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From Arthur’s run-in with the local council and planning office to the incompetent intergalactic civil servants, unchecked bureaucracy runs rampant throughout The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Not only does Arthur Dent lose his personal home, he also loses his planetary one, both casualties of the faceless bureaucratic entities that exercise their power without empathy. Adams suggests that the Galaxy is no different than the Earth: bureaucratic ineptitude, thoughtless development schemes, and job dissatisfaction mark the modern age.
Arthur’s confrontation with bureaucracy comes as his house is scheduled to be demolished to make way for a new bypass. When Arthur questions Mr. L. Prosser about the purpose of the bypass, Prosser provides a wholly unsatisfactory answer, an example of circular reasoning: “’What do you mean, why’s it got to be built? [ . . .] It’s a bypass. You’ve got to build bypasses’” (9). Prosser’s answer reveals the truth at the heart of bureaucratic fiats: The entire enterprise exists to justify itself. Prosser represents the quintessential bureaucrat as he would rather be anywhere than there, dealing with another disgruntled citizen: “He shifted his weight from foot to foot [ . . . ] Obviously somebody had been appallingly incompetent and he hoped to God it wasn’t him” (9). Prosser is not so much interested in resolving the dispute with Arthur as he is in placing the blame somewhere else. Bureaucratic hierarchies facilitate evasion of personal responsibility, making it virtually impossible for Arthur to question or resist what is happening.
The Vogons also represent the same bureaucratic workings in their demolition of the Earth to make way for a hyperspatial bypass. Like Prosser, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz does not really relish his job; he does it because it has to be done: “He always felt vaguely irritable after demolishing populated planets. He wished that someone would come and tell him that it was all wrong so that he could shout at them and feel better” (36). Again, the reasoning is circular, the job is self-justifying. In addition, the Earth could have been saved had a report reached Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz in time, as “a wonderful new form of spaceship drive [ . . . ] would henceforth make all hyperspatial express routes unnecessary” (36). The news exposes the pointlessness and inefficiency of destroying Earth, suggesting that it is the nature of bureaucracy to never consider the consequences of its actions—or, even, the relevance of its purpose. As Slartibartfast puts it, when the entire story of Earth is recounted—ten million years of evolutionary history wiped out in the work of a moment—“’Well, that’s bureaucracy for you’” (127).
Even the legendary Magrathea is not above the gravitational pull of bureaucracy. Its automated messages to the approaching Heart of Gold—not to mention its oncoming missiles—are generated by an ancient, and defunct, governing body. The messages themselves are redolent with the language of officialdom: “The commercial council of Magrathea thanks you for your esteemed visit [. . .] but regrets [ . . .] that the entire plant is temporarily closed for business’” (84). First, this automated voice lies: The inhabitants are merely in hypersleep, not away and unable to do business. Second, it masks its threatening intentions with an officious tone, laced with bureaucratic jargon, calling its missiles “part of a special service we extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients” (84). The absurdity of the situation becomes clear in the juxtaposition between the courteous language and the deadly intention. Once again, bureaucracy operates in illogical and pointlessly destructive ways.
There is another unintended consequence of the byzantine bureaucratic systems that populate the book: extreme job dissatisfaction, itself another byproduct of the capitalist imperatives of the modern age. Mr. L. Prosser clearly does not enjoy his job, just as the Vogon captain also despises his work. When asked why he does his job, the young Vogon assigned to take Arthur and Ford Prefect to the airlock has no ready answer: “’I dunno. I think I just sort of . . . do it really. My aunt said that spaceship guard was a good career for a young Vogon’” (49). Later, the Magrathean designer, Slartibartfast, reveals the pointlessness of his life’s work: All those complicated, award-winning fjords he designed for the coast of Norway are simply vaporized in a flash of bureaucratic confusion. Finally, the cops sent to arrest Zaphod Beeblebrox for the theft of the Heart of Gold engage in a discussion about their own jobs, complaining, “’It isn’t easy being a cop!’” (136) while insisting that they do not actually wish to shoot people. All of these examples reveal a deep disillusionment with work, an alienation from the functions demanded by a job made necessary by a consumer capitalist society. Bureaucracy, and the kind of work it engenders, generates many discontents of modernity.
Throughout the novel, different kinds of authority—governmental, institutional, academic—are exposed as empty or corrupt. From Zaphod Beeblebrox’s comic ascent to the presidency to the institutional authority of the academy to the challenges of authorship, the book skewers any claims to authority. Authority possesses no legitimate reason for being; it exists only insofar as it legitimizes itself, much like bureaucracy. In this sense, authority is akin to authoring fiction: one can simply make it up as one goes along.
In explaining Zaphod Beeblebrox’s new position as President of the Imperial Galactic Government, the narrator reveals that this alleged position of authority has no literal power at all, calling the President “very much a figurehead” with “no real power whatsoever” (28). The President is all style and no substance, meant to serve as a distraction from the real wielding of power that takes place out of the public eye: “His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it” (28). Zaphod Beeblebrox is essentially a confidence man who flaunts his eccentricities and attracts the public’s attention with his antics. The narrator also skewers the inflated claim to authority embedded in the continued use of the term “Imperial” in the title, calling it “an anachronism” and describing how the last “hereditary Emperor” was “locked in a stasis field which keeps him in a state of perpetual unchangingness” at the time of his death (28). The dead Emperor’s state of “perpetual unchangingness” can be read as a specific critique of the British monarchy—an anachronistic institution forever frozen in time—and as a general critique of the ways in which authority self-referentially reinforces itself. It is not enough for the title to be “President” of the Galaxy, it must also suggest something grander and more persuasive—the “Imperial Galactic Government.”
Academic authority is also satirized. The institutional staidness of the Encyclopedia Galactica is no match for the colorful anarchy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which “sells rather better” than the stodgy reference book (17). Another example involves the invention of the Infinite Improbability Drive. It is not invented by an established expert, but by a student sweeping up in the lab: “He [. . .] was rather startled to discover that he had managed to create the long-sought-after golden Infinite Improbability generator out of thin air” (60). The ruckus that ensues also lampoons academics: Upon receiving an award for his work, the student is “lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn’t stand was a smart-ass” (60). The event undermines the authority of the establishment by presenting a mere student as the author of scientific progress, while also exposing the self-serving pettiness and jealousy of the seemingly “respectable” scientists themselves.
Adams also questions the authority inherent to authorship, as exemplified in his frequent breaking of the "fourth wall.” In so doing, the author implicitly acknowledges both his omniscience and his artifice: The novel is a work of fiction, created by an all-knowing author—who is all-knowing only because he creates the fictional world—wherein the characters are manipulated in order to meet the author’s ends. This is an inclusionary form of authority, as the author’s assertion of omniscience is only made possible by his admission of artificiality—anybody can make things up. Ultimately, this may be the only kind of authority for which Adams can advocate: the kind that admits its claim to sovereignty comes from openly fictionalizing characters and events.
At the heart of the book is a struggle over coming to terms with the meaning—or potential meaninglessness—of existence. Adams often conflates coincidence with destiny and vice versa, never quite confirming which might dictate the rules of his fictional world. In addition, metaphysical musings over life, the universe, and everything are simultaneously satirized and taken seriously. Ultimately, there are fewer answers than there are questions, and the answers are often unsatisfying or absurd.
When Arthur and Ford are picked up by the Heart of Gold, the astronomical odds against them are mentioned more than once, with ”the chances of getting picked up by another ship” presented as virtually impossible due to the “mind-boggling size” of space (53-54). Nevertheless, Arthur and Ford are rescued by mere coincidence, the randomness unleashed by the Infinite Improbability Drive, or possibly because they have necessary roles to play in the unfolding narrative. Destiny implies purpose while coincidence is mere happenstance, yet it is never entirely clear which force is at play. In another moment of barely-believable coincidence—or, conversely, destiny—Arthur asserts that he has actually met Zaphod Beeblebrox before. While Ford struggles to grasp this incredibly unlikely connection, Trillian comes onto the bridge. She is the reason that Arthur and Zaphod have met; they were both vying for her attention at a party back on Earth some months ago. The improbability of the convergence of these particular characters grows more inconceivable with each passing scene, leaving open the question as to whether such events are all random or destiny-driven.
The metaphysical musings on the nature of existence also grapple with the problem of purpose and are often entangled with the absurdity of improbability and coincidence. When the Infinite Improbability Drive diverts the Heart of Gold from the path of missiles, the missiles themselves transform into a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias. Both apparitions contemplate the meaning of existence. In the first case, the whale “had very little time to come to terms with its identity” before hitting the planet’s surface, but still manages to ask the central questions: “[W]ho am I? [. . .] Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life?” (90). The implication is that all sentient creatures are primed to interrogate such metaphysical conundrums. In the second case, the bowl of petunias thinks, “Oh no, not again” (91). As the narrator continues, “Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now” (91). Adams’s Universe is not merely random—the bowl of petunias has been here before—but peppered with hints about the potential interconnectedness of people, events, and the Universe itself.
The ultimately elusive purpose of existence is why philosophers are satirized so extensively in the novel, with Adams ridiculing their confidence in finding definitive answers. When Deep Thought is reactivated after millions of years to reveal his answer, one of the philosopher pundits expresses total confidence in the computer’s response: “’Never again [ . . . ] will we wake up in the morning and think Who am I? What is my purpose in life?’” (118). However, the philosopher’s over-confident enthusiasm is immediately undermined by Deep Thought’s confusing answer: The answer to life, the universe, and everything is Forty-two. The great computer goes on to suggest that the philosophers do not even understand the question they were asking. The implication is that to answer such a question is to undermine the actual purpose of life—which is to continue asking such questions as “What is my purpose in life?” If humanity found definitive answers, Adams suggests, the very essence of what makes them human would be lost.
By Douglas Adams