Sophia Marraccini
Mr. Ceruzzi Final Reading Response of The Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Since the first book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was only 200 pages, I decided to read the first two books instead, so this second reader response is on the second book. The second book itself is called “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.” In it, it continues the basic plot of the story, where the Earth is destroyed it to make a hyperspace bypass and Arthur Dent, one of the last survivors of the Earth, travels the galaxy with his three friends Ford Prefect, Trillian, and Zaphod.
When I started reading the second book, I expected it to be the same plot as the first, where Zaphod looked for the reason he cut part of his own brain, but it actually started pretty randomly with people’s views on how the universe began. In the first few chapters, I was really confused because I expected it to start off somewhere in the close future, but it just started right where it ended in the first book. However, it got weird about a chapter after that.
In the third chapter, Arthur finally was fed up with this machine that was supposed to give him tea and ended up crashing all the computers in the ship while it tried to figure out how to make the perfect cup of tea. In this time, they were also being chased down by a Vogon ship that wanted to blow them up. After only three chapters, I was incredibly confused with what on earth happened between chapters 1 and 3. First, it starts off with a brief history of galactic religion, then suddenly they’re frozen in space, being targeted by a Vogon ship. To make things more complicated, somehow Zaphod summoned his great grandfather from the beyond and his grandfather zapped them across space. All in the first couple chapters. If theres anything I’ve learned about the books, they certainly know how to start a story. As if things couldn’t get more confusing in this series, this book managed to do so.
If I could be any character in the story, I’d probably change from Arthur Dent to
Zaphod. In this book, its not so much
