Chloe Reeve-Patel

Mrs. Fitzgerald

Freshman English (H) - Period 6

13 September 2016

Not Everything is as it Seems

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams pokes fun at several aspects of human nature and society. One of these aspects is the fact that humans as a whole can appear to have quite a big ego sometimes. On page 56 of the book, Arthur Dent is confronted with the option of putting a fish into his ear as a means to translate alien languages for him. He doesn’t like the idea of that and is very reluctant about trying it. To us this might seem like a normal reaction, but that is because we are human too and it is in our nature to reject new concepts like this. To other species of being, it might appear that we think that our way is always the best way of doing things, and we are reluctant because we believe that there is no better way of life. Furthermore, we humans think that we are the most intelligent creatures on the planet Earth. This egotistical belief is proved to be wrong in the book. In the book, it turns out that mice are secretly running our society and we are too proud to believe that it is possible for anything else to be smarter than us. On a closely related subject, many humans don’t believe in alien activity, or that there is anything out there at all apart from us. This might look like we don’t think that anything else is in the universe is intelligent or important enough to have a society such as our own. On page 35 of the book, the Vogon leader mentions that we don’t take interest in local 

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affairs. This could be Adams hinting about the fact that most countries don’t really care about what is going on in other countries, unless it is somehow affecting them. Overall I think that Adams is pretty heavily hinting about how humans can seem to have big egos sometimes.

Another aspect of human life that Adams makes light of is the fact that humans are quite oblivious to a lot of things. The main example of the obliviousness of humans in the book is the fact that Arthur had no clue that any of the other features of the galaxy existed (apart from the solar system). None of the humans realized that there was so much life and society outside of Earth. Humans didn’t even notice the fact that there were “Teasers” coming to Earth and buzzing them. An example of Adams poking fun at our general society in this way is on page 38, when it is explained that President Zaphod Beeblebrox is merely a figurehead with no real power, although the rest of the galaxy believed differently. This was pointing out the fact that we don’t really know much about the inner workings of our government system and that it is entirely possible that our figures of authority don’t have any real power. While they are on the Vogon ship, Ford points out the fact that humans seem to speak their thoughts a lot. This makes humans look pretty clueless because they feel the need to repeat what is happening to them just to make sure that it is true. In the book, humans are oblivious to something that is happening on their own planet. The mice. They didn’t notice the fact that every aspect of their society was being controlled by mice. It almost seems like they wanted to themselves as being in charge and in control when really, they were just playing along with a big game. Humans didn’t realize that there were much bigger things out there and that somethings are completely out of their control. 

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I think that Douglas Adams decided to poke fun at humans because we are all human, and because of that we find it hard to critique our race as a whole. He wanted us to look at humans from another being’s point of view and see the characteristics that we have become accustomed to. Adams was also trying to make us open our eyes to the fact that we know almost nothing about the universe we inhabit and explore the possibilities about what could be out there. Because not everything is as it seems.

Honors Freshman English

10/7/16

What I found most interesting about the book Of Mice And Men is that it does not have a happy ending. It almost gives the reader hope for Lennie, but then it is immediately taken away. Most writers do not do anything like this. Also, the amount of meaning that is put into the story in such a short book is huge. The book talks about life and death, hope and hopelessness and so much more. I think that I’m going to write about how the book symbolizes the power of innocence. Lennie is like a child, and he may do terrible things, but he doesn’t really know that he is doing anything wrong, which can make him be considered innocent to some people. Lennie is such a physically powerful character, that it makes him dangerous because he doesn’t know his own strength. The book shows the power of innocent actions and how they can affect some people. In part, the only reason that George continued to help Lennie was that Lennie was so innocent and childish that he needed guidance and assistance, or he wouldn’t survive on his own. I noticed that a lot of the characters like Slim, automatically sided with Lennie when he messed up because he didn’t necessarily do anything wrong, because he was so unaware. Also, the power of innocence is shown when Lennie’s innocent actions led to him being killed. It seemed that Lennie would have just done more damage to himself if he had continued to live on, so it was just more humane to kill him.