Galapagos Background

Galapagos Background

Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Galapagos, was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and then attended Cornell University. However, he dropped out at the beginning of 1943 and joined the US Army.

Published in 1985, Galapagos is a novel that describes life for humans in the future with many ideas of evolution prevalent in the book. A satirical work, Galapagos was one of Vonnegut’s later works that drew attention to him once again, later in his career.

In Galapagos, Vonnegut wrote about the small group of humans that survive after the world’s economy collapses and everyone except for those on Santa Rosalia, the fictional island that is one of the Galapagos Islands, cannot reproduce because of an infectious disease. As time goes on, those humans’ descendants no longer look like modern humans because of evolution. All of this is narrated by an immortal ghost named Leon Trotsky Trout. Galapagos explores many ideas of evolution and the scientific theories relating to natural selection and survival of the fittest.

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