I read in an interview of someone had done with an author I quite like that someone had told him once that his books are popular among young adults who are not much into reading. When I first picked up the hitchhiker's guide around 10 years ago I found myself having a similar experience, I wasn’t that much into reading but I really liked the read. It was non-sensicle in a funny way most of the time, and sometimes I didn’t even know why I was laughing. But that was almost a decade ago and I have done a lot of growing in that time. So when I found myself taking a business trip and I knew I needed to pack some reading material to keep myself company I thought I’d take my guide (compilation) with me to give it a second read and this time really ponder on the meta and try and understand the author (Dougle Adams) and his motives better.
Some of what I found during the second read is speculatory and some of what is influenced by what I had already read about Dougle Adams during the first read. I still haven’t made up my mind on a few questions like what does the ‘Heart of Gold’ represent or what was Zaphod’s motivation for his actions in the book. But from what I remember from the first read, these were answered in the proceeding books (which I’m planning to get to later on).
Notes (taken down sequentially as I read the book)
Parallels can be drawn between Ford Prefect and vampires found in fantasy novels. In that, both Ford and vampires are similar in character and some of their abilities (like suggestive mind control).
The fact that Arthur's house is to be demolished for a bypass on the same day the earth is to be demolished for a similar purpose may be Douglas’s way of pointing at the grand humor of metaphor between the insignificant (small) which we deem important and the significant (big) which we don't always see which is what's really important.
Douglas would have identified himself most with Zaphod Beeblebrox. He might have entertained a voice in his head when he lived that inspired him to make Zaphod have two heads. He might have tried to acquire what the 'heart of gold' represented to him.
Through the paragraph where Arthur is reflecting on the demolition of the earth (while on the Vogon ship, Douglas seems to be discussing his existential worldview. He also seemed to have been a determinist.
The metaphor between sex and death: the astronomically low odds of being picked up while holding your breath and waiting to die in space is the same as the telephone number of Arthur's 'one that got away'. Since Arthur does get together with her at the end (as I remember from the first read of the series) the author may be implying the odds were the same because the two of them were fated together.
Discussing the mechanics of the improbability drive, Douglas leans on the fact that most things we rule out as impossible are in fact improbable. The bit about creating finite improbability using a 'sub meson brain' and the coffee cup would have referred to Douglas's belief that the needle in the meters Scientologist use gets moved as they believe it does, defying physics and reason.
Marvin the robot may represent a time in Douglas' life when he was depressed because of his existential worldview. But he seemed to have grown past that stage to be able to identify himself with Zaphod. Taking this analogy further it may also well be that the four main male characters represent different stages of his life and how he saw the world during those periods.
Magrathea probably represents the god makers of ancient civilizations like that of Greece and Mesapothenia.
'The whale and the bowl of petunias' segment is a plot device that can be thought of separate from the rest of the meta-story. He hints at this when talking in advance of the missile attack. The whale in the story device may have been used to explore Douglas's view on how short life is and the irony of being self-aware so close to our end. The bowl of petunias would have been used as a juxtaposition in that compared to a whale the bowl of petunias would look rigid and inanimate but met the same end. To Douglas, the bowl of petunias may have represented the mysteries of faiths and the practitioners that believe in reincarnation.
Based on the content of the chapter where Slartibartfast is introduced and the chapter before that, Slartibartfast is probably someone Douglas knew in person who had lost his real name. A kind of godly stranger you would expect to find in a cosmopolitan city like New York as depicted in fiction like the 'one above all' in the Marvel canon.
The program the mice race ran on the organic computer (earth) made me think of Hegel's model of thesis and antithesis perpetually building up to a greater synthesis to form the absolute.
Vroomfondels and Majikthise's resistance to the creation of a machine that can answer the ultimate question, in general, can be a metaphor for the resistance science and reason face when inquiring about matters that traditionally fall under the realms of philosophy or theology. And in specific, it might represent the resistance Douglas Adams faced in his own existential inquiries as he tried to acquire 'the heart of gold'.
Douglas would have used the segment about Deep Thoughts' superiority over previous computers as an analogy over how great thinkers of the past generations needed to outdo each other in their search for meaning (thesis and antithesis). If Douglas did identify best with Zaphod he has used this character to brush his own ego in humorous ways. So he may have been gloating about himself through Deep Thoughts superiority at the beginning of the chapter. Later in the chapter, Deep Thoughts' inferiority to the Organic Computer may have been influenced by biblical wisdom prophets like Isaiah and John the Baptist's foretelling of the coming of Jesus Christ when they were asked the question.
The answer 42 seemed to have no meaning at the surface level. In the chapters leading up to the answer, Douglas probably used the two philosophers Vroomfondel and Majikthise to discuss his own reservations about such an answer. He might have thought of the ethical consequences of such an answer (responsibility of knowledge) or he may have decided to go with an answer like 42 out of his need for self-preservation (if he did identify himself as Deep Thought). But I think it was in his nature to need to leave some trace of what he truly thought. Being a determinist and an existentialist who also entertained the surreal. And thinking of the astronomical odds that needed to be beat for Arthur and Trillion to happen. When he wrote 'so once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means' he might have held the belief that we're born with some innate capacity to predict our end (answer) and that we are able to make these predictions by knowing ourselves (question). For Douglas Adams, this question may have been love (or sex, depending on how you see it).
The mice believe they manipulated Trillion off of earth as they needed a holiday, but as Douglas uses the deterministic thread of her needing to meet Arthur at the center of the story. He is implying the mice themselves were used and were not the causative agents in the matter.
Douglas seemed to have used the mice in chapters 31 and 32 to discuss his own thought process of coming up with a meaning to the grand question. 'How about What's yellow and dangerous' may have represented a meaning that can be understood through reason or philosophy. 'What do you get if you multiply six by seven' may have represented a mathematically or scientifically decipherable meaning and 'how many roads must a man walk down' may have represented a meaning that can be understood through the humanities (art).
'R the velocity measure' in chapter 34 and Slartibartfast's lifestyle trouble which he mentions to Arthur may have been a hint at Douglas's own struggles to avoid some perceived undesirable end he wanted to avoid which may have looked as procrastination to the outside (which he was renowned for). The end he feared may have been the loss of his agency to a deterministic world (as this is likely how Douglas perceived it). This view is expressed in sentences like 'it's all planned out' and 'don't panic'.
