Arthur Dent is interesting

Arthur Dent, much like Earth, is mostly harmless. He is the protagonist of every version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. I didn't specify medium because there are quite a lot of mediums that the Hitchhiker's Guide covers, almost all of which penned at least in part by Douglas Adams except the sixth book that was written by Eoin Colfer after Adams' death, though Adams had intended to write it himself, and the last 3 radio plays. There are 6 books, 5 radio plays, a TV series, a movie and a very good text-based adventure game. They all differ in story elements, sometimes greatly, and are all very funny.

We will be focusing on the two most accessible today, the books and the 2005 movie where he was portrayed by Martin Freeman. The books focus on his accidental romp through time and space, mostly the former, while the movie has a larger focus on his romance with Tricia MacMillan, understandable since the books run to something near 900 pages when compiled and the movie was less than 2 hours long.

In both Arthur is very much someone that things happen to. He doesn't choose to leave Earth as it is destroyed, nor does he choose to learn how to fly, they just happen to be things that have happened to him. He is the quintessential everyman, a 30-something who works in local radio and likes tea. He's not particularly bright, fit, good with words, attractive or quick on the uptake and one of the few things that he seems to actually want to do, have a nice brew, is practically impossible for him.

He has been portrayed as both sarcastic and put-upon and both work surprisingly and give this wholly unremarkable man a likable feeling. He might not be good at things, he might be the worst human who could be representing us out in space but after even a few chapters or 10 minutes of the film we grow to like him because what he does is what a lot of us like to think we would do in the same situation; panic a little, remember that we shouldn't and try and find something pleasant to put in our mouths.

He is actually rather extraordinary in his boring normality. This man has been through a lot, he's lived in a cave, he's been shot at, he's killed one guy over and over again and he had his house demolished but he takes it all with very few real changes in character. He has waded through thick and thin, time and space, alien and prehistoric plant life and come out asking for a cuppa.

There are of course moments where he veers off into some other want, sometimes he wants 'not to die' or 'the love of others' but in the end, the things that make Arthur Dent Arthur Dent is his admirable ability to accept what happens around him as just space stuff, his staunch Englishness and the fact that he endures the whims of a whacky improbable adventure while wearing his pyjamas.

Arthur Dent is interesting, he's a hoopy frood I'd like to sass, because he has all of these extraordinary things happen to him and he still seems normal, by the end of the film or the 6th book he still seems like the sort of guy we could chat to in the pub about football or the weather without having to revile in his stature as someone who has been on the trip he's been on.

Next time we look at someone a little less ordinary but maybe a bit more relatable as we answer the age old question, what do you even call a group of butterflies?