Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance Analysis
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In Robert Pirsig’s novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the narrator travels with his son across the United States on a motorcycle while giving personal insights into many prominent and elusive philosophies of life, occasionally providing an anecdote from his experience with motorcycle maintenance. For most of the novel, the narrator describes these philosophies by illustrating the life of a man named Phaedrus, the previous personality of the narrator that was suppressed by electroshock therapy after a nervous mental breakdown several years prior. The narrator breaks up his monologue into a series of lectures called “Chautauquas,” many of which deal with Phaedrus’s obsessive goal to rationalize the philosophical concept of Quality.…show more content… The path that the train follows is the track of Quality, and guiding the train at the very front is romantic Quality. The narrator defines this romantic reality as “the cutting edge of experience (Pirsig 289),” and here, at the absolute front of the train, there is no subjectivity or objectivity, only value. He says there is an element of mystery and confusion about where the train is headed, but the train has the ability to show the future and the past. The narrator continues explaining that in life, it is easy for one to feel “stuck” because of the societal barrier between rational thought, and creativity and imagination. Quality has the ability to break this barrier. He says, “When you’re really stuck, it is Quality that tell you where you ought to go (Pirsig 288),” meaning Quality will show us the answers we seek in order to become “unstuck,” the good and the bad of the world, but we must be willing to let the romantic Quality guide us into the unknown. He continues, saying that things like scientific method and rationality are good, but they don’t give you a sense of direction, which is why people feel stuck. The narrator refers to instances that cause one to lose sight of Quality as “gumption traps (Pirsig 312).” These come in the form of “setbacks,” where one is thrown off the track of Quality by external circumstances, or “hang-ups,” which occur when one is thrown off the Quality track by inner conditions. He also explains how it is easy to drift off the track of Quality, either by boredom or our own egos. “Boredom means you’re off the Quality track, you’re not seeing things freshly…(Pirsig 323).” Similarly, “Your ego isolates you from the Quality reality (Pirsig 321).” Phaedrus experienced this when he felt pressured to define Quality by the other professors at the University, and because he did not