Kurt Vonnegut's Galápagos

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Galápagos he writes of a futuristic society in where humans have evolved into small brained seal people. A world where knowledge is not a valued, and only a select few are able to achieve it because they are born with bigger brains. This novel brings may of the readers to think could this be a possibility for our own future? Is it already happening? While in George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant he writes about the pressure of others causes us to do things we usually would not do. And in The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon states that in violence must be solved in more violence, that it is the only way to get what we are fighting for. Ideas from both Fanon and Orwell seem to be present in Vonnegut's book, that draw parallels within the three pieces of writing, and even to our own reality today.

Galápagos vs Shooting an Elephant

the oversized brain. That cumbersome computer could hold so many contradictory opinions on so many different subjects all at once, and switch from one opinion or subject to another quickly…” (Vonnegut 67). Which entails that having a big brain causes humans to overthink things which causes problems, and they want to avoid big problems. Similarly, in Orwell’s piece the policeman is being forced to kill an elephant because it killed a white man. In the story the policeman is thinking to himself and he comes to conclusion what he ended up doing at the end of the day was the right thing to do, since the elephant was acting like a mad dog, it should be treated like one too (Orwell 374). Many humans use changing their opinions as a coping mechanism. They change their minds in order to not feel as bad/guilty for something they did, like what the policeman did. The more thoughts we have the more opinions we have, the more problems are created. This is why the new society in the Galápagos islands do not like the concept of having an