Text Analysis

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
This extract is an introduction to “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams (1952-2001), an English writer and dramatist, alumnus of Brentwood School and a B.A. in English literature (St John's College, Cambridge). This piece started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television series, several stage plays, comics, a computer game, and in 2005 a feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame. Science fiction, comedy and satire are the literary trends he belongs to. His main literary pieces are “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, ” The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”, ”Life, the Universe and Everything”, “So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish”, “ Mostly Harmless”.
The text appears to be split up in two parts. The first is a short ironical description of the Earth and the second is a review of a book called “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”. There used to be a problem on Earth: most of the inhabitants (undescended life forms called humans) being mean and mostly miserable, were unhappy for pretty much of the time and the best way of sorting out this problem has always concerned with money. But, before a better solution was revealed a terrible catastrophe had occurred.
The book is described as the Galaxy’s encyclopedia. It contains useful knowledge for those who are going to hitchhike across the Galaxy.
I think, the main problem raised by the author is that humans have generally become a “race of consumers”. Vast majority of people can’t help having money on their mind at first place, having forgotten the basic moral values. This obsession brings many of us to misery.
The main idea of the extract, in my opinion, is that if the situation weren’t changed the humanity would end up with a huge catastrophe, brought either by excessive consuming of minerals or a war for the rest of the minerals left.
The first part of the text is a humorous narration with descriptive passeges, which satirically underline the pettiness of our society, followed by a short account of events: a girl’s brilliancy on Thursday and the following catastrophe. The second part is fully devoted to the book’s humorous description.
The main mood of the “Earth” part is positively pessimistic and even tragic, though with a bitter humor. The “book” part is cheerful and emotional.
The composition of the extract due to its obvious incompleteness and disorderly may be structured as follows:
1. The Earth sarcastic description ( “…utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose undescended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea")
2. The problem of the planet (“…most people were unhappy”)
3. The brilliant solution (“…how the world could be made a good and happy place.”)
4 The sudden catastrophe (“… a terribly stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever").
5. The “Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” review.
6. The outcome of the extract appears to be the start of the book itself.
According to the plan above here’s more detailed analysis.
The description of our planet is pessimistic and ironical at the same time due to such epithets as “uncharted”, “unfashionable”, ‘primitive’, ‘insignificant’. The metaphor with digital watches is to emphasize the problem of a “race of consumers”. Apes’ coming down from trees is called ‘a bad move’ and ‘big mistake’ which clearly states irony as well as oxymoron 'unregarded yellow sun'.
Next, one girl came up with the idea of how to make the world prosper and “ … no one would have to get nailed to a tree”. This ironical reference to Jesus might let readers think that the author was an atheist.
The catastrophe is described hyperbolically as “terribly stupid” which proves the author’s idea of humanity’s wrongly chosen path.
The Guide is compared to some other books published on other planets, which are so funny titled. For example “Some of the God’s Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway”. Thus, the author’s slighting attitude to religion is proved easily.
To sum up, the author’s most commonly used language means in the precise extract are bitter irony and sarcasm which makes reading this peace entertaining and sets one’s thinking.