The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
49 pages • 1-hour read
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Chapters 21-27Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness and death.
Chapter 21 Summary
The technicians set up for Disaster Area’s “noisy show.” With the various bandmembers in states of disarray and local environmentalists protesting against the concert, the black ship locks into a “trajectory program.” It’s programmed to hurtle directly into the nearby sun and create a huge blast that threatens life on nearby planets. Arthur believes that the characters aboard the stunt ship are “going to die” (155).
As they search desperately for a means of escape, Arthur finds a half-installed teleportation machine. There is no guidance system, however, and no auto system. Not only will they have no control over where they’re sent, but someone will also need to stay behind on the stunt ship as it plummets into the sun. Marvin is nominated for this by Zaphod; the Disaster Area concert climaxes with the explosion as hints of a nearby Improbability Field are felt nearby.
Chapter 22 Summary
Arthur wakes up, feeling terrible. Ford is nearby, and together they try to decipher the source of “a dull stomping throb” (164). They’re aboard a spaceship, and the sound is made by a group of passing joggers. They follow the joggers, who seem to enter a room lined with thousands of “coffins.”
Chapter 23 Summary
Arthur and Ford take a closer look at the “humanoid” figures inside the coffin-like structures. The structures are cold to the touch, and each bears a description by the Golgafrincham Ark Fleet, Ship B, describing the occupation of the occupant. The occupants include hairdressers, advertising account executives, and telephone hand sanitizers.
As they try to count the number of occupants, an unknown voice tells them that there are 15 million such people. Arthur and Ford turn to find a security guard holding a gun at them, threatening to blast them into “tiny tiny bits” (171).
Chapter 24 Summary
The Captain of the ship enjoys his bath. An officer, referred to by the Captain as Number One, claims to have a report from Number Two. Number Two claims to have apprehended “some prisoners.” The Captain is perplexed but pleased for Number Two, who has always wanted this sort of thing.
Number Two marches Arthur and Ford to the bridge, where the Captain is in his “monstrous bath.” The Captain smiles at the prisoners and offers them a drink. Number Two is confused by this display of geniality; he suggests that they interrogate the prisoners. He settles for an aggressive offer to make drinks for Ford and Arthur and then quietly reminds the Captain that he’s been in his bath “for over three years” (180). The stress of being Captain calls for a lot of time to relax, the Captain explains.
When Ford asks about the frozen bodies, the Captain explains that the people are going to be revived. The people of Golgafrincham believed that their planet was doomed, so they created a plan to colonize other planets. This ship is Ark B, and it contains “hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives, management consultants” and more (181-82). Ark A will contain the planet’s most intelligent people, and Ark C will contain the people who do all the work, but Ark B was sent first. The Captain notes that they haven’t heard anything from the other arks or from Golgafrincham.
The trajectory of the ship is preset and set to crash-land for an unexplained reason. Ford accuses the Captain and his crew of being “a load of useless bloody loonies” (187). This, the Captain remembers, is the reason the ship was programmed to crash.
Chapter 25 Summary
The Hitchhiker’s Guide entry for Golgafrincham describes how the planet’s inhabitants concocted a false story of impending doom as an excuse to “rid themselves of an entire useless third of their population” while the rest remained on the planet (189), only for the civilization to collapse due to a disease that originated from a dirty telephone.
Chapter 26 Summary
That night, the ark ship crash-lands on “an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet […] in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the Galaxy” (190). Many of the 15 million die in the crash, but a few hundred thousand survivors—including Arthur and Ford—reach the safety of land.
Arthur and Ford feel separate from the entire incident. They wonder how long the survivors will last. Ford tries to use his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic to contact anybody off planet, but he picks up no signal. They set off to explore the planet in search of “a clear reception area” (194).
Chapter 27 Summary
Zaphod and Trillian rematerialize beside Zarniwoop on the Heart of Gold, and he asks about their meal. While they’ve been away, he set the ship on course to find the man who rules the Universe, and he expects to arrive very soon.
Chapters 21-27 Analysis
In the latter half of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the characters are separated across two divergent narratives. While Zaphod and Trillian are back aboard the Heart of Gold, Ford and Arthur are sent back in time. This temporal displacement separates the characters, and they’re not reunited for the rest of the book. Added to this, they are also separated from Marvin, who (seemingly) sacrifices himself by operating the teleportation device that separates the characters. This disruption to the unity of the core group of characters follows a pattern of disruption that occurs throughout the novel. Zaphod had been cut off from the other characters already and then reunited with them to attend the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
The relative prominence of the characters in the narrative during these periods of separation speaks to the relative levels of agency available at any time, invoking Human Insignificance Within the Universe. Zaphod, propelled by suggestions from his blocked-off mind, tries to get a handle on events around him, while Arthur, Ford, and Trillian are unable to exercise such a degree of control over their existence. Arthur and Ford are even more stranded without Zaphod’s hidden thoughts to guide them, adding peril to their situation, while also adding impetus to their reunion so as not to undermine the significance of Marvin’s sacrifice. The more the characters attempt to assert agency and find some semblance of logic or sense in their circumstances, however, the more unpredictable and illogical things become, once again reminding them of their insignificance and relative helplessness.
Ford and Arthur wake up on a ship in a moment that mirrors Arthur’s first experience of space travel in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This time, Ford is less sure of his surroundings. The sense of danger is exacerbated by the presence of millions of apparent “coffins” yet also undermined by the regular stomp of the joggers’ feet as they pass by. The contrast between the morbid dread of the coffins and the absurdity of the joggers plays into The Absurd Nature of the Search for Cosmic Meaning, as Arthur and Ford are unsure of whether to panic or laugh at their situation. The absurdity is heightened by the fact the Captain, the crew, and the coffins are all doomed. The sense of peril, dimmed by the cheerful Captain, gives way to a more profound sense of dread as Arthur and Ford realize that they have escaped one doomed spaceship only to materialize on another.
Chapter 25 is another diegetic aside, in which The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is cited to explain the fate of Golgafrincham. After congratulating themselves on having “rid themselves of an entire useless third of their population” (189), the people of Golgafrincham fell prey to a disease spread by dirty telephones. Having deemed the telephone sanitizers to be useless, the remaining population was killed by the exact problem the supposedly “useless” people kept under control. This is an example of hubris, as the people of Golgafrincham were destroyed by their own arrogance. The irony of their situation is that they’re survived by the population they sought to expel, creating a situation where the faked apocalypse manifests as a direct result of the big lie they told. This information illustrates how the people of Golgafrincham have become a cautionary tale in history.
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