Biblical motifs
Kurt Vonnegut, being a Christian himself, has often used biblical motifs in his novels, and Galapagos is not an exception. In the very first chapter of the novel the author says that if Noah’s ark had really existed, so his narration might be called The second Noah’s ark. One of the most famous biblical legends says that God told Noah to build an ark and take with him animals, as He will flood all the people because of their vanity, conceit and insolence. It was Noah who had to be the forefather of new humankind.
The story developed in the Galapagos resembles this biblical legend. A couple of people survived on the ship “Bahia de Darwin” to continue the existence of the human race. But the difference is that God chose the best of the best to become a forefather, while in the Vonnegut’s novel random people had survived. The legend of Noah is followed throughout the entire novel. When the ship “Bahia de Darwin” is in the sea, it can find no land to sail, and it is only because of the captain’s lack of skills. And when they seem to notice land ahead, he says that it might be the mount Ararat (the one to which, according to the Bible, Noah had reached after the flood).
Eden (allegory)
Vonnegut tries in the novel Galapagos to unite two completely different ideas of the way the Earth and humanity had been created. The first idea is that God had created everything, which is the basic canon of the Scripture. The second one is the idea of evolution developed by Charles Darwin and is set out in his major writing “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for life”. It seems that to combine these two ideas is impossible, but the satiric writer and master of black humor managed to do it.
The island Santa Rosalia becomes the Biblical Eden for people, the place where they return home. But these people are not those who had survived after the apocalypse, but those who descended it. One very important thing is that in one million years human beings will not resemble their ancestors in any way, they will look like animals living in the seas. And this fact is developed due to the idea of evolution and its rules.
Thus, future generations will “come back home to Eden” which is island Santa Rosalia, but in the form of first living beings of our planet. In this, way Vonnegut combines evolution and religion.
New World (allegory)
Rationality, which is embodied in science, is opposed to an irrational beginning, which is embodied in religion. Why Vonnegut considers religion irrational is, very simply, as he identifies it with creativity. God had created people because of curiosity, it was his biggest experiment. This idea is paralleled with Mary Hepburn, who, because of curiosity as well, tried to inseminate girls of the Konko Bana tribe. So Mary becomes anew god on the island Santa Rosalia. The captain, whose sperm was used, is a new Adam, and six girls from tribe Konko Bana are new Evas.
