Week 8 Blog: Douglas Adams

Dear All,

Below are four questions about Douglas Adams's Last Chance to See.  Please select one and answer it with a coherent, grammatical response of 300-600 words.

1. At the chapter "Blind Panic," Adams reminds us that "[a]ssumptions are the things you don't know you're making." This is a chapter about coping with disorientation, of having your assumptions challenged, of learning to realize that different assumptions could be at play. Choose a section of this chapter and discuss how humor is a way of coping with this sense of confusion.


2. Adams employs a literary humor technique called "the laughing return." In laughing returns, the author makes reference to something that he joked about in another part of the text, either reintroducing the joke or twisting how we laugh at it when we see it again. Find an example of a laughing return in the book and discuss how the humor evolves through its repetition.

3. On page 183, Adams describes the obsessive passion of the conservationists of Mauritius in the terms of war. What is the potential effect on the reader? Why does Adams do this?

4. Douglas Adams, for final words, expresses a concern not for the rare and endangered animals he has been seeking, but for "us." What, after finishing this book, does Adams think is endangered about human beings?