Identity Theme Analysis

Early in the text, the narrator reveals that he underwent electro-convulsive therapy to treat mental illness. This treatment altered the narrator so deeply that he regards his post-therapy self as an entirely different person. The narrator strictly separates his present-day self from his past identity and refers to the latter in the third person, using the name Phaedrus. His is “a mind divided against itself.”

The narrator’s conflicted identity complicates his relationship to his son. Chris is too young to fully grasp his father’s mental turmoil, but he does notice a personality change once the narrator returns from treatment. When Chris laments his father’s altered persona, the narrator observes, “I can imitate the father he’s supposed to have, but subconsciously, at the Quality level, he sees through it and knows his real father isn’t here.” The narrator feels obligated to replicate a role he fulfilled when he was a completely different person, even though such a replication is impossible. He sees this paternal discontinuity as one of the root causes of his son’s anxieties.

This divided identity is especially discordant when considered in the book’s larger context. Through his Chautauquas, the narrator strives to resolve the problems that arise when the world is intellectualized in terms of opposing dualities. However, all the while, the narrator maintains such a strict division between his past self and his present persona that he refuses to consider them the same person. Finally, at the end of the book, the narrator acknowledges this dilemma: “the biggest duality of all, the duality between me and [Phaedrus], remains unfaced.” Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance details Phaedrus’s attempts to provide a unifying philosophical framework that explains the universe in all of its physical, scientific, and subjective manifestations. While this new system is a fascinating one, the narrator’s psychological disunity is a constant reminder that Phaedrus’s philosophical system has not yet been perfectly actualized and put into practice.