The Meaning Of Nature In The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

Nature and its Meaning Finding a meaning to life and to nature is something all people try to do, but is there really a correct answer? Maybe the purpose to life is actually finding the purpose to life, or it might just be to enjoy living and all the experiences that come with it. Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, brings this up in his novel. Throughout the book, the theme nature and its meaning is shown through the knowledge that the main character accumulates. After Arthur Dent, the main character, leaves the exploded Earth, he is told many things about life that he did not know before. One thing he is told is that mice used to run the Earth (Adams 163-164). At first Arthur doesn’t understand, but then is taught that mice were actually creatures from space that were doing the experiments on the scientists. They pretended not to get through the maze in time so they could teach the researchers new things and advance the minds of humans. Another animal that Arthur was told helped humans progress were the dolphins. The dolphins, being the second most intelligent life forms on Earth (First being the mice and third being humans), tried to give warning

Earth was designed by the computer Deep Thought, who came up with the original answer to the meaning of life. Deep Thought was asked what the purpose of life, the universe, and everything was, and it took 7.5 billion years to come up with the answer 42. However, no one knew what the question to the answer was, so Deep Thought created a computer, Earth, to come up with the question. The process was to take 10 billion years, but Earth was destroyed about 5 minutes before it could reveal the great question (Overview). Just finding this out, Arthur becomes very confused. The planet that he lived on was something completely different than what every human thought it