The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

As the human race makes life-changing discoveries, it is made apparent that there is always more to learn as the universe, instead of becoming familiar, is becoming absurd. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, written by Douglas Adams, as well as the 2005 film adaption, portrays absurdity to be an all-encompassing system in the universe. Through the introduction and attempt to understand lack of reason, the narration of important elements and the human perception of the universe, the novel is as a whole, more complete than the film. With these points it is irrefutable that The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy develops the theme of absurdity with greater prowess than the film, resulting in a deeper

‘The Dawn of Man’ sequence is based in a prehistoric time period and the most important theme of this sequence is nature. Kubrick shows the two stages of nature before showing us as the audience how humans evolved as a species. The various shots of land are staged in altered settings within different time zones, which express the Earth as a large place. With no characters and no type of dialogue, the non-diegetic sound of birds chirping is a representation of nature. The sound of the birds in this sequence created a natural atmosphere and made it believable for the viewer.

An intriguing point in this chapter is that Frye proposes that literature is neither real nor unreal. Literature has been around seemingly forever, however, distinguishing between the “real” literature and the “unreal” would serve as the key concept to this chapter. Literature is real because since it is directly derived from human experience. This makes

-As readers we come across many details in literature that hole significance, however the common reader usually misses the deeper

Thomas C. Foster in ‘How to Read Literature like a Professor’, references the different literary devices that authors use in literature, in order to enhance the reader’s ability to critically analyze literature from any time period. Foster expands the reader’s understanding of literature by exploring the profound impact of symbols and common themes on literature.

Frye now deals with the respective claims of the reader and writer, the producer and consumer of literature. “We need two powers in literature,” he says, “a power to create and a power to understand” (p. 104). Both writer and reader need to understand literary convention.

“2001: A space Odyssey” opens in the African Rift Valley, where a tribe of hominids encounter a stone monument which has obstructed on their domain. This stone monument transmits radio waves that end up expanding their IQ 's, teaching them weaponry and other tool uses to help them live, as they proceed to defeat a rival tribe. Four million years later, we see the luxurious space travel that the vintage science fiction of the 1960’s, with space stations for air terminals and such. Dr. Heywood Floyd is heading to Clavius Base, a United States lunar station. Along the way, he finds out about gossipy tidbits about an unidentifiable disease going around on the Clavius Base and his responsibility to study a four-million-year-old structure. Floyd

There are many ways to interpret a book, one can read it as a character’s adventure, a conflict of ideas or emotions, or a story. For myself, I read the books, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville, in an ironic sense; and while doing this, I noticed that both books showed an intuitive sense of sociology. Furthermore, what mattered most by reading the books ironically is that it is easy to see the outcome of a situation which is pleasing to be conscious of. It is easy to see the outcome of a situation because when one is paying attention to a character, one’s attention is toward a character, except when one’s attention is on an entire situation, one’s attention is on the flow of events and then the

After conducting an hour-long observation and data collection of The Big Bang Theory, I found three specific patterns. These were patterns of traditional gender roles, heterosexual privilege, and gender performance. The first pattern is the traditional breadwinner and housewife roles that are portrayed throughout the episodes. In the show women are seen occupying the household while the men occupy the workplace. These traditional roles reinforce gendered behaviors and interactions amongst the male and female character that reflect modern day society.

Chapter six, … Or the Bible, of How to Read Literature Like A Professor (HTRLLAP) asserts that connect all of the dots is vital, and how a story about the loss of innocence always hit so hard because they are final. The two biggest points of this chapter, though, are how not all uses of religion are straight-forward, how some are there just to illustrate a disparity and that the names of the characters in a novel are almost always important to a writer's point and can help carry their message.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy single-handedly answers the question to the meaning of life in a mere 220 pages. The answer to this perplexing question is 42 (Adams 180), but ironically it is impossible to know what the question itself entails. For, according to Douglas Adams, if any one person knows the meaning of the question and the answer at the same time, the Universe will start over and become even weirder than it already is. His theory may seem irrational, but just wait, it gets even better. Imagine going on a crazy, wild interstellar adventure with the threat of death around every corner. If given only one item to take along, a towel would be at the top of the list, right? Well, according to the Guide, a towel is incredibly

Conflict, spanning simply from man versus man, to more complex issues such as man versus technology, overwhelmingly dominate modern science fiction films. Directors explore dark issues that humanity collectively faces with--through their portrayal of dystopian societies, advanced technology, and extraterrestrial life--potential answers based upon their own interpretation of the “unanswered.” In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick examines the relationship between the human race and technology, or rather the blurred line between technology and man. Kubrick constructs HAL , an advanced computer system, that holds crucial and vital responsibilities regarding the space shuttle operations on the spacecraft. Though HAL conforms to carry out

The general consensus in the academic world is that knowledge is power that can solve humanity’s problems. Sometimes, it is clouded by greed, or it lights the way for a better humanity. Scientists experiment to prove new theories, artists sculpt to express emotion and theologians study to provide interpretations of biblical stories. Therein lies the problem, while society is always searching for knowledge, to date there is no singular “foolproof” method of obtaining it. In the movie “The Theory of Everything,” Stephen Hawking has a “eureka” moment when pulling a sweater over his head and seeing flames through the material. In this case, it seemed that serendipity played a role in his search for truth. This led me to wonder, to what extent is the discovery of knowledge a matter of serendipity that can then go on to solve problems? While an exploration of whether knowledge is produced only to solve problems in the Natural Sciences may be more obvious, its application to Mathematics and Indigenous Knowledge may draw some interesting observations.

As the era of literature slowly declines, the expert critiques and praise for literature are lost. Previously, novels were bursting at the seams with metaphors, symbolism, and themes. In current times, “novels” are simply short stories that have been elaborated on with basic plot elements that attempt to make the story more interesting. Instead of having expert critical analysis written about them, they will, most likely, never see that, as recent novels have nothing to analyze. Even books are beginning to collect dust, hidden away and forgotten, attributing to the rise of companies such as Spark Notes. An author deserves to have his work praised, no matter how meager and the masses should have the right to embrace it or to reject it. As

Indeed, the best works of literature are those which are of relevance to our lives today. Through their relevance, these novels continue to persist and endure on. Through their relevance, we can better comprehend the messages, the themes, and the ideas that are imbued in them. Rather than literature being contradictory and in conflict with the truth and unpleasant reality of daily life, it becomes a weapon through which we can be educated about the existential crises facing our world today. In fact, the statement above could not be more far and distant from the reality of literature today. It is fatally flawed. Literature, whilst at the surface, seems whimsical and amusing is, at its very core, a medium through which we are enlightened