The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The last few chapters, like the book as a whole, are stacked with improbable events and timely coincidences. The randomness of the Universe—exacerbated in part by the Infinite Improbability Drive—seems to grow with each passing moment. The fact that the last surviving Earthman in the galaxy has arrived on the mythical planet Magrathea just as the mice are recommissioning the building of Earth II is another astronomical convergence of events. As Slartibartfast claims, this is “the third most improbable event in the history of the Universe” (128). When Arthur asks what the first two events were, Slartibartfast replies, “’Oh, probably just coincidences’” (128). Thus, yet again, the author conflates coincidence with providence. Adams ensures that the answers to such metaphysical conundrums—like the answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything—remain random, indecipherable, or at least nonsensical, furthering the theme of Meaning VS Meaninglessness in Existence.

The tangential aside that the narrator recounts at length in Chapter 31—about Arthur’s words slipping through a wormhole and causing a thousand-year war—is yet another example of Adams’s use of humor to create philosophical puzzles. As the narrator acknowledges of this random incident, “It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated” (129). From the World War II slogan, “loose lips sink ships,” to an interspatial wormhole in which a casually-uttered sentence unleashes full-scale warfare and destruction, Adams wields the “butterfly effect” to exaggerated ends. The “butterfly effect” derives from the field of chaos theory, suggesting that even the flap of a butterfly’s wings can, given certain conditions of time and space, create a tornado several days later in another region of the globe. While Adams clearly satirizes such ideas, he also takes them seriously enough to demonstrate what happens when such ideas are taken to the furthest extremes of their implications. He questions scientific authority and knowledge in the same way in which he questions capitalist systems and governing bodies.

Another form of authority is questioned during the final scramble to escape. The cops’ behavior and conversation while chasing the group satirizes the authority of law enforcement. When the cops defend their actions by suggesting that they would really rather not be yelling and shooting at other people, they also add that it is just a part of the job: “’Because there are some things you have to do even if you are an enlightened liberal cop who knows all about sensitivity and everything!’” one of them argues (137). Thus, the stereotypical banter an audience encounters in the average police drama turns into a satirical critique of the cops’ actual duties. The satire works on two levels, both as a response to the cliches involved in the writing of cop shows and as an examination of the job of police officer itself.

The random nature of the cops’ deaths also highlights the continuing flirtation with coincidence: It appears that Marvin’s conversation with the police officers’ vehicle ultimately led to their demise. His particular brand of passive-aggressive, depressive conversation incites the policecraft to commit death by suicide, as Marvin tells the group, which had the effect of cutting off the cops’ life support systems. Arthur and his companions are therefore saved by a series of random events. First, the sounding of the alarm which interrupts the mice’s plot to take Arthur’s brain is initiated by the arrival of the cops who are searching for Zaphod Beeblebrox. Second, Slartibartfast has randomly left them his aircar as a means of escape, presumably because he is disgruntled about the cancellation of the Earth II project—also initiated by the randomness of Arthur, the last Earthman, showing up coincidentally on Magrathea. Third, Marvin’s casual conversation with another machine ultimately takes care of the cops who are chasing the group.

In the final moments of the book, the characters turn their attention towards eating lunch. Adams inflates the importance of an ordinary occasion, lunch, to exponential degrees. Arthur reads in The Guide that, “’[t]he history of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as How, Why and Where phases’” (143). This at first appears as if it were an academic discussion about the evolution of civilizations, but then The Guide turns to more mundane concerns in its example of these 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?’” (143). Thus, the quotidian is conflated with the philosophical, the ordinariness of life mixed up with the great metaphysical questions of the universe—just like Arthur’s ordinary house represents all of Earth and the threat to its continuing existence. There is meaning in life, the universe, and everything if one knows where to look—even if one does not know the question.