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> Everything in a book was put there on purpose. > there's some reason the author chose one thing over another. Like the significance of the number 42? Somet

• brimble 5y ago
  There's a major character named "Piggy". Lord of the Flies, however overanalyzed (or, more often, just poorly analyzed) it may be in high school classes, is not a great place to start making the case that going past the barest of surface meanings isn't advisable. > Like the significance of the number 42? Maybe 42 was arbitrary. Maybe Adams just like the sound of it (still a reason!) Making the answer a number with no particular obvious meaning was surely not arbitrary or accidental (would it read the same if he'd picked 3.1459...? Or 7?)
• pessimizer 5y ago
  You can't come up with a random number without using a machine or an algorithm, and neither could Douglas Adams.
• wolverine876 5y ago
  42 was chosen for a reason, because it appeared random. It wasn't that Adams didn't care; something was being conveyed.
• mlyle 5y ago
  > Like the significance of the number 42? Adams was stuck on what the answer should be. He eventually decided it should be "should be something that made no sense whatsoever – a number, and a mundane one at that" He was writing radio plays, too. I am sure he was thinking of how it sounded, too. Could another number hold up there? Sure. Could any number hold up? Thirteen or seven or two hundred sixteen wouldn't have been a cultural touchstone, and this isn't entirely by accident.