Chapters 22-28: Passage Discussion

1.     "Too late, the surviving inhabitants of such a nation would crawl from the ruins of their own creation and realize that, throughout all their self-imposed agony, there had been absolutely nobody at the top who had understood how things really worked, what it was all about, what was really going on." (Pg.140, L.20-26)

     I wanted to share this excerpt, as it had left me a bit taken aback upon first glance. In this story, which features such frequent mention of 'big-brains' is a sentiment that, in essence, asserts these 'big-brained' to have been entirely unknowing. I believe this to be the heart of Vonnegut's story. This short passage is, in my opinion, of the greatest profundity of all those that we've read thus far in Galapagos.

2.    "Selena MacIntosh would never know for certain that her father was dead until she was reunited with him at the far end of the blue tunnel into the Afterlife. All she could be sure of was that he had departed her room at the El Dorado, and exchanged some words with Zenji Hiroguchi out in the corridor. Then the two went down together in the elevator. After that, she would never receive news about either one of them." (Pg. 147, L.1-9)

     This excerpt, like any other in Galapagos, serves to illustrate Vonnegut's 8 Basic's of Creative Writing well, specifically, his fourth decree that "Every sentence must do one of two things--reveal character or advance the action". In eschewing lengthy setting descriptions, Vonnegut allows himself to set focus upon the place of his characters within the realm of the human condition.

Vonnegut's 8 Basic's of Creative Writing
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-Utah