A Bitter Reminder

In Douglas Adams's short novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the reader finds themselves thrust into an amazing world of eccentricities, wonder, and danger. The juxtaposition of the Galaxy and the Earth creates a sort of culture shock with the protagonist, Arthur Dent. Adams alienates the reader aswell, by introducing foreign concepts that seem completely illogical (or improbable), Adams clearly does this to create a parallel with Arthur, Adams knows he can't just throw the reader at the entire galaxy and not explain anything, so he creates the Earth Man, Arthur, so characters can explain to him the world his surroundings. The good of using this tactic comes very quickly and apparently, the alien worlds, ships, and people Arthur visits, travels on, and meets come at a much milder rate, Adams turns down the orb of confusion from eleven to eight. However, the 'new guy' character also comes with some down sides- most notablely when the reader becomes aware of the storytelling strategy Adams uses. Arthur Dent really does not have much of a personality when examined and juxtaposed with his fellow companions; he only asks questions, acts confused, and makes snarky remarks. Really, the only characteristics I could give to Dent would be sarcastic and confused. This works very well for the unaware reader, and enhances the story by making it more accessable, but when looked at for solely the characters, the protagonist doesn't really exist other than to help explain things to Adams's audience. Maybe je just is boring because he is too similar to myself and other people of the planet earth; he has no eccentricites to make him special in our human eyes. Perhaps if Adams is ever published in space they will find the character of Zaphod annoying.  This simple reason makes Arthur Dent my least favorite character in Adams's otherwise spectacular book.