So most of my break was spent visiting and deliberating my college choices. Honestly, I'm sick of college already and I haven't even gotten there yet. At least some of every break since the beginning of Junior year has been spent looking for the right college. I am going into engineering, and I am looking for a technically oriented, suburban, small, quiet school. At this point, I'm 90% sure I'm going to Penn State (which is not at all small or quiet (but does have a very highly ranked engineering program)).
Aside from college visits I spent time relaxing, visiting family, and celebrating passover. Of all the Jewish holidays, passover is easily my least favorite. I'm not allowed to eat bread. It sucks. What sucks even more is that my birthday is April 21st, and sometimes falls during passover.
So, to put it mathematically: Passover + Birthday = NoCake.
To further expand: Birthday - Cake = Awful
I hope that helps explain my dislike of Passover. But seeing my family was still nice...
The title, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe," is an excellent title. In order to match the book's tone, it had to be something funny and relatively ridiculous. It also catches the reader's attention very effectively, and turns out to be a rather large part of the story itself.
The real restaurant at the end of the universe is a restaurant contained in a time and matter protective shield that exists at the very end of the universe (think apocalypse). Patrons must travel through time to the very last moments of existence to eat at this restaurant, and while eating enjoy the show the universe puts on as it is brought to an end. Arthur, Zaphod, Trillian, and Ford are brought to this restaurant when Zaphod tells the computer to bring them to the closest place to eat. The computer then jumps through time to the restaurant at the end of the universe (which happens to exist in that very location millions (and millions and millions) of years later. While there, the group sees a turning point in their trip. They abandon their starship and begin traveling to their final destinations (for this book anyway). For this reason, the title is very well planned.
If I were to rename this book, I would frankly have a very hard time. I would try to match Adams' sense of humor while still keeping the title relevant to the story. The best I can come up with is, "Who's the Nutter In Charge Here??" My title isn't as good as Adams', but I think it has potential. The true ruler of the universe turns out to be a mentally ill man kept locked away in a shack on a remote planet protected by a massive improbability field. This title also conveys the sense of aimlessness and confusion often felt by the characters throughout the book.
My predictions from prompt 6 were pretty far off. I predicted that the book would be an adventure story of the group trying to find the true ruler of the universe. It ended up being the opposite.
Rather than try to find the true ruler of the universe, Zaphod tried to run away. The book ended up being an adventure story of the group trying to avoid finding the ruler of the universe. Although in the end they fail (and successfully find the true ruler of the universe), the vast majority of the book seemed to be random wanderings around the universe (which I was very okay with).
My predictions were wrong because I put too much faith into Zaphod's determination, and not enough into his lazy and self-serving attitude. A responsible and curious person would have searched for the one true ruler of the universe as he was supposed to, but that didn't adequately entertain Zaphod. I should have seen those aspects of Zaphod's personality and adjusted my predictions accordingly.
In this one page chapter, Zaphod and Trillian rematerialize in a completely random place in the universe after jumping into an unprogrammed teleporter to avoid certain death. Against all odds, they end up on the starship Heart of Gold. They had previously abandoned this ship, and it is now in the possession of the man trying to force Zaphod to find the one true ruler of the universe.
So, I have to wonder, how did they end up back on the ship? The starship Heart of Gold has a one-of-a-kind improbability drive that causes the most improbable things to happen when engaged. However, this was not mentioned. All that is said is Zaphod and Trillian happen to reappear on the ship. The occupant of the ship never engaged the drive, so I don't understand what is going on. This is probably the only down side to Adams' writing style. I think he sometimes uses his humor and this improbability drive to make ridiculously impossible things happen to move the plot along, and here I think he overdid it.
In chapter 26, Arthur and Ford find themselves stuck on a ship full of millions of useless members of society that is heading for a pre-programmed crash landing on a remote planet. While on the ship and after crashing, Ford and Arthur remain isolated. Instead of helping the crew unload the millions of frozen people from the ship, they start to look around. And, as soon as they can, they leave to try to find a way off the planet.
This suggests to me that Ford and Arthur see themselves as either better than or completely separate from these people. Since they aren't from the same planet, Ford and Arthur feel no obligation to help save the lives of millions of frozen people. (Eventually, the ship sinks into a swamp with millions still frozen on board.) Perhaps as a result of their travels, Ford and Arthur feel as if they belong to a class of their own.
For Arthur, this is a little more understandable. His planet is destroyed and he still hasn't gotten used to the galactic new world he now lives in. He clearly feels isolated from and ignorant of his surroundings throughout the story, and it is very clearly showing itself here.
“On Earth – when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass – the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm’s way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another – particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e., covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish.” – (page 168)
Douglas Adams wrote this nice piece of commentary into the beginning of chapter 22. He seems to do that a lot. Rather than continue the story or describe the setting, he gives the reader a laugh. In this chapter, two of the main characters have been randomly transported to an unknown location that could be anywhere within a few lightyears of nowhere. So, where most authors would launch into a long and (in my opinion) boring description of the new setting, Adams comments on modes of transportation. After he finishes criticizing cars, Adams shows the reader some popular protest songs against teleportation (which are all very entertaining).
I think Adams decides to include more humorous than pertinent information sometimes because it is simply his writing style. Readers like myself enjoy reading this kind of book because we don’t have to sit through long-winded descriptions just to prove an author’s eloquence. Rather, we have fun laughing and get something more from the book than just the story.
Below is an excellent example of how I feel when writers (or characters) go on and ramble about themselves or the setting or their thoughts or anything else really that isn't interesting. I think this book does an excellent job of keeping the reader interested, unlike some other books (**cough cough** invisible man **cough** crime and punishment **cough cough**) that we have read in the past.
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it is revealed that the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42. The question, however, must be figured out by the giant organic super-computer that is earth. Unfortunately, as we find out in the next book, Earth was destroyed by psychologists so they could preserve their business and retain their clients just before the question was found.
Now, Arthur Dent holds the question to the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything. The only question remaining is how do Zaphod and the crew get it out of Arthur? Nobody knows. At least that was how it seemed. In this chapter, Marvin makes a startling announcement. Marvin, a manic depressive robot, hears the crew discussing how to find the question and announce that he can see it stamped on Arthur's brain waves. When asked why he hadn't said anything sooner, he replies, "You didn't ask."
This obviously surprised me. As a reader and an analyst, this is not what I was expecting. As a reader, I see Marvin as a sad little robot with funny remarks who doesn't really do anything. As an analyst, I see Marvin as a minor character used primarily for comic relief. Either way, I did not expect him to be able to find the question to the ultimate answer of life, the universe, and everything.
