick points out the distinctiveness of Adams’s work and that of others to

mark the significant improvement in the history of SF which “solidified many of the facets of

the genre as we know it today” (110). Being well-considered in every aspect, The

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy amuses through its great imagination of alien outer-space

and enlightens by observing the flaws of the world. Overall, combining different features of

genres or recognizing his writing style seems to uncover only the tip of the iceberg of

Adams’s creative thinking.2 It is better to center on the ideas within the novels to tease out the

main themes.

In a discussion of the main ideas of the novels, the purpose of life and human feelings

are inseparable topics. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reveals its concern for human

society by asking what the meaning of life, the universe, and everything is and by displaying

dramatic emotions of people reacting to the world:

Hurrahs burst from the ecstatic crowd.

1In Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2009), Gaiman records the first
outline of the story (239) and the initial concept of the Hitchhiker series (24-30).
2This thesis does not imply that the study of genre is of low value to other researchers, but some studies about
Adams’s use of genre lack explanations to the text itself. To identify Adams’s writing style may be helpful to
appreciate his artistic techniques, but the main topics in the novels still need to be explored.
 “Never again,” cried the man, “never again will we wake up in the morning and think

Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I

don’t get up and go to work? For today we will finally learn once and for all the plain

and simple answer to all these nagging little problems of Life, the Universe and

Everything!” (Adams 118)

The topics above are closely connected to philosophical inquiry, especially existential

anxiety. Surprisingly, only five available texts discuss existentialism in the Hitchhiker series.

First, Van der Colff’s Douglas Adams: Analysing the Absurd analyzes the absurdity

within the Hitchhiker series. Divided into three parts―the psychological function of fantasy,

a philosophical exploration of Existentialism, and Adams’s satirical observations―this

dissertation focuses on Adams’s intellectual and philosophical contribution and compares the

book to other literary works involving absurdity. Van der Colff gives a panorama of the

existential condition of human beings and promotes an execution of constructing meaning for

one’s entertainment. I agree with the main points of this dissertation, but one of the main

themes Van der Colff repeatedly mentions, boredom, lacks understanding and interpretation

in her analysis. Van der Colff points out the “prevalence of boredom in Adams’s work” (112)

but she does not explain it in any detail. She considers it merely a situation of “nothing about

to happen” (56) or “the act of waiting for meaning, and the frustrating boredom which ensues

if one is unable to entertain oneself ” (85). Van der Colff believes that humans have to fulfill

their life purposes by “making subjective meaning out of the meaningless world” (114). In

other words, humans need to amuse themselves to avoid feeling bored. Following Van der

Colff’s conclusion, this thesis attempts to point out specific working conditions which result

in boredom to further discuss the characters’ solution to existential anxiety in The

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

 In my view, some characters are unable to amuse themselves because they are busy

stuck with a low work status and thus waste their talent, and are not just absentmindedly

sitting and waiting for meaning. I suggest that creativity is the solution to the meaningless

world since creativity involves one’s enthusiasm and challenges one to produce imaginative

things or new ideas. This thesis aims to delve into the theme of boredom to explore its

relevance to the characters’ conflict between their dead-end jobs and their true wishes to

adapt their talent, their creativity, to create things for a seemingly purposeless world.

Van der Colff’s subsequent article, “Aliens and Existential Elevators: Absurdity and

Its Shadow in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker Series” follows the main argument of her

dissertation and briefly provides an analysis of four characters to define them as either absurd

heroes or hopeless nihilists. “Adams’s characters, be they human, alien, or sentiment

machine, all face the same existential choice: actuate individual meaning, or resort to

despondency”(Van der Colff 1). I find her argument about the absurd heroes persuasive, but I

disagree with the part that simply depicts Marvin and the existential elevators of Ursa Minor

Beta simply as desperate quitters. This interpretation ignores the problem of how Marvin and

the elevators gradually lost their interest because of their menial jobs, and misunderstands the

differences in representation between these two kinds of robotic figures. Marvin represents a

worker who is not only incredibly intelligent but also aware of his low and fixed social status.

Other robots act as workers whose thinking capacities are restricted but they cannot help but

have doubts about their wasted abilities in their undemanding jobs. Marvin’s disgust for his

work comes from not only his great ability being unappreciated but also the complete job

satisfaction his robotic peers gained. The other robots, on the other hand, enjoy their pettiness

because they are programmed to overcome the weakness of the prototype, which is Marvin’s

main character flaw.3 With an enforced belief in happiness, the upgraded robots have been

3 Marvin is the prototype for a working machine simulating real human personality, but, unlike others, he is a
brainy yet depressed robot. Although Marvin can solve almost anything, he is always frustrated to be asked to
do small chores. Marvin’s impressive intellect makes him suffer from depression and boredom, which is his
fixed to be more like “Your Plastic Pal Who’s Fun to Be With” (Adams 64). Like Marvin, the

elevators of Ursa Minor Beta get tired of the futility of their work (Adams 177-79). This

thesis seeks to find the answer to the problems of overlooking these robotic characters’

motives by assuming that the biggest obstacle in their way to find meaning is their boring

jobs and their identities as ‘forced laborers’.4

In addition to Van der Colff’s studies, Philosophy and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the

Galaxy, edited by Nicholas Joll and organized in four sections, includes eight essays that

discuss ethics, the meaning of life, metaphysics and artificial intelligence, and logic, method,

and satire recurring in the novels. My thesis uses three scholars’ contributions to this book:

Amy Kind’s idea of absurdity, Timothy Chappell’s discussion of timelessness and interest,

and Jerry Goodenough’s analysis of self-image and emotions. Kind’s article, “Life, the

Universe, and Everything” is useful for deepening and broadening my understanding of the

connection between absurdity and human reactions:

[L]ife is absurd because of a similar mismatch or incongruity.

Like Arthur Dent, we often think there is a deeper purpose to

our existence; we routinely have that strange and

unaccountable feeling that something is going on in the

world, something big− and we just wish that we could figure

out what it was. But though we take our lives to have some

deep purpose or importance, it turns out that there is none.

(78)

As the clown-like characters travel in outer-space to search for the meaning of life, the

adventure of finding nothingness supports the contention that one’s wish is mismatched to the

world’s order. The protagonists’ anxiety about the unreasonable environment invites the

major character flaw.

4 The term, robot, actually comes from a Czech word, robota, meaning “forced labor.”
reader to identify with existential crises. In the section “Resistance is useless,” Kind critically

emphasizes the fact that Adams’s depiction of absurdity as inevitable and ubiquitous

intersects with Camus’s perception of existentialism. Addressing the above two’s viewpoints

of absurdity, this thesis aims to respond to the question: If activities in life become like

Sisyphus’s repetitive and tedious burden, why is it worthwhile to live? This thesis finds this

problem as a starting point to argue that the feeling of meaninglessness mainly comes from

unskilled work to investigate how the characters gradually become like Sisyphus or how they

can possibly differ from him.

In the section of “Panic” and “Don’t Panic,” Kind indicates Adams’s humorous

attitude toward absurdity. Kind illustrates her point by providing Slartibartfast’s happiness as

an example. Because of an incongruity between an internal perspective and an external

perspective, a person is eager to find an explanation for his or her everyday life.

Slartibartfast’s context, nonetheless, reveals that one can enjoy his life even if he has no

knowledge of his purpose of living. I agree with her idea that people who spend little time on

grasping the meaning of life may still lead a joyful life. However, I find that in this case

Adams does encourage people to indulge in activities interesting yet challenging, such as

Slartibartfast’s design of landscapes, Arthur Dent’s practice to fly, and even the Vogon

commander’s composing amateur poetry.5 By doing such effortful projects, a person is

capable of discovering or demonstrating his or her talent. Activities requiring talent give a

person a sense of achievement which helps him or her to work out the value of life. That is,

instead of asking questions and waiting for the ultimate answer anxiously, creative activities

develop one’s talent and zest for life.

Chappell’s “The Wowbagger Case: Immortality and what makes Life Meaningful,”

mentions the plight of the Wowbagger as an extremely bored immortal and emphasizes the

5 Vogons are known for their bad poetry, which always tortures the listeners (Adams 45). Although they are
awful at writing poems, they are enthusiastic about writing them and reading them to others.
significance of a person’s interest in various forms of entertainment. Wowbagger embodies

the state of being utterly bored and justifies the contention that one loses his or her interest in

mundane and routine work. For instance, he sees tons of movies thousands of times; he

combats his never-ending boredom every afternoon; he finds nothing left to do but decides to

scold everyone in the universe (Adams 317). Chappell’s article supports my contention that a

person’s enthusiasm is sparked by his or her devotion to creative things; Chappell believes

that if a person actively involves himself or herself in what he or she is doing, every minute

gives meaning to his or her life.

Goodenough’s “ ‘I Think You Ought To Know I’m Feeling Very Depressed’: Marvin

and Artificial Intelligence” examines Marvin’s strong emotions to find out that robotic

feelings are very much like human feelings. Goodenough marks Marvin’s uniqueness and his

character conflict against himself, other characters, and society. To Marvin’s dismay, his self-

expectation is too high to be fulfilled; his ability extends beyond the task he performs. To

Marvin’s disgust, his automated peers are easily satisfied with unskilled labor; he alone

cannot bear his dissatisfaction with boredom. To Marvin’s grief, the crew cannot stand in his

shoes to truly understand his difficulty; there is evidently a lack of empathy. To Marvin’s

great annoyance, his society values efficiency of work much more than his sensitivity to

monotonous chores and his thirst for a sense of achievement. Moreover, I suggest that

character conflict between Marvin and the society in the Hitchhiker series represents

downward social mobility. The social hierarchy in the series is characterized by alien

domination and robotic subordination. There is a hint of class struggle between the working

class of robots and the upper class of aliens. The elevators, for instance, protest for better

working conditions against the alien users. Marvin also complains to Trillian and Zaphod, his

managers, about his job but he simply gets ignored by them. What’s worse, in the Hitchhiker
series, the incompetent are ironically more influential in political authority than the

competent.

Along with the studies above, Bamle’s MA thesis, Ethics of Infinite Improbability

and the Logic of Jokes: A Look At the Philosophical Inquiry in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker-

series’ aims to “investigate Hitchhiker’s participation in literature as a work of philosophical

inquiry, and to examine its philosophical content in philosophical terms, in order that it may

be recognized as work of philosophical fiction” (6). Bamle compares Adams’s The

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged to analyze their both themes

which lead to philosophical discussion. I find it persuasive when it takes a positive attitude to

face absurdity: “What are the insights to be gained from the philosophical inquiry of

Hitchhiker? One insight is that our lives persist even though the universe seems absurd, and

the only thing that we can do is to make the best of that situation” (114). I believe that “to

make the best of that situation” is like the positive response of Camus’s Sisyphus’ to the

heavy rock. Trying their best, Adams’s main characters persistently act like Sisyphus but they

face the absurdity with a sense of silly humor. In Bamle’s explanation, although life is almost

absurd, it is important to keep being the best of oneself:

Adams navigates a world of disputes among the learned when it comes to great

questions. The quarrel between Vroomfondel and Majikthise[, for example,] reflects

how difficult it can be to agree on reality (114). In a world of dogmatism, where

science and increased knowledge increasingly seem to trivialize man’s experience,

intuition and solidarity are replaced with bureaucracy and moral ineptitude. We would

instead be wise to remember the words of Ford Prefect, that “in an infinite Universe

anything can happen” (275). We would be wise to remember that life is infinitely

improbable, and we should value it as such. In a world that is saturated with absurdity,

it is still important to be nice (115).

 Aside from the philosophical discussion, Opahdal discusses Adams’s use of absurdity

as a literary expression. Opahdal points out two kinds of use of existential anxiety in The

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. According to Opahdal, Adams either brings forth such

anxiety to the characters or evokes it in the reader to reveal the mismatch between the

irrational world and a person’s psyche. Sometimes while there are certainly other

opportunities to run away from the absurd situation, the characters would rather decide to

stay. At other times, the characters are unable to escape from the insane incident because the

anxiety is beyond their knowledge and displayed to the readers on purpose. Opahdal

mentions the participation of the readers who share their anxiety as the characters do to

indicate that Adams’s absurd world is full of hidden truth about our real life. Above all, when

it comes to the towel,6 “Adams promotes the concept of finding new ways to use the things

we already have. If we stop searching for greater meaning and for something new or other to

solve things, maybe we can look at reality and discover new aspects of what we have” (15).

Opahdal’s analysis inspires me to ponder over Adams’s portray of free choice and the

ultimate answer, 42.7 Providing a number, Adams ambiguously answers the question but

allows both the reader and the characters to interpret the meaning of life wildy and

personally. A person’s free choice is the crucial part of this thesis since the characters who

live and work tediously lack the ability to control their life.

By building on these foundational critical works, this thesis intends to emphasize the

importance of boredom and its relationship with absurdity and creativity. Absurdity as the

worldview is inescapable but introspective in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Boredom, a situation of absurdity, reveals the characters’ wasted talent in their low jobs.

Adams advocates the benefits of a task giving people scope for creativity. Facing life with

6 In Adams’s creative writing, a towel is a multifunctional tool, and, most important of all, people can use it
when hitchhiking into outer space.
7 In the novels, it takes years and years for a most powerful computer named Deep Thought to calculate the
meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Deep Thought, however, answers the ultimate question with the
number forty-two, which further requires an appropriate question.
scorn is the attitude of Camus’s Sisyphus, but the demeanor of Adams’s main characters who

panic-lead their humdrum existence will reveal the goodness of absurdity in the end. By

providing more detailed textual analysis, this thesis aims to closely investigate how the

characters deal with boredom in order to interpret the meaningful facets of life in Douglas

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

III. Approaches and Theoretical Concerns

As its methodological focus, this thesis adapts Albert Camus’s perspectives on

absurdity and creativity in The Myth of Sisyphus in order to raise three central questions: how

are absurdity and futility juxtaposed with the characters’ feeling of boredom and happiness in

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Moreover, to what extent and in what ways does the

awareness of boredom enhance the mismatch between the external world and the human

psyche? Last but not least, how does Adams develop or modify Camus’s concept of creativity

and absurdity in the novels to comedically narrate the life-adventure of his signature

characters in a disordered world?

This thesis will be thus divided into four chapters including an introductory chapter,

two chapters on absurdity and boredom, and on creativity and comedy, respectively, and an

overall conclusion.

The second chapter will explain the detailed connection between absurdity and

boredom. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the electronic encyclopedia in the novel)

contains many examples of absurdity to mock the imperfections in the human world. Modern

living is problematic because it requires people to spend too much time and to work-off their

energy in meaningless labor. For at least some of Adams’s characters, to face absurdity, a

type of conflict between a person’s inner self and outer environment, is to become conscious

of a human’s true purpose of living. Working tediously is an expression of the absurdity of

overlooking one’s wishes for one’ own life. Wasting a worker’s whole career, work could be
boring, repetitive, and monotonous like a cruel punishment. To some extent, working, as a

common way for people to earn a living, becomes a waste of lifetime because it satirically

squanders the opportunities for fulfilling one’s limitless potential in various capacities.

The third chapter shows how creativity bonds with the ultimate meaning of life.

Creativity is shown in constructive ways to elevate one’s life: it brings passion to a person,

allows a person to cultivate his or her talent, and helps a person to have a sense of

achievement. Besides, in Camus’s words, “[c]reating is living doubly” (70). Responding to

absurdity authentically, a great artist seeks to imitate the reality he or she experiences and

incorporates his or her view into the creation. That is to say, to grasp the ultimate meaning of

life, is to learn by experience. Likewise, Adams, in his original storytelling and his unique

perspective, captures human life experience which can be seen as his reflective thinking

about facing absurdity.

Comparing Marvin’s fate with Sisyphus’, the third chapter also focuses on how

comedy functions to alleviate or intensify human existential anxiety in Adams’s novels. The

noticeable differences between these two figures are fundamentally tragic and comedic.

Camus has Sisyphus negate his destiny hopefully, but Adams amusingly makes Marvin

accept his unhappiness wholeheartedly. Instead of helplessness and unwillingness, humor and

comedy offer relief to the state of boredom. Rather than a mythic unbroken noble, Adams’s

characters are more likable and relatable because of their self-pity and fragility.

The concluding chapter summarizes the whole context of this thesis to review the life

philosophy within Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This thesis

examines the influence of both creativity and boredom on self-worth, an examination that

offers an opportunity to review the problems of self-acceptance. Marvin’s boredom and

depression during his lifetime extremely exemplifies the torture of self-negating. Marvin’s

shaping identity, in fact, teaches us how we tend to judge or evaluate ourselves by social
status, but it is actually acceptable to have our own weakness. Although we seem to be

imperfect in introspection, it is ‘mostly harmless’ to be an irrational creature living in an

absurd world. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy proves its artistic value by providing

nourishing food for thought, but it also cracks jokes about human beings being ignorant in

many expected yet unreasonable ways.

 Chapter Two

Absurdity and The Boredom of Labor

It said: “The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three

distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication,

otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is

characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we

eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?

—Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The boredom of labor is an expression of absurdity since it reveals a gap in a person’s

self-image between ideal life and reality. A laborer aims higher to achieve his or her personal

goal but others value his or her social worth differently. Adams narrates miscellaneous kinds

of absurd situations in a boundless universe to show one fact: fate is unpredictable, regardless

of peoples’ wishes. Among many absurdities shown in the novels, the boredom of labor, a

day-to-day dissatisfaction with one’s career, is a waste of his or her talent and precious

lifetime. Marvin, also known as the paranoid android, and other robots best exemplify the

plight of being bored because of their work experiences and their identities. In the novels, the

robots are solely responsible for unwanted chores such as opening and closing doors, giving

directions to guests, and making tea or coffee. Although the robots’ existence is to replace

humans for easy tasks, the robots constantly appear to question their life purpose as chore-

savers for humans. The robots are depicted as laborers who have no choice in lower social

class and laborers who fixate on their boredom and lose their interest for life, but Adams
apparently aims to draw a line between social roles and the expectations people have for

themselves. In this chapter, I will discuss the conflicts of boredom, the framework of self, and

the confrontation with absurdity in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The conflict of

boredom reveals the laborer’s discontent with social norms and leads to the better

understanding of one’s self-identity. Sisyphus’ trial of rolling the boulder supports the idea

that a person’s attitude toward absurdity determines his or her perception of the self. By

analyzing the relationship between absurdity and the boredom of labor, Douglas Adams’s life

philosophy in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy becomes lucidly decipherable.

Facing the absurd, a trial of boredom, is Sisyphus’ main challenge but also places

Marvin and other robots in a predicament. For both of them, the struggles against boredom

involve not only the physical stress of being exhausted but also the mental difficulties of

losing their self-esteem. To elucidate this point, I will compare Albert Camus’s idea of

absurdity in The Myth of Sisyphus with the portrayal of absurdity in Douglas Adams’s The

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Adams’s robotic characters and Camus’s Sisyphus are

alike in many ways, especially their forced laboring, passion for life, and their view of

absurdity. Unlike Sisyphus, however, Adams’s robots are humorously characterized with

sensitivity.

With a sense of absurdity, the laborer fails to find inherent value in his or her tiresome

work. Absurdism concerns the happiness of individuals and discusses the complex issue of

human life and death. Camus, the foremost thinker on absurdism, analyzes the subject of

absurdity and human exploration in The Myth of Sisyphus; his interpretation of Sisyphus

reveals the irony of the boredom of labor as a main purpose in life. Overall, Camus’s

argument focuses on futility, consciousness, and Sisyphus’ counteracting the absurd.

In The Myth of Sisyphus, boring labor is a penalty which makes Sisyphus suffer from

his passion for life. Sisyphus is forced to roll a gigantic boulder which will fall down again
and again when it reaches the summit of a mountain. The gods believe that the most severe

punishment is boredom since the repetitive action will end up causing futility and

hopelessness. Camus, however, emphasizes the importance of a person’s awareness, and he

indicates that misfortune befalls a person only when he or she is aware of the absurdity in his

or her situation.

In spite of the endless torture, Camus argues, Sisyphus is meant to be happy.

Although Sisyphus is condemned to work absurdly, he does not succumb to his fate.

Sisyphus, on the contrary, lives willingly to face his tragedy no matter how difficult the

ordeal is. Accepting everything he has to endure, Sisyphus is in control of his own destiny.

Camus concludes with Sisyphus’ satisfaction to reveal that happiness could possibly be

achieved in an absurd world.

This thesis finds Camus’s ideas corresponding with the robotic characters’ main

conflict in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Like Sisyphus, Marvin and other robots are

doomed to work boringly from the moment of being manufactured to the minute of becoming

dysfunctional; despite their purpose of being made, the robots have their own wishes for their

lifetime. Marvin, especially, envisions a more inspiring life for himself because of his great

capabilities. Besides, as Camus said, “[t]he workman of today works everyday in his life at

the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it

becomes conscious” (90). Analysis of the characters’ growing consciousness of their

mundane work helps to find a way to review the problems of modern living and lead a

meaningful life in Douglas Adams’s irrational universe.

At first glance, boredom seems to be a minor issue in the novels, but it actually

exemplifies the most important recurring theme in Douglas Adams’s writing: the sense of

absurdity. Before the ultimate answer to life, everything, and the universe is offered by Deep

Thought, crowds of men gather desperately to wait for an explanation. The boredom of labor
is the elephant in the room when speaking of meaninglessness and human existential anxiety:

“Never again, '' cried the man, “never again will we wake up in the morning and think[,] Who

am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don’t get up

and go to work? For today we will finally learn once and for all the plain simple answer to all

these nagging little problems of Life, the Universe and Everything!” (Adams 118). The sense

of absurdity is universal and ubiquitous in the novels; if it is necessary for people to work,

what will be the aftermath of taking a boring job for survival? The boredom of labor

demonstrates the ironic aspect of our human lifestyle and thus indirectly reflects the author’s

perspective on a person’s identity and its connection with the disorderly world.

In the novels, laboring is an unpleasant struggle for most of the characters. Many

instances show the feelings of unhappiness as well as the inner expectations of a laborer.

Arthur Dent, after a reluctant trip into space and a long period of absenteeism, is completely

forgotten by his broadcasting colleagues. Ford Prefect is an encyclopedia editor whose work

is insignificant and undervalued all the time. The jobless Trillian has doctoral degrees in

astrophysics and mathematics but never has an opportunity to demonstrate her ability before

she slips away to the galaxy with Zaphod. The police duo, working for the mice, are tired of

being seen as flat characters with a single appearance or pure evil minions, so they claim to

write novels and support humanitarianism in their off-duty hours. Mr. Prosser is a county

council worker, who has to convince Arthur to allow his house to be destroyed so a new

bypass can be built. As a bureaucratic employee, Mr. Prosser is responsible to the

government and citizens, but he feels only frustration and defeat. Mr. Prosser’s dilemma of

choosing between arguing with Ford’s fallacy and lying in front of the bulldozers

encapsulates the absurdity of work. “As soon as Mr. Prosser realized that he was substantially

the loser after all, it was as if a weight lifted itself off his shoulder: this was more like the

world as he knew it. He sighed.” (Adams 15). Regarding Mr. Prosser’s observation of the
relationship between him and his work, these two seemingly open options all lead him to

helplessness and meaninglessness. What’s more, it is noteworthy that these examples of

laboring are actually comedic dramas based on real issues.

Laboring is the common way of living for humans, but, in many cases as above, it

paradoxically makes the laborer feel worthless. The difficulty of making a living in the

modern world for people is also implied in the beginning story of the novels, “[t]his planet

has―or rather had―a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy

for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of

these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is

odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small pieces of paper that were unhappy” (Adams 5).

The profound melancholy of the workers is a realistic portrayal of life. In Working, a

Pulitzer-winning book of the workers’ personal reflection in America, Studs Terkel

investigates the reason for the workers’ innermost negative emotions:

It is […] about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the

walking wounded among the great many of us. […] It is about a search, too, for daily

meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment

rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort

of dying. […] To be remembered was the wish, spoken and unspoken, of the heroes

and heroines of this book (13).

The triviality experienced by workers is a day-to-day quest for meaning; this everyday

reaction against work is no less straightforward than Sisyphus’ trial. Whether it occurs

through malice or indifference, it is nearly impossible for the workers to overlook. Even

worse, in the novels, when workers intend to argue, their requests for better work conditions

are easily rejected.

 Beside feelings of insignificance, the inner voices of these workers’ expectations can

be clearly heard in the complaints of Marvin and other robots. The huge gap between the

personal and social views of work is made vividly unbridgeable through Marvin’s eloquence.

As Marvin argues, “Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to

the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? Cos I don’t.” (Adams 65). This quote clarifies how

ridiculous it is for the most intelligent person to be forced to do only small and simple tasks.

In the novels, robots replace humans in unwanted work, but, being overqualified, Marvin

earnestly expects to achieve things that require more skills or involve greater challenges.

Although Van der Colff in “Aliens and Existential Elevators: Absurdity and Its

Shadows in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker Series” tends to describe Marvin and the elevator as

a purely “nihilist shadow of absurd heroism” (132-33), since they fail to “actuate individual

meaning” but “resort to despondency” (122) , it is important to reconsider the robots’ conflict

with the boredom of labor and their relationship with humans, and more importantly, to

scrutinize Marvin’s long-term confrontation with the absurd before his death. Terkel’s words

resonate with Marvin’s grief: “most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us, like

the assembly line of the worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big

enough for people” (21). Since the robots cannot have an alternate way of living but face a

sense of absurdity, the conflict of boredom remains consciously inescapable: nothing notable

is accomplished, no one is memorable, and none is worthwhile.

The boredom of labor is shown dramatically through Marvin and other robots, whose

anthropomorphic characters reflect how humans behave unwillingly during work. The feeling

of being underrated, in fact, is not only the laborers’ suppressed emotions but simmering

discontent with the social role they are forced to play. Hiding negative passiveness like an

emotionless machine, laborers are used to faking their feelings to meet the requirements of

society. Sarcastically, the descriptions of the robots are provided in the Guide: “[t]he
Encyclopedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work

of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as

“Your Plastic Pal Who’s Fun to Be With” (Adams 64). Nevertheless, in contrast to this

image of a harmonic working companion, there is a clash over belief in social norms and

personal value in a worker’s mind.

The conflict of boredom is a tug of war between the laborers’ inner voices and the

social values they must follow. The mismatch between self-image and public image in reality

can be observed clearly in the plot. Marvin and other robots, for example, have no choice but

to perform easy tasks without expressing any grievances to their human managers:

“Just that?” he said.

“Yes,” said Trillian firmly.

“I won’t enjoy it,” said Marvin.

Zaphod leaped out of his seat.

“She’s not asking you to enjoy it,” he shouted, “just do it, will you?” (Adams 63)

When robots obey orders involuntarily, their dissenting voices are muted. Carrying out

others’ commands, they gradually lose their voices to express their own ideas. Being working

machines for chores, the robots have to face boredom in their everyday lives.

In the case of Marvin and other robots, it is evident that laborers are aware of their

status from different perspectives. Their identification with their boring work is complicated.

The robots ponder the question of what role they really play and who they truly want to be.

That is to say, a person’s sense of self is developed from various points of view. In Sources

of the Self, Charles Taylor introduces his observation on human identity in modern times:

In general, one might try to single out three axes of what can be called, in the most

general sense, moral thinking. As well as the two just mentioned——our sense of

respect for and obligations to others, and our understanding of what makes a full life
 ——there is also the range of notions concerned with dignity. By this I mean the

characteristics by which we think of ourselves as commanding (or failing to

command) the respect of those around us. (15)

The framework of self, overall, is a dual recognition consisting of social norms, a person’s

deep thought, a person’s actual reaction to and response from others’, and a person’s notion

of leading a moral life. In light of this, Marvin and other robots’ identification with the

boredom of labor indicates that one’s self-image is prone to be influenced by his or her social

role.

To clarify this point, a character analysis of the robots’ failure in working and

interpersonal relationships is crucial because it helps readers to understand the author’s stance

toward basic human needs for work and unfulfilled life goals in a world full of absurdity. In

many situations, the identification of the self is troublesome for the robots. In spite of their

appearance as humanoid androids, they are exploited laborers, whose feelings are deeply

hurt. In fact, “[t]he robot is that place in [a] SF text where technological and human are most

directly blended. The robot is the [dramatization] of the alterity of the machine, the paranoid

sense of the inorganic come to life” (Aldiss 161). Aldiss further indicates Adams’s comic

characterization of the robots to emphasize that they are not just humans covered in metal. A

complex mix of human personality and high technology is revealed in robots. We can infer

from Aldiss’s argument that Adams’s exaggeration of the robots forms a distorted mirror to

look at human emotions toward boring work and our discontent with the social order.

The hidden needs in work and negative feelings of the robots are two central keys to

realizing the setbacks in shaping the robots’ identities, but also represent a standard to

evaluate the qualities of one’s happiness. Their hurt feelings, furthermore, highlight the

impact of good faith and bad faith in humanity. The robots cannot fully express their opinions

since their long-term pent-up emotions are always unimportant or socially annoying to
humans. The awareness of the lack of feelings of freshness, positive feedback, and the sense

of achievement are contextualized in the characters’ attitude toward their work. From a

sociological perspective, Herzberg in Work and the Nature of Man explains how human

nature and work satisfaction are intertwined as he states that “man has two sets of needs: his

need as an animal to avoid pain and his needs as human to grow psychologically” (71).

Herzberg’s findings on job satisfaction help to identify the characters’ displeasure resulting

from work and how exactly their expectations come to nothing.

These hidden wishes are fundamental to one’s happiness both in Adams’s novels and

Camus’s delineation of Sisyphus. From the gods’ point of view, the boredom of labor

exhausts a person’s body and mind simultaneously. It is a cycle of never-ending labor, a

repetitive failure and a trigger to meaninglessness. It is supposed to diminish Sisyphus’ love

for life. Likewise, in Adams’s novels, the need for feelings of freshness is shown by an

immortal being, Wowbagger, who embodies the utmost boredom through his unusual

pastime. To kill time, Wowbagger curses everyone in the universe word by word; he even has

watched almost every movie thousands of times. Wowbagger’s boredom is tremendously

unbearable yet relatable to readers in daily life. When Wowbagger spends an unenjoyable

afternoon in a contemplative mood poetically named “the long dark teatime of the soul”

(Adams 317), the telling imagery of boredom is visualized. With his everlasting longevity,

Wowbagger’s odd hobby graphically illustrates the significance of one’s passion and

curiosity for things new or different. Moreover, it is noticeable that “part of his reason for

taking on the project he does is that everyone likes a challenge—and the project of insulting

everyone in the universe, in alphabetical order, is really challenging even if you’re immortal”

(Chappell 103).

Additionally, it is clear to see the eagerness for the feeling of freshness in the

elevator’s playfully disobedient response to an order. When Zaphod asks the elevator to move
upward, the elevator offers him the option of going downward instead. Though the elevators

are programmed to foresee what will happen in minutes to save time for unnecessary

greetings and awkward waiting for customer’s sake, the elevators apparently seek to move

variously to counteract boredom. However, since the function of the elevator is only to lift

objects vertically, the one thing the robots can see for sure is a lack of change within their

motions:

“Like what other possibilities?” he said wearily.

“Well,” the voice trickled on like honey on biscuits, “there’s the basement, the micro

files, the heating system…er…”

It paused.

“Nothing particularly exciting,” it admitted, “but they are alternatives.”

“Holy Zarquon,” muttered Zaphod, “did I ask for an existential elevator?” He beat his

fists against the wall. (Adams 179)

“[T]he elevator’s existence is defined by the repetitive action of going up, or going down.

[...]They never reach the top or actually achieve something transcendental; neither do they

find meaning at the bottom of their existence” (Van der Colff 135-36). Although Van der

Colff stresses the meaninglessness of the elevators, I argue that they are stuck in a life

without possibilities. The feeling of freshness is nowhere to be found in a monotonous job.

The expectation for a whole new life and a more likable self in their imagination is

unattainable. As in Camus’s sketch of a modern workforce, the elevators eventually consider

their work meaningless and find their prospects limited. In Adams’s satirical writing,

although they revolt to move sideways in experiment and protest against their inability to

make decisions on their own, the elevators end up isolating themselves in basements with

heavy hearts. The strike of the elevators tells us that a laborer’s mentality is harmfully

affected by monotonous laboring.

 Still, it would be myopic to categorize the elevator as a nihilist “in bleak despair”

(Van der Colff 123). This interpretation ascribes the elevator’s disappointment to nothingness

and Van der Colff thinks less about their restriction as involuntary workers who cannot

participate in negotiating for their potential. I suggest that their awareness of reality and their

ability to anticipate a near future both serve as focal points of one’s boredom with work.

According to Herzberg’s analysis, “one needs a system for the avoidance of unpleasantness

and a parallel need system for personal growth” (75). In Herzberg’s view, the working system

should be designed to help a worker grow and prevent any cause of dissatisfaction. However,

neither of these requirements exists in the elevators’ work, but their awakening and protest

against their boredom manifest a worker’s true aspiration. In my view, the Vogons8 appear to

be caricatures of bureaucrats who also have little interest in routine work and they are neither

kind nor polite in their services. Because the needs for a breath of fresh air are never fulfilled,

neither Vogons nor the elevators, laborers who cannot run away from boredom, are no longer

looking forward to their work and eventually lose hope for a promising future.

In addition to the need for feelings of freshness, the robots scarcely receive positive

feedback during work, which results in their low self-evaluation.They are often treated rudely

in many scenes, no matter what task they do or how many problems they solve for humans.

Their work is mostly taken for granted, and their feelings are rarely respected. The robots are

not just machines embedded with artificial intelligence; in Adams’s delineation, the feature of

“Genuine People Personalities” (Adams 64) shows that they have feelings just like humans.

In Technology and Metaphor, Aldiss points out “the glory of Marvin’s

characterisation is that he pursues the expression of his depression with machinelike [rigor],

so that he not only adds human characteristics to his machineness, he adds machine

characteristics to his human traits. He is a potently thorough blending of machine and man”

8 A fictional alien race who is well known for their ruthlessness and low efficiency for work. With a hidden
announcement posting in a place off the beaten road, the government asks to demolish Arthur’s house, but, at
the same time, Vogons demand to destroy Earth to build an intergalactic highway coincidentally.
(162). Aldiss stresses Marvin’s uniqueness in the history of science fiction to argue that he is

as powerful as a machine yet as sensitive as a human being. “Marvin combines the attributes

of the most advanced of machine intelligences with the pathological character traits of a

particular flawed human being” (Aldiss 161). Mavin has explained his specialty, “Let's build

robots with Genuine People Personalities,” they said. So they tried it out with me. I’m a

personality prototype. You can tell, can’t you?” (Adams 65). Unlike the rest of the robots in

the story, Marvin as a “prototype9” is capable of being aware of his low social status and how

people think of him.

In “‘I Think You Ought To Know I’m Feeling Very Depressed’: Marvin and

Artificial Intelligence” Goodenough echoes Aldiss’s idea that Marvin renovates the

traditional representation of emotionless or villainous robot in science fiction because of his

hypersensitivity to others’ expressions. Goodenough discusses Arnold Schwarzenegger’s role

in The Terminator to show that robots are sometimes depicted as sinister and senseless who

lack human feelings and reasoning. Goodenough asserts that a robot should at least

understand how a human mind works, so it can work well with human beings. This

awareness of others is Marvin’s distinctiveness. Goodenough’s argument supports my

contention that Marvin’s “sense of self-awareness leads him to desire at least a certain level

of admiration and respect for his qualities, but he doesn’t receive it” (149). The thought of

others’ opinions of him fills Marvin with dismay.

Marvin’s interpersonal relationship with his crew is unquestionably unequal. Marvin,

ludicrously yet paradoxically, uses bitter language to express his boredom but he will follow

the humans’ lead anyway. Opdahl specifies Marvin's loyalty as she finds that on several

occasions he would rather stay to overcome the obstacles for humans than escape (10).

Nonetheless, he is hardly treated respectfully as a character with real feelings but is faithfully

9 In the novels, Marvin is the pioneering product of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation; his character appears to
have more negative emotions than the updated robots.
committed to doing some dangerous tasks to protect his human crew, such as waiting in the

parking lot for thousands of years, guarding against the enemies’ attack for Zaphod, saving

everyone’s life because of shutting down the Krikkit’s War Computer and so on.

Besides, there are many examples in the novels to indicate Marvin’s worthlessness in

the responses to him by other characters, who either turn away from him or force him to be

silent. The left side of Marvin’s body is broken in his first encounter with Arthur and Ford,

who sing a tune to ignore his problem. Marvin complains that, “[…] of course I’ve got this

terrible pain in all the diodes down my left-hand side…” but “I mean I’ve asked for them to

be replaced but no one ever listens” (Adams 71). In the end, he is never carefully fixed before

his death and even paired with an unfit component in Adams’s comedic yet pathetic

narrative. The indifference of humans to Marvin is visible, but it is important to explore

Marvin’s loneliness from the angle of lost empathy and disrespect.

Being frequently offended, Marvin still seeks approval from others. Despite the

fragility he has shown, Marvin’s voice of pain is never attended to. For example, after

Marvin’s disagreement about his boring work, he cares about others’ feelings by cautiously

asking, “I’m not getting you down at all, am I?” (Adams 63) or, more directly, assuring them

that “I wouldn’t like to think I was getting you down.” (Adams 63). The worst of Mavin’s

insecurities of self-esteem can be seen easily when Marvin starts to physically abuse himself

in a water bucket and straightforwardly points out other people’s impatience toward him:

“You don’t have to pretend to be interested in me you know,” said Marvin at last. “I know

perfectly well I’m only a menial robot. […] But I’m quite used to being humiliated,” droned

Marvin, “I can even go and stick my head in a bucket of water if you like. I’ve got one ready.

Wait a minute” (Adams 233). Unfortunately, “[t]his leads to a personality that depresses

others who then avoid Marvin which then depresses him even more. So we see a kind of
feedback loop here where things just get worse” (Goodenough 150). A double disapproval of

the self, after all, represents how Marvin realizes his interpersonal relationship with others.

It is undeniable that one’s recognition of the self involves to a very great degree one’s

value as estimated by others. Being a human-like robot, Marvin’s negative feelings reveal a

worker’s dissatisfaction at not being respected and the social rejection of others. Goodenough

further concludes from Marvin’s low self-esteem that he has a strong awareness of others

who constantly depreciate him (Goodenough 147), and he quotes the poet Burns’s words,

“To see ourselves as others see us,” to describe Marvin’s mental illness thus: “what ought to

depress us is that these very same qualities are the ones that could have made Marvin happy

—or at least, happier—if he had been treated as a person rather than a tool or slave”

(Goodenough 151). According to Marvin, “[i]t’s the people you meet in this job that really

get you down” (Adams 236). Named “the paranoid android,” Marvin has a compelling reason

for his melancholy mood due to the people who utilize and abuse him in cold blood. To put it

bluntly, the relationship between the robots and humans teaches us an invaluable lesson:

social acceptance constituting everyday violence can be a vicious nurturing to self-worth.

Last but not least, the sense of achievement is thoroughly lost in Marvin’s lasting

grumbling as he deals with his tedious work: “Why bother? What’s the point? Nothing is

worth getting involved in. Further circuits amused themselves by analyzing the molecular

components of the door, and of the humanoids’ brain cells. For a quick encore they measured

the level of hydrogen emission in the surrounding cubic parsec of space and then shut down

again in boredom” (Adams 65). Marvin is overqualified for his work so he is bored with

every task he receives. As a matter of fact, in modern life, what we normally trade work for is

salary, but I suppose that the robots do not get paid at all. Therefore, the only thing they can

receive from a job finished is the sense of accomplishment.

 In their satisfaction for work, there is a sharp contrast between Marvin and the

automatic doors on the ship Heart of Gold. In Marvin’s first appearance, he amply

demonstrates his agony at the doors’ satisfaction at a simple task being completed. The doors

are dissimilar to Marvin in their optimistic personality and the recognition of finishing a great

job: “All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their

pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with knowledge of a job well

done” (Adams 65). Marvin is entirely beyond the automatic doors’ competence, so he is

annoyed by the doors’ idea of being menial but blessed. It is obvious that the difference

between these two kinds of robots is their intelligence. Marvin’s capability, as he ceaselessly

mentions, is as enormous as a planet. He is presumably the most ingenious of all the

characters in the series and has an unquenchable thirst for challenges.

What Marvin in the whole series has been searching for is something that

demonstrates his intelligence. To elaborate on Marvin’s high self-expectation, we need to

examine how self-actualization is addressed in social psychology. Herzberg finds the sense of

achievement in the historical study of many psychological theories considering self-

realization as a person’s greatest but the most strenuous ambition for his or her career:

To be sure, the concept of self-actual action, or self-realization, as a man’s ultimate

goal has been focal to the thought of many personality theorists. For such men as

Jung, Adler, Sullivan, Rogers, Goldstein, Maslow and Gardener, the supreme goal of

man is to fulfill himself as a creative, unique individual according to his own innate

potentialities and within the limits of reality. When he is deflected from this goal, he

becomes, as Jung says, “a crippled animal!’ (56)

Very much like the wounded creature in Jung’s remark, Marvin is gifted but wasted. He is

distant from approaching creativity but tightly suffocated by boredom. Despite Marvin’s

sincerest wish for a difficult task, he is never able to find one because he is only being asked
to tackle simple tasks. What’s more, he is far too qualified for almost everything although

some of his tasks can seem not easy at all. Through Marvin, the character who has the most

capabilities, Adams conveys the message that full awareness of the gap between reality and

self-expectation is not painless as one stares at the boundaries between one’s calling for

creativity and the actual reply.

Marvin’s honesty10 and his knowledge of reality are two of his prominent

characteristics but, as the most brilliant being, he is depressed. In fact, Marvin’s whining

discloses not only his negated view of his lighthearted peers but also his ultimate purpose for

life: “[p]ardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don’t know why I bother to

say it, oh God, I’m so depressed. Here’s another self-satisfied doors. Life! Don’t talk to me

about life” (Adams 66). What Marvin dislikes about his life is his total understanding of how

bleak life is for the robots responsible exclusively for uninteresting work. No one really

appreciates their being and they are used as entry-level tools no matter how all-powerful they

are.

To a greater extent, it is hardly possible for him to have a sense of achievement but he

still insists on arguing, “Can I pick up that piece of paper! Here I am, brain the size of a

planet and they ask me to…” (Adams 233)11. As knowledgeable as Marvin, it is very likely

that he perceives the huge gap between his great expectation and reality. His persistence on

pursuing a goal of realizing himself is unrealistic to others in Adams’s absurd world, but why

would people blame him for his passionate perseverance for life? It is not easy to face reality.

Take alcoholics or junkies for example: drinking or taking drugs is not a method to solve the

problem but a temporary placebo to avoid seeing the truth. Facing the absurd is a process of

realizing one’s identity, which for those who strive to survive as menial robots is certainly not

10 Marvin talks with his candor because, comically speaking, his “lying circuits are all out of commission”
(Adams 354).
11 In this quote, Marvin is interrupted by Zaphod. Again, no one cares about his feelings and everyone is tired
of hearing his complaints about the quality of his work.
a box of chocolate but “wormgears12” (Adams 352) as Marvin morosely describes it.

Regardless of the reality, he keeps his ambition to dream big.

The perception of absurdity is visible in Marvin’s viewpoint of life: “loathe it or

ignore it, you can’t like it” (Adams 95). While Marvin sees the boredom of his work with

crystalline clarity, others seem only to pacify him to overlook the problem. Trillian comforts

Marvin by saying, “you just act as comes naturally and everything will be just fine” (Adams

63). Zaphod also wants to persuade Marvin to do his work unconditionally so he tells a white

lie: “there's a whole new life stretching out ahead of you” (Adams 239). Moreover, Marvin is

sold to an exhibition named Mind Zoo where visitors, after hearing his life story, all try to

encourage him to “cheer up and think positive,” and some even yell at him to “give us a little

chuckle” (Adams 353). However, what is the point of just smiling at one’s pain? In Bright-

Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America, Barbara Ehrenreich discusses the

overuse of positivity by discounting the truth: “What it gave me, if you want to call this a gift,

was a very personal, agonizing encounter with an ideological force in American culture that I

had not been aware of before—one that encourages us to deny reality, submit cheerfully to

misfortune, and blame only ourselves for our fate” (44). This explains the reason why

Marvin’s personality is undesirable to other characters: he imparts what he knows about

reality without reservation once he has a chance to speak up, and we can tell that pointing out

the trouble of laboring honestly is not inviting at all.

The awareness of absurd work allows us to see the failures of robotic figures. The

robots are representations of workers, who struggle to be socially accepted and search for

challenges as well as changes. They may not be able to pursue their goals in the mismatch

between reality and their expectations but, on the other hand, it could be an epiphany of their

relationship with meaninglessness. It is properly put in Camus’s assertion:

12 When Marvin introduces himself to the mattress, Zem, he extends their discussion of his left leg to his
perspective of life.
 Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It

would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd

discovery. It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness. “I

conclude that all is well,” says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the

wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It

drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a

preference for futile sufferings. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be

settled among men (90-91).

Camus’ belief in happiness and the absurdity of a person’s fate is identifiable with Marvin’s

death. On Marvin's last day, he drags himself to witness God's final message, “we apologize

for the inconvenience” (Adams 610). Marvin’s response to this apology is portrayed in

serenity by his saying, “I feel good about it” (Adams 610). Goodenough has doubts about this

expression of goodness and he assumes that either Marvin recognizes the unreasonableness of

the whole universe and its creator or Marvin is free from the burden with satisfaction (142).

Van der Colff considers Marvin’s death as a destination to “his morbid electronic life” (135)

and she believes that Marvin voluntarily cuts the wire to his battery at last, but I argue that

rather than being a defeatist Marvin is the courageous one who demonstrates the

confrontation with absurdity for a nearly eternal life.

If we recap what Marvin has endured in his life-adventure, it will be doubtless that his

death is no cowardice. As a low-status laborer, Marvin may loudly complain how boring his

work is but he will finish it for others every time. In his statement, “what do you know of

always? You say ‘always’ to me, who, because of the silly little errands your organic life

forms keep on sending me through time on, am now thirty-seven times older than the

Universe itself?” (Adams 608). Being perceptive, he is aware of how people think of him, yet

he bitterly takes care of them even though he sees nobody as a friend. When Arthur describes
Marvin as an old friend, Marvin disagrees with him: “don’t think I ever came across one of

those” (Adams 608). Marvin, the most intelligent character of all, is being forced to do his

menial job but he never gives up searching for a sense of achievement. Although Marvin

declares that he has no enthusiasm for anything (240), his ambition for self-realization repeats

in his well-known line even before his last moment, “to come in last. It would be fitting. Here

I am, brain the size—”. Though some may suspect that Marvin takes all this suffering

because he has to follow the three laws of robotics,13 there are exceptions who break the law

as the story carries on. For instance, in the conversation with the battle machine, Marvin

explains how uneven the relationship between men and robots is and the weaponized

machine chooses to committ suicide right away (184). Replying Camus’s statement that

“there is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide” (3), Marvin faces

absurdity with passion for life in a hateful tone and a metal body till the end of his existence.

Marvin’s ending phrase is similar to the absurd man’s yes, which shows his autonomy

not only because of the proof of God's vacancy, but also because of his self-acceptance of

what he has given to his life unapologetically. Making the best of every worst thing, Marvin

is definitely no faithless nihilist; in Adams’s portrayal, even in defeat his human-like mind

may be more emotional but surely tougher than Sisyphus’ because he must meet all his

misery with a sensitive personality and a fixable mechanic body that spells for him a kind of

timelessness. As Camus argues that, “[a]t that subtle moment when the man glances

backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he

contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him,

combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death (91). Death is usually

considered a tragic ending in literature, but Marvin’s death is different. For a character who is

13 According to the formulation of Issac Asimov and his editor, John Campbell, a robot may not harm a human
being, must carry out the orders, and should keep its own existence from contradicting the first and the second
rule.
always unsatisfied but feeling good for the first and the last time, Marvin’s growth is his self-

acceptance. From Marivn’s death, we can see that confronting absurdity is a means of sorting

out the objective truth and one’s belief to gain a more profound understanding of self-

approval.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the electronic guidebook to the universe,

entails all kinds of knowledge of the unknown in an imaginative outer space based on the real

human world. More than containing practical information such as bringing a towel, the novel

instructs the reader to have a conceptual understanding of the true self from an introspective

and external perspective. In Adams’s depiction, destiny is always absurdly unexpected.

Nevertheless, seeing through the gap of one’s wishes and the irrational world offers insight of

its own. From the conflict of boredom, we perceive how modern labor belittles one’s voice,

wastes one’s talent, and diminishes one’s love for life. Living with passion is Adams’s and

Camus’s interconnected viewpoint of life, but Adams’s characters who show extreme

emotions are not as impeccable as Sisyphus but more humanly fragile. Adams’s comedic

sense of love for life is expressed by Marvin in a funny mechanical complaint with absolute

resentment. The truth of reality for many people who live with a low status could be biting,

but rather than staying numb, the hysterical and sentimental expressions toward our human

existence are natural. For many of us, “[i]n many ways, Adams’s assessment of the absurdity

of the human condition is similar to Ford Prefect’s assessment of Earth and its occupant: it’s

mostly harmless” (Kind 77). If we find out that our human world and ourselves are saturated

with flaws and unreasonableness, we should still live authentically by following the guide in

amusement and enlightenment.

In this chapter, we have discussed how the absurdity of boredom affects the robots’

thinking and feeling correlating with inherent value and value estimated by others. Seeing the

robotic characters’ plight, the conflict of boredom is a result of one’s wasted life, a mismatch
between the inner self and the outer world, and a life-long attempt to challenge absurdity. The

robots who have authentic personalities manifest our human flaws and our expectations for a

meaningful life. Working tediously, many people in real life cannot reach their life goals.

Only when people are aware of living in between absurdity and happiness, could they know

what situation they are in or who they really are. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,

facing the absurd is the inevitable but thoughtful perception of one’s self. Adams depicts a

world full of the uncontrollable, but his portrait of Marvin makes us believe that one’s love

for life is not in vain if one is honest enough to be his or her self. Although fate seems always

to go against one’s wishes, every little decision one makes can be influential to social norms

and personal faith. Summarized by the bold warning, “Don’t Panic,” the novel provides more

than a space journey: a philosophical prescription for self-discovery.

 Chapter Three

Creativity and Comedy

It was Star Wars time, there was a lot of interest in space. Also, when people think of

space they tend to think of something very comic-strip and here was something very

erudite and witty. That surprised people. But it appealed to everyone. The intellectuals

compared it to Swift, and the fourteen year-olds enjoyed hearing depressed robots

clanking around.

—Geoffrey Perkins, DON’T PANIC

In the last chapter, we discussed how the absurdity and boredom of labor coincide in

an incongruity between the characters’ wishing and their existence in Douglas Adams’s

fictional universe. A general overview of the robots’ conflict with boredom concerns a

restricted worker’s hope for various life experiences, social acceptance, and creative

challenges. The boredom of labor and absurdity could be linked to meaninglessness and

lifelessness, but, taking advantage of comedy and creativity, Adams not only guides the

reader through his imaginative scenery of the irrational but also empowers us to interpret the

meaning within the novels in a playful manner.

 Again, a mismatch between one’s anticipation and one’s reality demonstrates not only

the inner voices of the characters but also the author’s sense of humor. Telling a joke of

human experience, the guidebook for space travel investigates the imperfections of the real

world and makes unbearable human customs laughable. In this chapter, I will examine how

creativity and comedy are intermingled in the novels. Combining the comic with creativity,

Douglas Adams probes into the meaning of our human lives. In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the

Galaxy, human culture and humanity are depicted as both entertaining and enlightening.

The ultimate meaning of life is the core debate in the novels, but rather than defining

it affirmatively, it is portrayed in a riddling number, 42, which is like a game of the author

and an invitation to the reader to solve the puzzle or to suggest that there is no solution.

Scholars of this topic have touched upon its relevance to philosophy and existentialism while

some critics have treated it with uncertainty. “According to Deep Thought, the problem is not

in the answer, but in the question. We’re looking for clarity, but in this seemingly endless

search, we don’t even know how to properly formulate the question that we want answered”

(Kind 87). Van der Colff lists existential recognition of meaninglessness to further suggest

constructing subjective meaning in amusement. Opdahl points out that Adams encourages us

to zealously reconsider the meaning of everyday objects like a towel to find a new facet of

reality (15). Whissen indicates that “the novel does not offer a value system or code of

behavior to subscribe to, other than the example surviving with grace and humor, the reliance

on luck and the virtue of not taking things too seriously” (117). Woodford in Novel for

Students argues that searching for the meaning of life is illusory but the humor of the novel

represents the aim of living (137). I find their analyses insightful and interesting because the

obscure answer of 42 may seem to be confusing to many of us; but it is not gibberish. It is an

instruction to interpret as freely as one can. To put it more precisely, it invites us to reshape

our understanding of ordinary life in an aesthetic and humorous way.

 With an ambiguous answer, everyone is capable of deriving their own meaning to this

number. In the plot, Benjy and Frankie, who refuse to wait for the earth to find the ultimate

question to this answer, hastily make up their own to reply in a rhetorical sentence, “How

many roads must a man walk down?14” (Adams 135). The inquiry is perfect for them because

it sounds “very significant without actually tying you down to meaning anything at all”

(Adams 135). They emphasize the importance of searching by saying “yes idealism, yes the

dignity of pure research, yes the pursuit of truth in all its forms” (Adams 132), but they prefer

to fabricate one plausible answer for their sake to make money and to justify their own

existence. Instead of mumbo jumbo or instruction in details, the whole series is set in this

unexpected tone to crack jokes and to let the readers have their own meaning as Benjy and

Frankie weave ideas together. The meaning of life is said to be funnily inscribed in Arthur’s

mind and every other earthlings’ thinking15 so we can assume that to personally construct or

to grasp the meaning in a creative and comedic way helps the reader to enjoy the author’s

brainstorming.

Absurdity as the worldview of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is inescapable

but inner-directed. The sense of the absurd not only reflects how the characters’ wishes are

contradicted but is also the essential bridge to comedy. In Aristotle on Comedy: Towards a

Reconstruction of Poetics II, Richard Janko reorganizes the lost manuscript of Aristotle and

translates it from ancient Greek into modern English. According to Aristotle’s collected

handwritten notes, several elements are vital to play in a comedy, which is defined as

follows:

14 This is the first line of Bob Dylan’s song, “Blowin’ In The Wind” (1963). Dylan reveals doubts for one’s
depth towards maturity in a lifetime, later singing, “the answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind.”
15 In the novels, earth is constructed as an all-powerful computer to think up the ultimate question of life, but in
the last five minute of the calculation, it is ruined by Vogons. The mice somehow believe that the minds of the
earthlings have the ability to find the question.
 “Comedy” is an imitation of an action that is absurd and lacking in magnitude,

complete, <with embellished language,> the several kinds (of embellishment being

found) separately in the (several) parts (of the play); (directly represented) by

person<s> acting, and <not > by means of narration; through pleasure and laughter

achieving the purgation of the like emotions. It has laughter for its mother. (25)

Aristotle believes that comedy is to provoke laughter and find amusement. Adams’s novels

serve the same purpose. In the setting of a strange but earthlike outer space, acting absurd is

through the alien and robotic characters’ mimicry of human nature. Although the exact genre

of Adams’s hitchhiker series is the topic of a long-standing debate, Adams’s primary concern

is simply to be entertaining. Adams once responded to this issue by laughing at the

complexity of his novels in an interview: “I’ve inadvertently done something quite clever, in

that I’ve done a show which science fiction fans like because they think it’s a science fiction,

and which people who don’t like science fiction like, because they think it’s knocking science

fiction. [Above all…] I just wanted to do stuff I thought was funny’’ (Roberts 91). Aristotle’s

recognition of comedy corresponds to the mirroring of real human behavior in the novels, but

Adams seems to hint at many philosophical questions in the jokes. Many of them are

displayed by a mismatch between reality and one’s anticipation, which is closely related to

Aristotle’s explanation of the basis of humor:

[M]ost jokes arise through transference and the arousal of false expectation…

(Humour) arises when it is unexpected, and contrary to one’s previous expectations,

but instead resembles parodic turns in jokes (the same effect is caused by puns, as

they too lead one astray) and in lines of verse: the verse “stately he trod, and under his

feet were his chilblains” does not run as the hearer anticipated—he thought it would

say “scandals.” (33)

Humor is founded on the constant use of false expectation, and the demonstration of humor in

the novels is an incongruity between the characters’ inner voices and their fate as well as a

gap between the reader’s assumption and the situation as it unfolds. For instance, in the

beginning of the story, a girl’s realization for the meaning of life is spotlighted but, to the

reader’s surprise, she later turns out to be a minor character who fades from the scene in a

flash. “This is not her story. But it is the story of that terrible, stupid catastrophe and some of

its consequences” (Adams 5). The narrative unfolds with a twist of standpoints and focuses

on the turmoil and folly in the relationship between the last earthlings and non-humans.

Beside surprise and laughter, this intersection of absurdism and comedy can be

extended to the appreciation of creating. In “Absurd Creation,” Camus points out that “[o]ne

must live it or die of it. So it is with the absurd: it is a question of breathing with it, of

recognizing its lessons and recovering their flesh. In this regard the absurd joy par excellence

is creation” (69). Camus quotes Nietzsche’s statement, we have art in order not to die of the

truth, to stress that the one and only way to face the absurd truth is to create, and he further

concludes with “[c]reating is living doubly” (70). In a writing process of recreating reality, an

artist with an awareness of absurdity focuses on his or her thoughts with freedom as his or her

confrontation with meaninglessness; although no one can escape from death, the creator

seeks to incorporate his or her view into the creation as an ephemeral triumph for liberal

passion. That is to say, to grasp the meaning of life is to retake one’s experience by creating

with wit. Creativity is thus bound to the ultimate meaning of life. Embodied by artists such as

a view designer, a poet, and a robot, Adams’s praise for an individual’s creative

accomplishments is fully visible in the novels. Each of these artists represents a different

meaning of creating. Furthermore, giving meaning subjectively is also shown in the

guidebook as a tool for carrying on the stories to reflect Adams’s critical thinking on human

cultural activities.
 This thesis finds that comedy and absurdity both arise from an imbalance between

expectations and reality. The incongruity between what actually happens and the result

people hope to achieve is firmly explorable and diversely comical in these novels. It shows a

character’s struggle for absurd truth but cracks the joke of soft and funny sides in humanity at

the same time. With a unique sense of humor, Adams offers a series of comedic jokes

enriched with limitless creativity. In the novels, the sense of absurdity is clearly undeniable

but an authentic experience of facing it and responding to it is shown in the characters’

pursuit of creativity.

Creativity is constructive in the way the characters’ face the absurd. It gives a person

freedom in his or her acting of thinking and crafting. Creating is artistry which allows one to

show his or her capacity. Developing creativity more or less makes the creator less bothered

by meaninglessness in an absurd world. When Arthur concentrates on making sandwiches, he

is finally satisfied with his “life work”(Adams 730). “For every sandwich the size and shape

of the trimmings were different, but the Sandwich Maker would always effortlessly and

without hesitation assemble them into a pattern which fitted perfectly. A second layer of meat

and a second layer of trimmings, and the main act of creation would now be accomplished”

(Adams 727). Finding favor with them, Arthur cements his social relationship with others by

his artistic techniques. It is through comedy and creativity, moreover, that Adams faces

absurdity and uses his narrative and invention to reflect the human world.

Playfulness is a principle in the narrative of the novels. Almost everything is taken

cheerfully in the narrator’s tone although sometimes the topic can be a really serious one such

as violence, death, or war. The setting of outer space after the destruction of earth is an

imaginary imitation of human civilization. The way to build this world is to subvert the

ordinary and blend the traditional with some unconventional elements. “In a way, Hitchhiker
is a kind of Gulliver’s Travels in space. One goes out into space, one leaves the world and

comes across all sorts of extraordinary people who behave in extraordinary ways and one

discovers that the more things change, the more they stay the same. One sees human foibles

played out on a grand scale really…” (Roberts 89). In Ford’s welcoming and comforting

words in response to Arthur’s panicking, we get to see that Adams’s universe is like a

playground, as Ford says: “You just come along with me and have a good time. The

Galaxy’s a fun place” (Adams 39). In Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga argues that the instinct

of play is well-grounded in human’s minds and its necessities contribute to civilization in

many ways:

Summing up the formal characteristics of play we might call it a free activity standing

quite consciously outside “ordinary” life as being “not serious”, but at the same time

absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material

interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper

boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It

promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with

secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguising or other

means. (13)

In our attempt to understand Adams’s elaboration of his fictional galaxy and his artistic

characters who are in the mood to play, Huizinga’s view of play enables us to identify how

the characters find satisfaction in their self-willing creation, from which they gain social and

spiritual values, and in their individual ritual of making their own works. With the power of

imagination, readers get to see a reflected society which amusingly manifests the silliness and

brilliance of imagery by mocking seriousness. By analyzing the characters’ experiences and

creations, we see how Adams playfully esteems the production of art and makes wisecracks

which focus on the vulnerability of humans and the flaws of the world.

The whole series involves many aspects of human life and concerns with

philosophical discussion. For example, from the whale’s life and death, a brief but lively

experience can be observed. The whale asks about its existence, “Why am I here? What’s my

purpose in life?” (Adams 90). Soon after the whale thinks out loud of its being, it begins to

feel its presence as an “interesting sensation” (Adams 90) and associates with the

environment by naming things. The whale starts to feel the outside world by moving its tail in

the wind and has the spontaneous idea of making partnership with things around it before its

subsequent death and immediate incarnation. It is obvious that life is too short in the whale’s

soliloquy, but the whale’s awakening in its period of existence is a common desire to befriend

others and find meanings in one’s own definition and senses. In Adams’s accurate portrayal,

life is an unexpected adventure with activities such as going through unfamiliar things,

acquiring kinds of knowledge, and building relationships with others. Moreover, to the

reader’s amazement, the comic sense is layered and intensified in its repetitiveness as we get

close to uncovering the mystery of the whale’s karma of life and death. The whale gets killed

by Arthur coincidentally after it is reborn in all kinds of forms. While Šoštarec considers the

whale’s reappearing death and the Cathedral of Death16 as a symbol of absurdity (11), I think

it emphasizes how human nature drastically changes from pure innocence to malice by

unintentional violence.

Full of surprises and jokes, the novels make fun of many well-known philosophical

theories to show that probability can be very interesting. For instance, in Arthur and Ford’s

flight from the Vogon’s attack, they take a ride on a ship powered by the Infinite

16 The soul of the whale is named Agrajag, who transforms to be a bowl of petunia, a rabbit, a fly and many
other living creatures in his numerous rebirth. He is accidentally murdered by Arthur too many times so he
builds a Cathedral of Death to seek revenge.
Improbability Drive17 (Adams 59), which allows them to witness numerous monkeys

becoming playwrights to write Hamlet in relays. Relating to the infinite monkey theorem, the

novel shows how impossible things can be a source of inspiration for dramatic jokes.

According to the theorem, if there are uncountable monkeys who have limitless time and

sufficient resources, it is possible for them to write literature like Shakespeare’s play.

Unexpectedness and philosophical perception coexist fundamentally in Adams’s sense of

humor. Making no boundaries between imagination and randomness, Adams’s jokes

underline an unrestrained and vigorous style that brims with talent. In Don’t Panic, Gaiman

mentions Adams’s ideas on writing humor in 1984. In that article, Adams addressed how he

considered comedy a serious business. When Adams passionately committed to writing

humor, it was hard for him to “stay sane” (Gaiman 114). From the monkeys’ action of writing

like Shakespeare, we can also tell that to create imagery of madness and to think ingeniously

are essentially interrelated. In a world full of possibility, the craziest joke is simply not

effortless rambling but “an awful lot of engineering” (Gaiman115).

Moreover, the keystone of this playfulness is evident in Slartibartfast’s sophisticated

but sincere reply to Arthur’s wonder. When Arthur shows his doubts about his mundane life

to Slartibartfast, the landscape designer talks to him with an approving sense of coziness. To

answer Arthur’s existential anxiety, Slartibartfast says that everyone in outer space possesses

“perfectly normal paranoia” (Adams 127), but he believes that it is not actually troublesome:

“Maybe. Who cares?” said Slartibartfast before Arthur got too excited. “Perhaps I’m

old and tired,” he continued, “but I always think that the chances of finding out what

really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the

17 In the novels, the Infinite Improbability Drive is a generator installed on the starship Heart of Gold, which
teleports in transport but has unprecedented side effects. “The theory behind the Infinite Improbability Drive
shows us that there are dimensions in the universe hitherto unaccounted for. The Drive engaging with one of
these dimensions largely accounts for metaphysical randomness. It also to a large extent explains cosmic
absurdity…” (Bamle 78).
 sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me: I design coastlines. I got an

award for Norway.” […] “Where’s the sense in that?” he said. “None that I’ve been

able to make out. I’ve been doing fjords all my life. For a fleeting moment they

become fashionable and I get a major award.” (127)

Slartibartfast’s sense of accomplishment can be seen as a tangible proof of Adams’s

encouragement to create. As a landscape designer, Slartibartfast works to customize the

landform for a planet, and Earth happens to be a merchandised creation by him. In

Slartibartfast’s taste, the scenery of fjords is intricately complicated, and the design of

landscaping is very challenging but pleasurable. At the end of this discussion, the prize is

thrown away by Slartibartfast since for him satisfaction is not material but spiritual. During

the second time of building the earth, Slartibartfast adapts his skills as usual but places more

fjords in Africa since he is really fond of them. Slartibartfast’s preference for the fjords, his

devotion to creating, demonstrates one’s passion for life no matter what the trend is and no

matter who intervenes. Kind argues that Slartibartfast upholds a lifestyle of being caught up

in activities that are appealing in order to ease the suffering of absurdity or consider it not a

problem (96), but I argue that Slartibartfast’s unstoppable love for designing all his life is

how he indirectly achieves his purpose of life. Besides, Adams’s fictional portrayal of nature

is an artificial work of art to be appreciated in which a pure happiness can be spotted in

discovery as well as handcrafting.

Adams’s enthusiastic support of creation is unmistakable. However, the relationship

between one’s capacity and one’s contribution to culture is comedically explicated in the

poetry of the Vogons. Poetry is widely considered the finest type of literature, but, in

Adams’s portrayal, it is a double-edged sword. In the novels, the amateur loves to write bad

poetry and the worst poetry simply shows the creators’ idiocy and awfulness. Art should be
beautiful but Vogons’ poetry is infamous throughout the universe for its lousiness. The

audience who listened to the Vogons’ poetry will be damaged, but Vogons still appreciate

their creation and sharing:

“The prisoners sat in Poetry Appreciation chairs—strapped in. Vogons suffered no

illusions as to the regard their works were generally held in. Their early attempts at

composition had been part of a bludgeoning insistence that they be accepted as a

properly evolved and cultured race, but now the only thing that kept them going was

sheer bloody-mindedness.” (Adams 45)

Thus, we can see that creativity sometimes requires one’s talent to a great degree to be

acknowledged, but the creator can still relish the sense of inventing and presenting

wholeheartedly. While the artist may treat his or her work in all sincerity, the artwork

sometimes may be indecipherable, degraded, and unfavored by the audience. A person’s

creation is nevertheless not exclusively for the viewer but also the creator’s inner satisfaction.

Further, if we keep an eye on Arthur’s forced critical review of Vogons’ poetry, the

misreading of the poet’s stance will show us the fact that one’s work reflects the creator’s

personality faithfully. The artwork itself is an expression of the creator’s voice, and by

creating it, the creator practices to form a better understanding of self-recognition. Regardless

of the given oratorical compliments, the Vogon commander’s sharp defense of their vulgarity

and brutality ridicules the shallow art but also makes an unapologetic gesture to the principle

of staying true to oneself. There is a notorious saying in Vogon: “resistance is useless”18

(Adams 47). For artists, it is very likely that they gain self-knowledge and portray self-image

in their creation. In Adams’s depiction of Vogons’ obsession with poetry, writing and reading

18 It is a phrase frequently said by Vogons in their first greeting to emphasize that there is no possibility of
defending against their attack.
are sometimes irresistible due to their connectedness to others in spreading knowledge

socially and to establishing one’s identity.

Likewise, in Marvin’s lullaby, the sense of self-absorbedness is clear. Although Van

der Colff categorizes Marvin as a desperate individual who cannot amuse himself and give in

to nothingness (111), I find Marvin’s artistic composing to be an indisputable and

indispensable indication of Adams’s ingenuity in designing Marvin’s character.19 The lullaby,

which contrasts between sleeplessness and seclusion, is as follows:

“Now the world has gone to bed,

Darkness won’t engulf my head,

I can see by infrared,

How I hate the night.

He paused to gather the artistic and emotional strength to tackle the next verse.

(Adams 444-45)

In this nighttime song, it is obvious that a loner seeks peacefulness from creating. Usually, a

lullaby is sung to children to comfort them. In Marvin’s solitude, the one thing he does to

soothe himself for a little bit is to sing himself a lullaby. “Having solved all the major

mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, sociological, philosophical, etymological,

meteorological and psychological problems of the Universe except his own, three times over,

he was severely stuck for something to do, and had taken up composing short dolorous ditties

of no tone, or indeed tune” (Adams 444). Marvin does feel gloomy for most of the time, but,

in this song, we can infer that he expresses his innermost feelings by composing when he

19Adams’s favorite character was Marvin, although he did not affirm this very much. Adams thought that
Marvin “holds himself wrong,” and he found that Marvin’s “patheticness comes from his attitude to himself
rather than any inherent design” (Gaiman 255).
needs to calm himself. From Adams’s depiction of a misfit’s lullaby, we can see that to create

comedically is to point out the irony such as a dreamless robot’s desire for tranquility and

company. In “The Artist and His Time,” Camus argues that an artist has to “interfere in the

affairs of the world” (150) and “must simultaneously serve suffering and beauty” (151).

Camus believes that nihilism, the worth of creation, and benevolence are inseparable and

synchronized, but only a great artist such as Melville and Tolstoy can make them balanced.

Marvin’s insomnia demonstrates the vision of an artist since his awareness of bleak reality

and art is lucid, yet it is interesting that Marvin faces the absurdity with self-pity instead of

kindheartedness. The tuneless song is emotional. Although composing, singing, or listening

to music cannot solve any problems, it at least speaks for Marvin’s broken heart. Moreover,

Adams depicts Marvin as a depressed figure to capture negative emotions, many of them

nearly self-projected.

Like Marvin, Adams understood a creative slump. He was devastated before he

published his first novel. Jem Roberts notes that Adams’s incorporation of his downfalls

while writing novels and the feedback he received from readers echoes the same mood:

Having started from a position of utter misery, he told an interviewer after publication

of his first novel, ‘In Hitchhiker there’s an element of writing myself back up out of

that. I was surprised and delighted to find a lot of letters from people in the early days

would say, “I was terribly depressed and upset until I sat down and read your book.

It’s really shown me the way up again.” I wrote it to do this for myself, and it’s

seemed to have the same effect on a lot of other people. I can’t explain it. Perhaps

I’ve inadvertently written a self-help book.’ (86)

Revealing one’s vulnerability to others can be mutually beneficial. Adams and his readers

both went through some miserable periods but found enjoyment in reading and writing. John
Shirley, in The Anthology at the End of the Universe, interviewed Douglas Adams to talk

about Adams’s style of humor, and commented that Adams’s books are “therapeutic. When

you make great humor out of the senseless patterns of random violence in your life, you make

life more acceptable and tolerable, because you make it possible to laugh it off” (178).

Adams agreed with Shirley to recognize that the inspiration for making jokes did come from

some worst time in life and making humor of hardship is a common feature of his work. In

my view, many facets of the world are problematic, especially violence and ignorance.

People are anxious about dealing with these difficulties. Since people are able to identify

themselves with the sad moment as in Marvin’s lament, or cackle with laughter in a relatable

world mirroring the stupidity of real life experience, the novels somehow achieve an effect of

healing in the reader’s and the novelist’s minds.

Comedic catharsis, an Aristotelian concept, is to find pleasure and laughter. In this

case, Adams transfers his personal suffering for financial issues20 to a fictional work full of

absurdity and fantasy that amazes the reader. By doing this, Adams incorporates his life

experience to create the novels as his authentic way of facing the absurd. The novel portrays

many imperfect sides of the real world but it is not too awful to be laughed at. Pleasure and

laughter, “given moderate expression by mimesis, relieve one's impulse to the immoderate

display of these emotions in everyday life, and in so doing produce pleasure” (Janko 83). If

we find compassion for those who endure “wanton violence” (Shirley 175), perhaps it is

relatable to our mutual experience in the memory of our past, which “attracts our or engages

the author’s sympathy” (Shirley 175) for the characters’ ordeal. In short, the readers and the

author have been through the same plight, and this notion of being understood is precious and

helpful to one’s upsets in everyday life.

20 As Gaiman records in Don’t Panic, Doulgas Adams could not pay the rent for his apartment in London so he
was about to give up on his dream to become a writer in the Christmas season of 1976. After moving back to
live with his parents in Dorset, Adams was really discouraged during that time (18).
 The electronic device within the narrative, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,

entails the imagination and introspection of the author’s idea for human behavior, general

concepts, and ordinary items. According to Ford’s explanation, the Guide “tells you

everything you need to know about anything. That’s its job” (Adams 37). In the Guide, every

piece of information can be looked up but the definition is somehow bizarre to our common

understanding of the thing in daily life. Through Ford’s work, the lexicographer, planet

researchers, or journalists for travel guides, the meaning of things in the fictional galaxy

become astonishing. The information of the guidebook allows the reader to look at the

familiar thing from a new aspect. What’s more, the Guide challenges common beliefs in

human communication and culture. In fact, language has creative power as its function in

teaching, communicating, and commanding, as Huizinga states:

Language allows [man] to distinguish, to establish, to state things; in short, to name

them and by naming them to raise them into the domain of the spirit. In the making of

speech and language the spirit is continually “sparking” between matter and mind, as

it were, playing with this wondrous nominative faculty. Behind every abstract

expression there lie the boldest of metaphors, and every metaphor is a play upon

words. Thus in giving expression to life man creates a second, poetic world alongside

the world of nature. (4)

From Huizinga’s perspective, we get to see that the electronic guide in the narrative gives

meaning by wordplay, and this act of creating new definitions demonstrates Adams’s

discovery of the human world and his presentation of picturesque images of an invented

universe with its own peculiar brand of humor.

To begin with, the towel is the foremost item to discuss because of its significance for

hitchhikers in outer space. “[T]he new values and the new meanings are attributed to this
item” (Ekmekçi 30) because the purpose of the towel is not limited. Being used as a

defensive weapon, an indicator for intergalactic traveling, and a great solace to adventurers,

the towel becomes the best aid for space travelers in every possible way. Mostly unrelated to

a towel’s normal uses in ordinary life, the Guide specifies many original uses for it:

You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of

Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus

V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which

shine so reply on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the

slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your

head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of

Traal (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see

you—daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in

emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems

to be clean enough. (Adams 21)

A towel is elemental in everyone’s life, but we hardly look at it from any other angle.

Apparently, however, it has its own function in Adams’s wild fantastical interpretation.

Opdahl believes that “Adams promotes the concept of finding new ways to use the things we

already have” (14). I strongly agree with her, but I further assume that the towel with so

many exceptional uses let us build up a lifelike alien world map. As we enter this fantastical

world, the most familiar stuff in the bathroom becomes unexpectedly handy. If readers see

things from different perspectives, the meaning is creatively given by one’s imagination. The

idea of hitchhiking is to travel courageously without planning things first, so the voyage to a

fictional space is to let go of prejudice and find the extraordinary facet of everything as

boldly as one can. “The idea that something we humans really need in order to solve many of
our everyday problems is not some alien technology, but actually something common to us, is

comforting” (Opdahl 14). Opdahl’s argument supports my contention that giving meaning to

practical life is a gift which offers us endless possibilities for entertainment and relief. This

spirit of audacity is also deployed in Arthur’s and Ford’s attempt to fly. The Guide provides

detailed instructions on how to fly. Flying is impossible to do in the real world, but

daydreaming is how inspiration spontaneously comes.

Unlike our common belief, the Guide as an encyclopedia provides much information

to challenge one’s recognition of reality. For instance, anthropocentrism is mocked in the

Guide’s descriptions of the dolphin as well as the experiment led by the mice. As the Guide

states, humans are less knowledgeable than the dolphins and the mice:

[M]an had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had

achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—while all the dolphins had

ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the

dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for

precisely the same reasons…In fact there was only one species on the planet more

intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavior research

laboratories running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and

subtle experiments on man. (Adams 105)

With a highly developed civilization, many people believe that we are the savior to

endangered animals. In the fantasy of the novels, it is wickedly the opposite. The earth is

destroyed by aliens but dolphins save humans from crisis because they are grateful for the

fish humans have fed them. In Adams’s fictional world, animals are much wiser than

humans, who cannot amuse themselves but are mostly worried about earning money from

boring work. The dolphin’s language and postures are misinterpreted by humans when they
try to warn the earthlings by “attempts to punch footballs or whistle for tidbits” (Adams 105).

Such miscommunication indicates how human-centeredness can dominate our perception of

nature, but many men know less than they think about the relationship between the

environment and all living things. Take the mice’s overthrown behavioral test, for example:

the controlling power of humans on earth can be only self-deception and unintelligence. That

is to say, what seems to be common belief may be only misrepresented by fake evidence or

misinterpreted by its adherents. Furthermore, if we try to stand in the shoes of the beasts in

the wild, the carefree lifestyle they have perhaps explains why people fail to achieve

happiness in society. In the modern world, it is easy to find pressure instead of joy in simple

sensations such as somersaulting or swimming. What’s worse, from the dolphins’ view, it is a

real danger for humans to overlook the aftermath of the bombs, weapons, and war but only

treasure the merit of high technology.21

Likewise, human behavior is described as stupid in Ford’s first impression and second

thought of the normal greeting habit on earth. As an alien, Ford finds human beings are used

to speaking unimportant and basic information to people they meet. When people say hello to

each other, they like to talk about the very first thing they notice, such as the day’s weather,

the height of a person, or simply the present situation. The everyday language people use to

welcome each other is like, “[i]t’s a nice day, You’re very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have

fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right? (Adams 35). Of course, these phrases are

very intuitive. Pointing out the awkwardness of this social habit, Adams makes a joking

theory to ridicule the relationship between brainy thinking and verbal expression. Ford first

thinks that if people stop talking, their mouths will shrink little by little. On second thought,

he concludes that human brains will begin to work once they cease to move their lips. Ford’s

aloof attitude is the crux of the joke. The power of disengagement is indicated in Bergson’s

21 In the beginning of the story, it is said that digital watches are cherished by humans, who evolved from
barbarians.
saying,“look upon life as a disinterested spectator: many [dramas] will turn into a comedy

(5). In Bergson’s analysis, the character’s weakness is exaggerated and laughable in a

detached attitude. From an alien’s field-investigation, Adams humorously portrays what may

indeed be silly but common in social etiquette. To laugh at the folly of human activity, the

Guide informs by stepping aside to reconsider things from a non-human viewpoint.

Moreover, this detached feeling toward others could be more than a comedic effect, revealing

a usual manner that happens frequently in human society. Ford declares:

“An S.E.P.,” he said, “is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain

doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what

S.E.P. means Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out; it’s like a blind

spot. If you look at it directly you won’t see it unless you know precisely what it is.

Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye.” (Adams 334)

Contrary to the social habit of unwittingly restating the insignificant, the phenomenon of

S.E.P. refers to the tendency to ignore others’ troubles on purpose. In the novels, it can be

used to explain how a science-fictional spaceship hides itself from being discovered in public

but, in a roundabout way, it pokes fun at the indifference in humankind. While considering

the least important thing, people find the emperor’s new clothes unspeakable or negligent. In

Adams’s portrayal, humanity is contradictory and arrogant because of limited knowledge and

deep-rooted prejudices.

The jokes in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy have moral values for social

criticism. Bergson analyzes the meaning of laughter in comedy, arguing that laughter can be

seen in its social projection:

[L]aughter aims at correcting, it is expedient that the correction should reach as great

a number of persons as possible. This is the reason comic observation instinctively

 proceeds to what is general. It chooses such peculiarities as admit of being

reproduced, and consequently are not indissolubly bound up with the individuality of

a single person,—peculiarities that are held in common. By transferring them to the

stage, it creates works which doubtless belong to art in that their only visible aim is to

please, but which will be found to contrast with other works of art by reason of their

generality, and also of their scarcely confessed or scarcely conscious intention to

correct and instruct. So we are probably right in saying that comedy lies midway

between art and life. (170)

In Bergson’s view, the purpose of laughter is not only to please but also to set right. To

reflect what is commonly featured in the human community, laughter is educative and

entertaining to the mass audience. Comedy is a work of art because what is greeted with peals

of laughter is human life and its simulation. Bergson’s view of laughter shows great

similarity to Adams’s comedic techniques in depicting the fragility of humanity and the fault

of the world. “The function of Adams’s fantastic landscapes and characters is to mould

humankind into an alien form. Adams does not create wholly new ‘heavens or hells.’ Instead,

he urges the reader to see human folly and absurdity from a new perspective in the shape of

Vogons, Krikkiters, robots, sentient mattresses and hyper-intelligent shades of the colour

blue” (Van der Colff 109). Vogonity and Genuine People Personality are extreme examples

of humanity, but they represent different social classes. Vogons are a bureaucratic race who

enjoys torturing others mercilessly. The robots, who are programmed with Genuine People

Personality, are working class. Vogosphere, the hometown of Vogons, is barren due to their

overuse of natural resources. What’s worse, Vogons destroy Earth to build an intergalactic

bypass and they are proud of their harmfulness. Being busy with their labor, the robots never

have the chance to adapt their talent. The contrast between these two kinds of humanity is

whether they have “the poet's compassionate soul” (Adams 47) or not. Vogons’s purpose of
making art is purely “to throw [their] mean callous heartless exterior into sharp relief”

(Adams 47). They do not appreciate sublime imagery, fun elements in music, or any artistic

inspiration at all. However, sentimentalism is observable in the robotic figures. Through

Vogons’ immorality, Adams mocks human shamelessness and brutality. “To summarize the

summary of the summary: people are a problem” (Adams 278). The phenomenon of

inequality, wars, violence, and bad faith are all sugar-coated in laughter, but, in a lighthearted

way, Adams aims to point out the problem that lies in these serious issues is inhumanity.

Overall, in a comedic and sarcastic manner, Adam depicts a hierarchical alien world

to portray a miniature of human society. Space serves as a stage for Adams’s characters to

imitate human living absurdly.“The function of art is to hold the mirror up to nature, and

there simply isn’t a mirror big enough…” (Adams 244). Adams’s world is full of unexpected

fantasy and hilarious discovery of meanings. Human culture and humanity are tightly

connected through the characters’ and the author’s pursuit of art. Adams gives humorous

meaning to things negative and chaotic in life, but his portrayal of ugliness and idiocy in

humanity is insightful. “Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the

history of the Universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but that we are

powerless to prevent it. ‘It’s just life, they say’” (Adams 130). What happens in fiction is

based on reality, so the simulation of human problems is imaginary yet pragmatic. The

creative and destructive powers equally exist in the narrative, but it is humor that blends them

well.
 Chapter Four

Conclusion

“Exactly!” said Deep Thought. “So once you do know what the question actually

is, you’ll know what the answer means.”

—Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

In chapter one, we reviewed the academic research on Douglas Adams’s The

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Although many scholars have examined the novel’s

groundbreaking features as a fusion of various genres, this thesis explores the main themes

within to find out the novel’s core message: the absurdity of life and numerous discoveries

about what we think we know. The boredom of labor is the main conflict of the robots, but

researchers mostly neglect this topic and narrowly consider the robotic characters as quitters.

This thesis delves into one of the most common existential questions to explore the

relationship between work and a worker. To put it more succinctly, this thesis analyzes the

robotic characters’ confrontation with the absurd. Furthermore, providing examples of

constructing meanings, this thesis also discusses Adams’s use of comedy and creativity.

The conflict of boredom and its link to absurdity are discussed in chapter two. Boredom

is a real-life situation because many modern people cannot find meaning in their work as the

robotic characters do. Boring work is problematic for people who have passion for life but are

not able to achieve their goals. Through the perspective of the robots, we can see the struggle
between social norms and personal values. Absurdity as the novels’ worldview is irresistible,

but it allows the reader to understand one’s identity and our craving for a meaningful life with

moral, social, and psychological depth. Although the gap between one’s wishes and reality is

unbridgeable, one’s life purpose can be staying true to oneself like Marvin. Facing the absurd

is shown by the characters’ dramatic emotions, but according to Kind’s analysis, Adams

thinks most of the unreasonable are acceptable if one has an attitude of “benign neglect” (97)

and sets new projects that are distracting him or her from philosophic thinking. Comedically,

the things on Earth are “mostly harmless” (Adams 44), and the advice inscribed on the cover

of the Guide is “Don’t Panic” (Adams 39). The sense of absurdity may not be worrisome if

people find their way of creating meaning. Adams illustrates many kinds of absurd situations,

but working, like Sisyphus’ trial, is noteworthy because the laborer’s plight eventually

reveals one’s vulnerability. The robotic characters, unlike Sisyphus, complain to express their

love for life. Adams’s tone of voice is both sympathetic to and comic about human weakness.

A person’s self-worth is portrayed in the gap between Marvin’s valuation of himself and his

value as estimated by his peers. Adams’s view of an individual’s wasted talent and

meaningless work is not exclusive to the robotic figures. Reading these novels, we inevitably

reconsider how we possibly judge ourselves by social status and others’ opinions. Adams’s

design of characters with human-like identification and their comparison with humanity can

be extended and examined thoroughly.

Adams’s world is saturated with irrationality but his love for creating is beyond

question. Chapter three discusses how Adams as a novelist treats his creation and many sorts

of creating meaning in his serial novel as the ultimate meaning of life in a sense of humor. To

face the absurdity, creators seek to apply their knowledge of truth to the work with their

talent. The pursuit of creativity can be seen in the characters’ experience and their creation;

many of them are philosophical, hilarious, pitiful, passionate, and playful. Two kinds of
combinations of comic sense and creativity co-exist in the Guide’s information; the first one

is to subjectively as well as comedically redefine ordinary things we are familiar with, such

as a towel. The second type also creates meaning, but it challenges the role of humans in a

subversive structure and ridicules some social customs frequently seen in human culture. In a

fictional world mirroring reality, to grasp the meaning of human life is to make fun of the

problematic side of the real world in laughter and find our human flaws with compassion.

Frankly speaking, human culture is an umbrella term including many facets of our way of

living, but this thesis only mentions Adams’s depiction of human custom, art, literature, and

music. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been

compiled and recompiled many times over many years and under many different editorships.

It contains contributions from countless numbers of travelers and researchers” (Adams 53).

The Guide includes various topics on human living and the ideas within are revised by

different writers. Similarly, this thesis can be a springboard for future study to trace Adams’s

elaboration of culture and humanity in the novels.

Beside its main focus, one of this thesis’s goals is to offer an opportunity to appreciate

the Hitchhiker series and Adams’s other works including Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective

Agency, The Salmon of Doubt, Last Chance to See, and The Meaning of Liff series. Academic

research on Adams’s novels is still not plentiful, but careful reading shows that his works

deserve more attention and literary study. In Wittgenstein: A Memoir, it is recounted that

Ludiwig Wittgenstein once remarked that, “a serious and good philosophical work could be

written consisting entirely of jokes” (27-28). It is obvious that Adams has depicted an

imaginative universe based on our reality to sharply yet humorously point out several long-

existing but careless issues in human life. However, for the readers, to respond to the right

question concerning life, the universe, and everything is doubtlessly thought-provoking and

amusing. Although Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are rarely
discussed by scholars, I think his contribution to literature is still valuable and positive to the

readers, who have experienced the whole journey with his fictional characters in laughter and

are aware of their existence in an enormous universe. Adams and his works are not (yet)

included in the canon of great literature, but his whimsical sense of humor and the reflection

of the real world are one way to interpret and to grasp the meaning of life.
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