Arthur+Dent

=Arthur Dent=

(The picture showes Simon Jones who played Arthur Dent in the BBC tv series of the hitch hikers guide to the galaxy. Source: click on the picture)

Arthur Dent is the main character in Douglas Adams’ very popular novel the Hitch Hikers guide to the galaxy, which was first released in 1979. Arthur is the first person we meet, and we follow him throughout the book. Arthur lives on the small and unbothered planet earth. He wakes up one morning to find that his house is going to be demolished to the advance of a bypass. Later that day he finds out his best friend is an alien, and the earth is also going to be demolished to the advance of a hyper galactic bypass. Two minutes before the earth blows up he and Ford Perfect, which is his best friends name, catch a hike with a hostile space ship, and his new life begins.

Before all this Arthur Dent lived a very calm life as a very average, steady earthman He lives on the English countryside in a very average house. He works at the local radio station, which he tells his friends is;” much more interesting than they probably think it is.” Arthur Dent believes in the little things, and in the book the only direct description of him is just about the following sentence; about thirty, tall dark haired and never quite at ease with himself.” He is a little bit edgy, and likes to live peacefully. He had to move out of London because it made him nervous and irritable. Arthur is a person that worries easily, and one of the things that worries him is that people always asks him what he is looking so worried about.

Arthur Dent is not at all the typical proganist of a novel. He is on the other hand a more typical antihero. He is not very talented or remarkable, more scruffy and shied. His background, childhood, and at all his life on the planet on earth is not mentioned very much in the book. But on the other hand it is not an important function to the story. The writer uses a lot of time on describing the fictional world in which the action takes place, and all the colourful, fantastic monsters that live in it. So the kind of grey uninteresting earthman makes a contrast to the rest of the content. His views of life are completely turned upside down in this novel. Humans are no longer the most intelligent creatures on earth. They are third after mice and dolphins. And humans are no longer as great as he would like to think.

Another important trait about Arthur in this book is his naivety. He is not a person who easily suspects things to be anything more than they seem. Which shows very well in this book since things so often are more than they seem. The earthman Arthur is a little bit like a child coming into the grown up world when he comes into space. His views of life are completely turned upside down in this novel. Humans are no longer the most intelligent creatures on earth. They are third after mice and dolphins. And humans are no longer as great as he would like to think.

All in all Arthur Dent is a very ordinary person put in very extraordinary events. His ordinarity works as a contrast in all the extraordinary in the novel. And puts a perspective to things. He is the only person that is from our planet so he is the person we sympathise with, and he is the one we recognize ourselves in.