Galápagos (book)

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The novel Galápagos is Kurt Vonnegut's look at evolution. It was first published in 1985 by Delacorte.

Galápagos is the story of a small band of mismatched humans who get shipwrecked on the fictional island of Santa Rosalía in the Galápagos Islands after a global financial crisis has crippled the world's economy. Shortly thereafter, a disease renders all humans on earth infertile, with the exception of the people on Santa Rosalía, making them the last specimens of mankind. They eventually evolve into a species resembling seals: though possibly still able to walk upright (it is not explicitly mentioned, but it is stated that they occasionally catch land animals), they have a snout with teeth adapted for catching fish, a streamlined skull and flipper-like hands with rudimentary fingers.

The story's narrator is a ghost who has been watching over humans for the last million years. This particular ghost is the immortal spirit of Leon Trout, son of Vonnegut's recurring character Kilgore Trout. Leon maintains that all the miseries of humankind were caused by "the only true villain in my story: the oversized human brain". Fortunately, natural selection eliminates this problem, since the humans best fitted to Santa Rosalía were those who could swim best, which required a streamlined head, which in turn required a smaller brain size.

Like Vonnegut's earlier Slaughterhouse-Five, the story is fragmented and told out of sequence. Major events are rarely seen directly, but are rather alluded to and mentioned in reference to other events. In this way, the focus of the reader remains on the characters; the reader is not permitted to become carried away in the storyline itself.

References

• Moore, Lonnie. "How Humans Got Flippers and Beaks", New York Times 6 October 1985, section 7, page 7.
• Vonnegut, Kurt. Galápagos. New York: Dell Publishing, 1999. ISBN 0385333870.