LITR 4632: Literature of the Future

Bryan Hyde

De-evolution in Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos

Synopsis:

While the main story takes place in 1985, it is a story essential to the present of the novel, which is one million years later.  The novel is narrated by Leon Trout, or rather the ghost of Leon Trout, a shipbuilder who died during the construction of the Bahia de Darwin, the cruise ship that transports the progenitors of all humankind to the new cradle of civilization, the fictional island of Santa Rosalia in the Galapagos Islands.

In the main story line (1985), people from different walks of life embark on what is called “The Nature Cruise of the Century,” a cruise to the Galapagos Islands.  Through a series of blunders, the ship is run aground on the island of Santa Rosalia, where the passengers are left stranded.  At the same time, there is a widespread epidemic everywhere else in the world—a particularly nasty  bacterium is eating all of the ovaries, rendering the entire population of women sterile, and for all intents and purposes, humanity extinct.  The only place where the bacteria do not invade is in the Galapagos Islands.

With no hope of other humans in the world, there is no hope of escape.  Consequently, the shipwrecked passengers of the Bahia de Darwin set up a community and continue life on the island.  The novel ends as the first generation of settlers begins to die out and the second generation is growing up.

The real vision of the future comes from Leon Trout, who, as he narrates the story of the Santa Rosalia community, also drops hints about the human situation one million years in the future, the de-evolution of humankind.  In the birthplace of evolution, humanity undergoes some surprising changes:

“Nobody has a name anymore—or a profession, or a life story to tell.  All that anybody has in the way of a reputation anymore is an odor which, from birth to death, cannot be modified…Everybody is exactly what he or she seems to be.”

“…nine months old.  That’s how long human childhood lasts nowadays.”

“As for human beings making a comeback, of starting to use tools and build houses and play musical instruments and so on again: They would have to do it with their beaks this time.  Their arms have become flippers in which the hand bones are almost entirely imprisoned and immobilized.  Each flipper is studded with five purely ornamental nubbins…These are in fact the tips of four suppressed fingers and a thumb.  Those parts of people’s brains which used to control people’s hands, moreover, simply don’t exist anymore, and human skulls are now much more streamlined on that account.  The more streamlined the skull, the more successful the fisher person.”

“Human beings had much bigger brains back then than they do today.”

“Can it be doubted that three-kilogram brains were once nearly fatal defects in the evolution of the human race.”

Questions:

1.  Something like Parable of the Sower (but not much like), Galapagos has a vision of the future that is both apocalyptic (the bacteria) and evolutionary.  Can there exist a purely evolutionary vision of the future, or is an apocalyptic, cataclysmic event necessary to “jump-start” the evolutionary process?

2.  With so much focus on the “untapped potential” of humanity and the upward mobility of the evolutionary model, do you see it being just as plausible for humans to de-evolve?

3.  Despite the obvious, blatant reason of being more successful fisher people, what advantages might Vonnegut see for human beings developing smaller brains and flippers instead of hands?  Do you agree with him?  What advantages do you see?