Summary Of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy written by Douglas Adams tells the adventure of Arthur Dent and friends in search of the “Ultimate Question", while Arthur comes to terms with his new life. Arthur is saved from the destruction of earth by his peculiar friend Ford Perfect by hitchhiking a ride in an unfriendly alien spacecraft. Kicked out of the ship into the cold void of space the improbable happens, they are saved seconds before death by another spacecraft with people who Ford and Arthur happen to know. Here they meet Tricia McMillan and Zaphod Beeblebrox and ride along with the delirious Zaphod to find what he assumes he is looking for is the “Ultimate Question”, but because he erased some of his own memory to keep his secret he

An example of him not understanding is when Ford told him to stick a special fish in his ear that would translate all language to english for him. On page 55 shows their conversation and Arthur questioning the logic of the fish, “Ford was holding up a small glass jar which quite clearly had a small yellow fish wriggling around in it. Arthur blinked at him. He wished there was something simple and recognizable he could grasp hold of.” Arthur simply cannot comprehend this new world that's drastically different from his old average man life on earth. Another example is on page 164 when Slartibartfast tells Arthur his planet was ran by mice that had been experimenting on humans but Arthur protests and says “Ah no,” he said, “ I see the source of misunderstanding now. No, look, you see what happened was that we used to do experiments on them…” This comes as more world shattering information to Arthur he realizes all this time he was been the lab rat. In the end the book shows he come to terms with his predicament stating “...and Arthur took to his bed to flip through Ford’s copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Since he was going to have to live in the place, he reasoned, he'd better start finding out something about

He shows this at the beginning after being captured by the Vogons on page 66, tortured by Vogon poetry readings, the Vogon states “I present you with a simple choice! Either die in the vacuum of space, or...” He paused for melodramatic effect, “ tell me how good you thought my poem was!” Arthur is amused, instead of scared at the possibility of being thrown out into space, he calmly states “Actually I quite liked it.” This part is significant because literally moments before the same people who he is talking to just destroyed an entire earth and his response to these beings decides whether or not he gets to stay alive. He shows this calm expression when his friends leave him on the planet Magrathea alone with the depressed robot Marvin to guard passageway. This conversation is on page 142 Zaphod asks “ yeah, could you just sort of keep this robot with you and guard this end of the passageway.