Theme!! post #3

Tea appears to be an important part of the Hitchhiker's  Guide to the  Galaxy by Douglas Adams.  Arthur Dent wakes up one morning to find a demotion team preparing to knock down his house.  His friend Ford shows up to return a borrowed towel and informs Arthur that the world will be destroyed in a few minutes.  After a series of strange and bizarre events, the two find themselves on the spaceship Heart of Gold.  There they begin their journeys to distant planets where Arthur expresses his true human faults.    

I realized that Arthur is a cross between a reluctant, anti-hero and innocent protagonist.  Arthur blunders aimlessly into situations where he becomes a pathetic lump.  After waking up with a terrible headache- "Arthur Dent is no more aware of his destiny than a tealeaf is aware of the East India Company".  When he saw the bulldozers,  his mind short circuited and he impulsively sat in the mud in front of them.  When Ford came and pulled Arthur off the planet, Arthur was bewildered to find himself on a spaceship.  Years later, he still hadn't adjusted to space-travel proving that most people don't adjust to things as long as they still think they are impossible.  

Throughout Arthur and' Fords adventures, Arthur's develops a craving for a warm cup of tea.  When they reach the Heart of Gold, he isn't satisfied by the thick brown "tea" the spaceship provided: "He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea(84)".  Arthur's craving gets stronger the more he mopes by himself which leads me to think that this is a sign of how much he misses earth.  His obsession grows to the point that he succumbs to the human defect of yelling at inanimate objects.  This shows another one of his human faults, obsession.

We all know that humans aren't perfect but some of our faults are just plain frustrating.  Change is hard.  When you move or your friend isn't going to your school anymore it's sad.  When you move and everything and everyone you knew and loved blew up with the earth it's even harder.  Still, you're not going to help things by moping for years.  Another problem Arthur faces is controlling his instinct to act irrationally.  When one person freaks out it makes the people around them nervous and suddenly people are running around screaming.  One of the best pieces of advice in the world is "Don't Panic".  In other words, when something is bothering you, think before you do something that might make the situation worse.