Bathrobe and the Galaxy

Arthur Philip Dent,one of the protagonists in the book the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is a character of controversy. He is the only human to escape planet Earth before it gets demolished. Arthur wakes up with a hangover in his house, and as he gets outside he notices that his house is about to be plowed down by bulldozers. He decides to go lie in front of them to stop it. His friend, an alien, Ford Prefect comes to meet him outside the house and they make way to a bar. From there, their travel across the Galaxy begins.

Arthur has some troubles with his lifestyle, as he wakes up in the beginning of the book with a hangover and wonders why does he actually have a hangover. That’s why you could say that Arthur is not in a full control over his life and kind of goes with the flow as they say. He doesn’t seem to be too worried about anything. He is a rather ‘neutral’ person. As the book is absurd in all its humor and storytelling, so is Arthur. I find him a confusing character from time to time as he has some odd routines and he seems to be a bit confused himself too. One funny thing about Arthur is that he always wears a bathrobe he had the morning the Earth was destroyed. Arthur also enjoys tea, even though it’s rather hard to find in the galaxy.

As humans usually, Arthur is also pretty adaptive. He is kind of forced to be adaptive though, since there is no ‘home’ to go back. He is bound to travel the space for who knows how long. At the beginning of the book he says: “If I asked where we were, would I like the answer?”, he asks this from Ford Prefect, his alien friend. As they have teleported to a spaceship Arthur realizes that his life just changed forever. Still, he remains his ‘neutrality’ and adapts to the situation. He is sort of anti-hero in the book, as he does not do anything heroic or be a leader, he just goes along from situation to situation, facing the weirdest things a man can. Overall, Arthur is an absurd character in an absurd world of an absurd book.

Mind map of Arthur Dent (click the picture to enlarge!)

Here is one version of the character Arthur Dent.