Survival Of The Fittest In Kurt Vonnegut's Galápagos

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Galápagos, Vonnegut establishes the bulk of the story from his writing style. Galápagos is centered around the process of evolution and survival of the fittest, where a few are stranded on the islands and evolve over the course of a million years. Vonnegut uses his writing style to set up a specific environment for the book, to reveal characters and how they will react to the events, repetition, and how syntax and diction is used throughout which all play together to form the story of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and survival of the fittest.

The theme of Galápagos, which is centered around Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and survival of the fittests is more of a scenario rather than a story. Vonnegut spends

The most helpful and noticeable reputation is the starring system. “*Zenji Hiroguchi, twenty-nine, a Japanese computer genius… *Andrew MacIntosh, fifty-five, an American Financier and adventurer…” (19) From this point on until their death Hiroguchi and MacIntosh will be starred. When a new character is introduced that will die, they will inherit the star in front of their name. “He had been pressed into service as a room waiter be *Siegfried von Kleist, the manager, who himself had taken over as bartender.” (77) This is implied to every character and sticks with them the moment they get it until the moment they perish. Word choice within influence the environment within the book. “One million years ago, back in 1986 A.D. …” (3) Million is repeated throughout as the time gap. A million years is more than enough for evolution to take its course. Nothing major happens at the end of that time frame other than that humans are still on this planet. Vonnegut uses the million years as an easy way to isolate the two points. He doesn’t need to choose an oddly specific date as after the event that took in 1986, the only thing that matters is that they