Welcome to the year 1,001,986! You’ve been enjoying the last 900,000+ years taking it easy in the afterlife. One day, you notice a portal that has suddenly opened in the clouds. Kilgore Trout – one of the most annoying people in the afterlife – is leaning out the portal talking to his son, Leon. You decide to join him. He promises to keep the portal open for a little while so you can take a look around. You can’t help but notice that human beings in the year 1,001,986 are… different… from how you remember them. Leon Trout is convinced that human beings are much better off now than they were in the year 1986 (or 2024). But what do you think? I would like you to write a report to whoever you report to in the afterlife (God, a dinosaur, Karl Marx, etc.) about the state of humanity in the year 1,001,986 using your own observations and Leon’s book as your evidence. The purpose of your report is to determine whether the human race is better off in the year 1,001,986 than they were when they had “big brains.” You will support your report with evidence from Galápagos (in the form of properly introduced, analyzed, and cited quotations from the novel). As this is a creative assignment, though, you also have the latitude to include some fictional components to your report as well. In other words, not everything in your report needs to be supported by quotation, but I would like you to include at least five quotations from the novel in your Reading Reflection.
