Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

As the group makes their way onto the High Plains, the narrator notes that Chris is becoming more restless, which is a bad sign. Stopping in a town for coffee, he notices that the land seems to no longer be valued, marking a strong contrast from the tidy towns they have previously visited. This contrast points to the fact that they are now in a western town.

The narrator again talks about John’s reluctance to take on his own motorcycle maintenance. John is only interested in seeing things as they are, not in seeing things by what they mean. At one point, he thought he would wait to broach the subject again with John when something on his motorcycle needed to be fixed. There came a time when John’s handlebars became loose and the narrator diagnosed the easily fixable problem, which only required a simple shim. Instead of thanking the narrator, however, the advice seemed to anger John even more. The narrator finally deduced that if the part was expensive, or imported directly from Germany, John would have gladly accepted it. This again led him to think about the overarching problem of the Sutherlands’ discontent.

The problem with John and the shim was that John was seeing the makeshift shim as a part in and of itself, as opposed to the narrator seeing its underlying form, seeing the intellectual makeup of the idea and the part. This is the difference in John’s approach to motorcycles. The narrator believes it is a conflict of “visions of reality (68).” There are two different realities, one of artistic appearance and one of underlying form.

Chris is becoming more annoyed and restless as they continue on the journey, and the narrator notes how tied and cranky everyone seems. At the next stop, they hear about a campground, and when John mentions camping out in town instead of in a rural campground, Chris is visibly upset by the idea.

The group finally finds the campground, which is a bad spot to camp, but they decide to try anyway. The wind is too strong, the mosquitoes are abundant and there is no light. Chris continues wandering off and ignoring the narrator even when asked to help out. As they try to make a fire and get dinner going, an explosion is heard behind them, which turns out to be Chris, who has found firecrackers and has lit one, angering everyone. When they sit down to eat, Chris spills all of his food and the narrator alludes to him having a scene, as he seems to do often when he is angry. At times like this, the best thing to do is to ignore him.

The narrator tells John and Sylvia that Chris is exhibiting early signs of mental illness, and that the doctors have not quite figured out what is wrong with him. The narrator does not like the idea of letting doctors or psychiatrists treat Chris because they are not his kind, as in the original meaning of the word, “kin,” also meaning kinship or kindness. They cannot possibly have the same feelings of loyalty to Chris as the narrator does, and this distance bothers him.

Chris finally returns and gets ready for bed. He tries to ease the tension by asking questions. The narrator remains stern and tells him to go to bed, which causes Chris to cry himself to sleep. The narrator wonders if Phaedrus is calling out to Chris, if his presence all along has been to call out to Chris and to reach him.

The narrator decides that the Chautauqua will now focus on explaining Phaedrus’ world and what he had to say. Only Phaedrus can really explain himself or what he was trying to accomplish, but the narrator will attempt to explain his thoughts. In doing so, he hopes to bury him forever. To understand his thoughts, the narrator says it is crucial to look at underlying form from an internal view as opposed to an external one. Earlier, he talked of technology. This is an example of an external view. Phaedrus used a dichotomy when dealing with human understanding: the “romantic” and the “classic.” In other words, romantic understanding is what people often align with art, it is seeing something as it is, its present beauty. Classic understanding is associated with dull form, such as science, and deals with underlying form. The beauty in classic understanding is often found in what is meant.

The source of the problem as Phaedrus saw it is that people usually align themselves as either classic or romantic, never seeing themselves in both camps or attempting to merge the two. This separation and hatred are the subjects of Phaedrus’ research. Everyone thought he was eccentric, however, so much so that he was institutionalized by court order. Phaedrus was a completely classic person. He dealt with things analytically, another synonym of classic understanding.

The narrator then breaks a motorcycle up into its various subcategories of parts and functions. It is the perfect example to explain classic understanding and analysis. The first observation from the breakdown of the motorcycle into its subparts is that one has to have a preconceived notion of a motorcycle to understand it. The second observation is that there are no real subjects in the description of the motorcycle, only objects. The third is that no value judgments, such as good or evil, have been placed. The fourth is that a knife, an intellectual knife, is moving among the parts, separating them. The narrator mentions that it is vital to see the knife itself and understand it for what it is. It will help to clarify possible solutions later on for the classic/romantic split. Phaedrus was a master at using this knife to split the world up into whatever parts he wanted. The real issue was that Phaedrus cut the world up in such an unusual way that no one understood it or saw what he was getting at. In the end, he became the victim himself.

The group arrives at another small town, suffering from the heat. The temperature in town reads 102 degrees Fahrenheit. Though the group wants to get inside and away from the heat, they stop to talk to a local for a time, and then go inside after Chris and the Sutherlands become increasingly annoyed. The narrator understands that he should not try and fight against Phaedrus and discussing his ideas. He goes into describing Phaedrus’s “knife,” a tool he used and which all individuals use to discern and separate the environment around them and classify things into understandable parts. As opposed to most people, Phaedrus wanted to understand the infinity of awareness that people parcel out there understanding of the world from. In other words, he wanted to understand the whole from which the part is derived. 

The narrator explains the concept of deriving knowledge as gathering a handful of sand from a landscape. The landscape is the infinite whole of awareness, where the piles of sand are little parts individuals take to more easily understand. Classical understanding is concerned with the different piles of sand that can be generated and not only how those piles can be sorted, but why they are sorted in specific ways. Romantic understanding is only concerned with the pile before it is sorted.

John and Sylvia want to travel faster, but with his balding tire, the narrator drives even slower and focuses on his ideas about Phaedrus.

At this point, the narrator describes some of Phaedrus’s biographical background. Phaedrus wielded the “knife” expertly, using his analytic knowhow to understand the world around him. He had an unusually high IQ of 170. He was a very reclusive individual, even to his family and close friends. The narrator then recalls a memory, a “fragment” from Phaedrus’s life, where he came into contact with a timber wolf in the woods. Phaedrus made eye contact with the wolf and realized that he was seeing a vision of himself in the wolf. The wolf, then, is an expression of Phaedrus’ being.

The ghost of reason was something Phaedrus always pursued because he thought that if he could study it, he could understand and beat it. If he destroyed it, he could liberate himself from this reason. The narrator then admits that it is time to explain his own relation to Phaedrus. At a party a while back, the narrator was drunk and went to lie down. When he awakened, he found himself in a hospital. He reasons that what he recalls from before waking up is all a dream, and he is told by the staff that he has developed a new personality. As it turns out, Phaedrus was ordered by the court to undergo electroshock therapy. After the treatment, Phaedrus disappeared and the present narrator now inhabits his body. The narrator fears the fact that he can never run from Phaedrus.

John and Sylvia’s anger comes to a head and they confront the narrator for his slowness. As the group rides on, the scenery changes and they find themselves in a meadow. Everyone’s mood has changed and they feel restored.