GALAPAGOS ~ KURT VONNEGUT

1. Story
The story is been told by a ghost, named Leon Trostky Trout. Hes been ghost for a million
years. Leon was beheaded while working as a shipbuilder of the Nature Cruise of the
Century. He lived as a ghost on the ship and travelled with the tourists from Ecuador to the
Galapagos Islands.
But the trip didnt become a cruise. The world economy system breaks down and Ecuador
falls in a deep crisis. Their money is nothing worth anymore. Famine starts and world war III
is not far anymore. And on top of all these problems, some weird bacteria break out and eat
all the human ovaries. Every woman becomes futile, couldnt have babies anymore.
When the violence starts in Guayaquil, port of Ecuador, ten people escape in the cruise.
These ten brave people has still come to Ecuador to make the Nature Cruise of the
Century, ignoring all the warning reports. They reach the island Santa Rosalia without any
navigation. At this point there is only one male, the ships captain, and nine women. One of
them is a schoolteacher named Mary, six are Indians and then there is Hisako, a Japanese
woman who gives birth to a girl with fur.
Mary is afraid that the population of Santa Rosalia will dies out. So she starts an artificial
insemination project. She injects the Indian girls with the sperm of the captain. According to
the New York Times: Humanity was about to be diminished to a tiny point, by luck, and
then, again by luck, to be permitted to expand again.
They live already million years on the islands and they survive very well. They are developed
and adapted at their environment. They have now flippers, instead of hands and feet, and
smaller, streamlined heads. They also have beaks and the same fur as Hisakos girl. They
are a real fisherfolk right now.
The book is separated in two parts. The first part is called The Thing Was, to show the
original form of the human animal and capturing the colloquial way to refer to complications
in a narrative form. The second parts title is And the Thing Became, to show the
adaptation to the aquatic life on Galapagos.
The New York Times compared Vonnegut's book with an American sitcom made in the
sixties. The sitcom called Gilligans Island and has the same storyline as Galapagos, only
the book is more Darwinian. The sitcom is about six people who make a pleasure trip until it
starts to storm. They strand on a island and stuck their for almost hundred episodes, vainly
their tries to escape from the island. The Galapagos colonists also strand on a island, but
dont try to escape. They start a new population, which is different from the sitcom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8jhb5NnADM

2. Main characters

Mary Hepburn: the main character, is a biology teacher who is signed up to the Nature
Cruise of the Century by her sick man Roy. Roy dies but Mary promised him that she would
go on the cruise so she travels to Guayaquil alone and she stays at the El Dorado hotel. At
first she marries with James Wait (or Mr. Flemming) who dies on board of the Bahia de
Darwin right after the ceremony because of the results of a heart attack. Later she lives
together with Adolf von Kleist for many years. Mary turns out to be the reason for the
continuation of the human race because she used Adolfs sperm to impregnate the KankaBono girls. She dies at the age of 80 when she is eaten by a shark.
Roy Hepburn: Roy is the husband of Mary. The two of them never were able to have kids,
because Roy was infertile due to nuclear experiments. Roy gets a tumor in his head and
books tickets for the Nature Cruise of The Century for him and his wife. Before they can
leave he dies. Before he died he made Mary promise him that she will go on the cruise and
she will find another loving husband.
Akiko: She is the daughter of Hisako and zenji. She is born At santa Rosalia after her
fathers death and she was born with a fur. This fur protects her from sunburn and cold water
when she goes for a swim. She will pass on this fur to her seven children that she has with
kamikaze, the first born son of the Kanka-Bono girls who were impregnated by Mary. Aiko
will take care of The captain when Alzheimer strikes him and she will be a good friend of
Mary
for
the
rest
of
her
life.
Hisako: Shes Akikos mother who went on the cruise to escape the economic chaos in the
world. She loses her husband Zenji but manages to go on board of the Bahia de Darwin.
When she arrives at Santa Rosalia she gives birth to Akiko and raises her with the help of
Selena MacIntosh. She will be depressed for the rest of her life and eventually will commit
suicide.
Zenji: Hes a Japanese computer developer who invented translation devices like the
Mandarax and goes on the Nature Cruise of the Century because of the invitation of the
rich American MacIntosh. Befor he is able to go on board of the ship hes shot in the head
the day before the ship sails off. Hes killed by an Ecuadorian thief. Because of his death he
will not be there to raise his daughter Akiko.
Kanka-Bono girls: Six starving girls of the Kanka-Bono tribe manage to get into the hotel
where they get food from James Wait. All the girls are orphanages because they lost their
parents because of pesticides sprayed over the forest where they were living. The girls
survived because they were at singing practice. They were brought to an orphanage where
they get taken away by an old, dirty, bad man Quezeda. He teaches the girls how to be a
thief and he puts them into prostitution. The girls manage to escape this man and eventually
end up at Santa Rosalia where they get pregnant from Adolfs sperm and become the
mothers of the human race.
Adolf von Kleist: Hes the captain of the ship, but actually he doesnt know that much about
ship. When the war broke out he was getting drunk, not expecting that any passengers
would make it to the ship, but his brother Siegfried managed to get them on board. Adolf
wants to prove that hes a good navigator but he gets the strandet at Santa Rosalia. His

mistakes help the passengers survive because if they would ended up at Baltra where they
used to go to they would have extinct just like the other humans.
His sperm will be used by Mary to impregnate the Kanka-Bono girls and therefore he will be
the ancestor of the entire human race.
Siegfried von Kleist: Hes a manager who works in the El Dorado hotel and hes the
brother of Adolf. He never had kids because he has the genes for the Huntingtons disease.
When the war between Peru and Ecuador starts he tries to save the hotel guest by driving
them to the ship with a bus. Its a difficult trip because of all the bombs, but he manages to
get the passengers in safe. He dies because of a wave that threw him and his bus off the
wharf.
James Wait: Wait is a convict who runs off with all the money of the woman who hes
married to. He was seventeen times married. Due to his way of making money he always
changes his name. At the El Dorado he has set his eyes on Mary because he thinks shes
excellent for his next prey. Along the stay he actually falls in love with her, but he gets a heart
attack. He gets to the ship in time but he couldnt go to a hospital to be cured. He married
Mary and died right after the ceremony on board of the Bahia de Darwin. Mary will be
thinking of him the rest of her life because she thinks he was a good man.

3. Importance of Galapagos + important elements

A lot of Vonneguts own life refers in the book. He was biochemist before the war and studied
at Cornell, but he left after three years. Most of the time he was writing for The Cornell Sun,
anything to get away from biochemistry. He knows a lot about the natural selection and the
evolution.
Then came the war, World War II. Vonnegut was captured and became a prisoner in
Germany. He survived the Allied firebombing of Dresden and wrote later a book about it
Slaughterhouse-Five. World War II also comes back in this book. The two german
characters are from the Second World War.
After the war he attended the University of Chicago. He loved to study their. He studied in
one of the great anthropology departments in the world. He learned about cultural relations,
folk societies and natural habitats.
Four years before the publication of the book, he visited the Galapagos Islands with his wife.
He was fascinated by the islands natural life. He spent as much time there as Charles
Darwin did. But Vonnegut had advantages that Darwin didnt have, he had motorboats and
biology guides, much better than the rowboats of Darwin. And most important, he knew
Darwins theory of evolution, and Darwin didnt when he was there.
Vonnegut tried to make the book as responsible as possible scientifically and I think he has
succeeded, because he had the right background.
3.1 Influence of Darwin
The novel questions the merit of the human brain from an evolutionary perspective. The title
is both a reference to the islands on which a part of the story plays out, and a tribute to

Charles Darwin on whose theory Vonnegut relies to reach his own conclusions. And that is
just put mildly, because the book looks at everything it handles about with a darwinist view.
The story has literally darwinism all over the place.
3.2 Santa Rosalia
The colonists are settled at the island Santa Rosalia. This island is part of the Galapagos
Archipelago and Vonnegut made it up. It is fictional island and has a symbolic meaning, told
by a legend.
A long time ago Rosalia lived like a hermit and died in the caves during the Middle Ages.
When her bones were found, the village organized a procession with the bones as feature.
This procession set the village free of a plague that already killed a lot of people. Ever since
then shes been holy and called Santa Rosalia.
This is the reason why Vonnegut called the island Santa Rosalia. There was a huge plague
in the world of human-eggs-eating bacteria. The bacteria ate all the eggs of the women
wherefore they got futile. This meant the end of the population in the world, because the
women couldnt have kids anymore. The virus started at the annual Book Fair at Frankfurt in
Germany. Vonnegut describes that the women experienced a slight fever, which came and
went in a day or two, and sometimes women had a blurry vision. After that, the women would
be just like Mary Hepburn: they couldnt have babies anymore. Nor would any way be
discovered for stopping this disease. It would be spread practically everywhere.
But the colonists escaped from the mainland and got stranded at Santa Rosalia, the island
that the bacteria never received, is called to the holy woman who liberates a village from a
plague.
The whole island population got flippers, beaks and fur and stays growing. The island
becomes too small, but they dont swim back to the mainland. The reason why is the humaneggs-eating bacteria and the world was destroyed through the Third World War. Fortunately
the island never becomes too small. The natural selection and the white sharks keep the
population within limits.

4. By luck
The theory of Darwin on the origin of species consists for a large part of the fact that the way
evolution works is by accident. The nature plays with the qualities species have and tries
new things to see if it benefits them. That been said, the story has a similar concept of how
the people who will end up together on the galapagos islands will be gathered together
merely by luck and accident. A good example is James Wait getting a heart attack. Siegfried
wants to bring him to the hospital but Peru has declared war to Ecuador and bombed the
hospital so he is unable to bring James wait there and takes him to the ship. Although he
wont reach the galapagos island. It nicely illustrates how these people will finally end up with
each other by mere luck.

5. The blue tunnel in the Afterlife

The story is told by the ghost of Leon Trout, son of Killgore Trout, a character from one of
Vonneguts previous books: Slaughterhouse 5. Leon was a shipbuilder who helped at the

build of the Bahia de Darwin. Leon died and became a ghost because he refused to go
through the blue tunnel that leads into the afterlife 4 times and therefore he had to wait a
million years before he has another opportunity to go through it. Leon felt that he died before
his time and wanted to stay to see if the humans were worth the trouble. Because he has to
wait a million years he can watch the slow evolution of the surviving humans into creatures
with fur, like a seal, flippers and small brains adapted to swim and catch fish.
6. The big-bad-brain
In Galapagos, you will find one main idea across the whole book, namely the idea of
humankind evolving to have much smaller brains because our big ones cause more trouble
than theyre worth. I will illustrate this with a piece from the book. (piece is one million years
later)
This financial crisis, which could never happen today, was simply the latest in a series of murderous
twentieth-century catastrophes which had originated entirely in human brains. From the violence
people were doing to themselves and each other, and to all other living things, for that matter, a visitor
from another planet might have assumed that the environment had gone haywire, and that the people
were in such a frenzy because Nature was about to kill them all. But the planet a million years ago
was as moist and nourishing as it is today and unique, in that respect, in the entire Milky Way. All
that had changed was peoples opinion of the place.

(Frighteningly familiar, isnt it?) Our brains do cause a lot of trouble, and we can trace things
like war, violence and a set of sophisticated and cruel ways to hurt others to our big-brain
ideas.
(Now there is a big-brain idea we havent heard much about lately: human slavery.)
But at the same time, the book also shows that so many things make us glad we dont have
smaller brains. Things like music, poetry, art but also stories, inventions, curiosity and
Beethovens 9th symphony (this is a sort of joke that only works if youve read the book, im
afraid). Vonnegut manages to subtly highlight both the pros and the cons of Big Brains, and
the result is a book with a unique mix of pessimism and optimism. I have another passage
that shows this big brain idea beautifully:
(Some automatic device clicked in her big brain, and her knees felt weak, and there was a chilly
feeling in her stomach. She was in love with this man.
They don't make memories like that anymore ) (misschien gebruiken)
In a sense, too, this man had already been hit by a meteorite: by the murder of his mother by his
father. And his feeling that life was a meaningless nightmare, with nobody watching or caring what
was going on, was actually quite familiar to me.
That was how I felt after I shot a grandmother in Vietnam. She was as toothless and bent over as
Mary Hepburn would be at the end of her life. I shot her because she had just killed my best friend
and my worst enemy in my platoon with a single hand-grenade.
This episode made me sorry to be alive, made me envy stones. I would rather have been a stone at
the service of the Natural Order.
But I have yet to see an octopus, or any sort of animal, for that matter, which wasnt entirely content to
pass its time on earth as a food gathered and to shun the experiments with unlimited greed and
ambition performed by humankind.

That, in my opinion, was the most diabolical aspect of those old-time big brains: They would tell their
owners, in effect, Here is a crazy thing we could actually do, probably, but we would never do it, of
course. Its just fun to think about.
And then, as though in trances, the people would really do it have slaves fight each other to the
death in the Coliseum, or burn people alive in the public square for holding opinions which were
locally unpopular, or build factories whose only purpose was to kill people in industrial quantities, or to
blow up whole cities, or so on.

7. Other critique on the world and similarities with life

A large part of Galpagos takes place in Ecuador in 1986, one year after the book was
published. It was the authors intention for readers to view this story as one possible
outcome of the events that took place in the eighties. Two of the main drivers of the story
share many similarities with real-life events.
The first one in the story is the outbreak of a financial crisis in Ecuador because of a crash in
the value of the Ecuadorian sucre. Basic goods such as food, shelter and clothing have
become very expensive and rare because of this. The eventual food shortage that arises
forces the protagonists to flee the country and eventually end up on Santa Rosalia. In the
beginning of the eighties we had a similar event in the form of the Latin American debt crisis.
Vonnegut blames the human brain for the existence of financial crises and its devastating
consequences throughout the book. A second important element in the book is the birth of a
bacterium that makes women infertile. It quickly spreads across the globe and eventually
leads to the extinction of humanity except for the people stranded on Santa Rosalia. It is
likely that the AIDS virus served as an inspiration for this fictional pandemic. AIDS quickly
became a pandemic during the eighties and grabbed headlines everywhere as more and
more people became infected.
invloed WOII + Nazis https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/28/lifetimes/vonnegutgalapagos.html
voor de nazis!!! + vele kinderen hebben later blonde krullen en blauwe
ogen
= ARIRS

The Galapagos Islands only became famous after Darwin had explored them. The popularity
caused a touristic boom which was good for the economy of the Islands. This proves that
someones opinion can change the way in which we look at something. When the people
have small brains, that opinion doesnt matter anymore. The same with the value of money:
money is only paper when theres a shortage of food. It has a value because we give it to it,
but in the end its still a piece of paper. These things tell something about we look at things
nowadays and how easy we follow the opinion of someone or go with the flow of opinions.
We always have something to say about everything.

9. Sources
http://www.omphalosbookreviews.com/index.php/reviews/info/212