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I was reading parts of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy again. The tome in question is not exactly short and I've ploughed my way through it a few times already but this time I was hunting for a specific part of the story with very little luck. The main character Arthur Dent is thrown into a number of ridiculous events after earth is demolished to make way for an intergalactic expressway.

In one part of the book which I failed to find, Arthur makes his way to a distant planet in search of some direction in his life. After some treacherous travels he arrives at a filthy cave. Supposedly the universe's greatest life coach lives there and Arthur is in desperate need of some coaching. A hideously disfigured and very smelly character appears pushing out a solar operated xerox. The life coach makes a copy of his biography and hands it over. He explains that the biography outlines every major event and decision he ever made which led to life in said filthy cave. He suggests that Arthur looks long and hard at all the choices the life coach made and when in a similar situation do the opposite.

The entire book has been a source of much enjoyment over the years and I'm sure Aristotle would agree for many reasons. Most of the characters in Adams' book are neither good nor evil in any of their archetypal forms. A better description would be antiheroes. On page 4 of poetics Aristotle claims the perfect tragedy should [...]excite pity and fear. [...P]ity is aroused by unmerited misfortune. The effect is greater if we can associate with the character and the misfortune is brought through some personal error or frailty.

Aristotle calls all art forms an imitation of nature and that which is known to man. On page one he explains why people enjoy such likenesses. It gives the beholder an opportunity to find themselves learning and inferring. Even when the original is not known from nature there is much to learn from such imitations, which is where the Hitchhikers Guide shines. I don't know any aliens who habitually travel with little more than a towel, and yet reading Adams' tale I learned much about myself and in some instances was subjected to a different view of things that turned out to be highly applicable in everyday run-ins with my co-humans.

On page six Aristotle reminds us that the greatest thing by far is to have command of metaphor. Adams has that command and yields it like a flamingo would be yielded in croquet. When describing giant planetary bulldosers, Adams paints us his nature defying image saying they hung in the sky the way bricks don't. As Aristotle reminds us, With respect to the requirements of art, a probable impossibility is to be preferred to a thing improbable and yet possible.