74 pages • 2 hours read
Douglas AdamsThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1979A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 8-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary
Arthur and Ford have been ejected into space. The narrator interjects an entry from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is’” (53). To this end, the book suggests, the odds of Arthur and Ford getting picked up by a passing ship in the vastness of space are truly astronomical. Further, the numerical odds happen to correspond to a telephone number on Earth where Arthur once met a lovely girl. Then, astoundingly, Arthur and Ford “were rescued” (54).
Chapter 9 Summary
Arthur and Ford’s rescue coincides with a hole opening up in the universe. Several improbable events happen at once: besides Arthur and Ford’s rescue, celebratory balloons and hats were dropped on the universe; more than two hundred thousand fried eggs were dropped on a starving tribe in a different galaxy; and the pair are gripped by “vicious storms of unreason” (55). They experience a series of unsettling transformations, with Arthur watching his arm drift away while Ford slowly turns into a penguin. Eventually, a soothing voice comes across the intercom: “’Welcome,’ the voice said, ‘to the Starship Heart of Gold’” (58). The voice assures the men that normalcy will soon be restored—but not before a horde of monkeys wants them to review their script of Hamlet.
Chapter 10 Summary
The Infinite Improbability Drive “is a wonderful new method of crossing vast interstellar distances in a mere nothingth of a second, without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace” (60). Physicists thought this kind of invention “was virtually impossible,” which inspired a student to rethink the problem. Virtually impossible implies that the making of the machine harbors a “finite improbability” of success (60). After engineering a generator, the student feeds it a hot cup of tea, and it works. After garnering awards for his invention, the student is attacked by a horde of actual physicists.
Chapter 11 Summary
Zaphod Beeblebrox and Trillian are manning the controls of the Heart of Gold, as the probability numbers continue to fall toward normal ranges. Beeblebrox is upset that the hitchhikers have been picked up, since he is running from the intergalactic law for stealing the ship. Trillian informs him that she did not pick up the strays—the ship itself did, on its own.
Beeblebrox orders the onboard android, Marvin, to retrieve the two men. Marvin is “’feeling very depressed’” as he feels that life is pointless (63). The Guide explains that the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation had the idea of infusing their robots with particular personalities, much to the chagrin of people having to work with them. Marvin, reluctantly, goes to retrieve Arthur and Ford, complaining about life. He tells the pair that the ship has been stolen by Zaphod Beeblebrox, who would like to see them. Ford responds with astonishment.
Chapter 12 Summary
Meanwhile, Zaphod is listening to the “sub-etha radio bands” for news of himself (67). Trillian thinks something is suspect about this coincidence: she herself was picked up by Zaphod in this very same sector of space. When she crunches the numbers, the improbability of this happenstance is “an irrational number that only has a conventional meaning in Improbability Physics” (69). That is, it is so improbable as to be nearly impossible.
Chapter 13 Summary
Arthur and Ford are led to the bridge of the ship by Marvin. When they encounter Zaphod Beeblebrox, something odd occurs: Arthur believes he has met the man before at a party in Islington. Back then, he was “Phil,” and he left the party with a woman Arthur was interested in. Arthur seethes with fury at Zaphod’s callous coolness, while Ford gapes in disbelief: not only does Arthur know his cousin, Zaphod Beeblebrox, but also he realizes that Beeblebrox left him stranded on Earth. Trillian comes into sight of Arthur; she is the young woman who left the party with Beeblebrox. Arthur exclaims, “’Tricia McMillan? [. . .] What are you doing here?’” (74). The improbability stakes continue to rise.
Chapter 14 Summary
The group ponders why they have been brought together. Trillian cannot sleep because she is upset upon learning of the destruction of Earth. She, Arthur, and two white mice are all that is left of the planet. Zaphod cannot sleep because he is bothered by the improbability of his own actions, much less what brought Arthur and Ford into his orbit. Ford cannot sleep because he is excited to be back in the universe with his cousin. Arthur sleeps soundly, exhausted by his exploits.
In the morning, Trillian informs Zaphod that she thinks they have found what he has been looking for.
Chapters 8-14 Analysis
The narrator echoes the introduction to the book, which emphasizes the vastness of space and thus the unlikely rescue of Arthur and Ford in the thirty seconds they have to survive outside of the Vogon ship’s airlock. This improbable occurrence sets the tone for the next few chapters. The author conflates coincidence with destiny, physics with fate, and then parodies his own comparisons. On the one hand, the narrative suggests that the universe is a place of unfathomable harmony, where everything happens for a reason—the characters are brought together for some ultimate, yet-to-be-determined, conclusion. On the other hand, the narrative mockingly questions the very idea of fate, with randomness ruling the day.
It is not only the improbability of the rescue that opens the door for this mockery but also the attitude, personified by the android Marvin, about the pointless nature of existence. With the invention of an Infinite Improbability Drive, the author satirizes the emerging field of quantum physics and its upending of traditional scientific consensus about how the universe works. For instance, the Infinite Improbability Drive is sparked into life by “a fresh cup of really hot tea” (60)—like an Englishman waking up in the morning. The Frankenstein-like creation allows the ridiculousness to proliferate: Arthur watches his limbs detach, as Ford transmogrifies into a penguin. The author also employs the very symbol of randomness, “The Infinite Monkey Theorem,” which posits that an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of keyboards will eventually produce Hamlet, one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. The problem is that the very definition of infinity prevents the theorem from ever being proved via the traditional scientific method, wherein measuring and testing cannot occur—infinity exists only as a concept, not as a physical reality.
The improbability number that represents the odds of Arthur and Ford’s rescue happens to be “the telephone number of an Islington flat where Arthur once went to a very good party and met a very nice girl” (54) who turns out to be Trillian. She reacts to the numbers with a gasp as well. The implication is that the probability of the pair’s rescue is, absurdly and coincidentally, Trillian’s old phone number on Earth. The narration therefore keeps alive the tensions between a determinist view and random view of the universe, leaving how much is truly random as an open-ended question.
Marvin, the robot with depression, embodies the view that existence is pointless, with his fatalistic attitude and rejection of all happiness. Not only do the cheery whirring sounds of the doors drive him to distraction, he also openly displays “his utter contempt and horror of all things human” (63). Marvin’s exaggerated world-weariness satirizes existentialist navel-gazing in the modern era, while also directly invoking comparisons to the famously indecisive Hamlet, who cannot act in the face of difficult choices. Marvin does not act, believing that it does not matter, since everyone is doomed in the end.
The narrator again ridicules various kinds of authority throughout these chapters, such as the angry mob of respectable physicists attacking the student responsible for the Infinite Improbability Drive. Representative officials and authorized institutions are depicted ironically. Even the very laws of physics come under question in this unlikely quest. The final chapter here returns to the problem of improbability, as Beeblebrox announces that they have just found “’the most improbable planet that ever existed’” (77). In Adams’s hands, improbability becomes the most probable of plot developments.
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