Over my spring break, I was lucky enough to travel to New York City. During my trip, I was able to pursue my long-term ambition of diving into the world of literature outside of my English 205 class. As my beloved girlfriend and I made our way through the city, we happened upon a fantastic book store, the Strand Book store of 828 Broadway, New York City’s illustrious “home of 18 miles of new, used and rare books.”
In searching through the plethora of print, I was able to find a gem that has stretched my mind for the past week or so. This novel is Kurt Vonnegut’s “Galápagos”.
The book is full of radical ideas and spine tingling notions of humanity, but one early in the novel caught my attention. Vonnegut’s story is written from the perspective of a human living one million years in the future, yet is also existent in 1986, the setting of the novel. The narrator constantly criticizes the “big brained humans of the past,” saying that our big brains trick us and get us into trouble that is useless and unnecessary. He presents the idea that opinions, although wavering in nature, hold more weight in people’s decision making rather than hard facts.
At first I was taken aback by this, but then Vonnegut’s narrator presented his examples. The narrator states that “the Galápagos Islands could be hell in one moment and heaven in the next.” This first example didn’t really resonate with me, as it seemed sort of irrelevant to my life, but seemed quite relevant to the book. Although inapplicable to my life, this example helped me to understand his argument at a base level.
The next example the narrator provides is this: “Julius Caesar could be a statesman in one moment and a butcher in the next.” This example begins to take Vonnegut’s thoughts to the next level. This shows that humans are capable of seeing another person as a great man in one moment and, with a sudden change of opinion, this man who was once great can become a monster. Nothing about this man will have changed: he is the same person he was when he was thought of as a “statesman.” Yet human opinion, a simple thought, will have changed everything this man once was. This is where things begin to get deep.
“Ecuadorian paper money could be traded for food, shelter, and clothing in one moment and line the bottom of a birdcage in the next.” This example contextualizes Vonnegut’s claim in a more relevant, real world fashion that hits home for me. Vonnegut is suggesting that the value of money, what most people see as the true sense of worth of an object, is up to opinion, which it truly is. Almost all currencies of today are like this. The worth of a USD is only as much as opinion says it is. A USD in 1970 was “worth” a lot more than a USD in 2014, which can be seen as fact, yet is mere opinion. If I had money in my wallet, any USD has not changed one bit since it’s printing date, yet is growing and shrinking in value constantly. The mere fact that a dollar is consistent throughout time is corrupted by human opinion.
Vonnegut’s final, and most pressing, example is this: “the universe could be created by God Almighty in one moment and by a big explosion in the next.”
Simply put, this book has challenged my philosophy of humanity, and I’m hardly a third of the way through it. I highly recommend this book, as it has shaped many of the opinions I hold near to my heart today. The philosophy presented in the novel is brilliant, but, of course, that is just my opinion.
