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

signs that the Earth was soon going to be blown up (Hitchhiker’s). Unfortunately, people thought they were doing mere tricks and didn’t get the message. Arthur Dent finally realizes that both of these animals were not what he thought they were, and that his life on Earth was extremely different too.
The second example that shows how Arthur learns about the meaning of nature is when he learns that Earth was a computer.

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

was.
Finally, this novel shows nature and its meaning by giving information on the structures of Earth. Slartibartfast, one of the creators of Earth, tells Arthur that he was the one to make the glaciers and the fjords of Norway. In the book he says that he spent so much time putting very fine details into the glaciers that are to roll over Africa (Adams). This shows that Earth wasn’t made naturally, but it was made by a person who then had everything planned out so humans could learn from what he put there. So, is nature really “nature” if it was made by a person who had a schedule of every event that should happen to improve the knowledge of humans?
In conclusion, throughout the book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the theme nature and its meaning is shown through the knowledge that the main character accumulates. Arthur starts off as an ignorant human being and then is taught so much about what is actually going on in the universe. He finally grasps the idea that he was living on a planet that was made to find the meaning of everything. The mice, dolphins, seven wonders of the world, the fjords, oceans, and all of nature were developed by someone in a lab. No human could figure out what was needed without someone guiding them. This brings up the questions: is it impossible to find the meaning of life,and is there even a meaning to life? Even if there isn’t a purpose to life or nature, it is still immensely valuable and should not be taken for granted.