Introduction
On the fifth of September 1957, Jack Kerouac opened up The New York Times to read a glowing review of his novel, On the Road. This review praised Kerouac’s illustration of life on the go with Neal Cassady and the gang of Beats. As Gilbert Millstein said, On the Road is: “An authentic work of art, the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as ‘Beat’ and whose
principle avatar he is” (11). Kerouac’s novel celebrated the simple joy of movement and
explored the protagonist’s identity through the journey motif, which is a central theme in North America’s literary canon. This characteristic search for identity on the road has
traditionally been attributed to Americans’ frontier mentality. When the settlers colonised the New World and continued to expand frontiers, rootlessness and movement became engrained within the American experience. The reconnection with mobility is central to On the Road and would continue to be explored in later decades through works such as Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, published in 1974.
As the protagonists in these two works rediscover mobility through their journeys, they reconnect with the lost American identity markers of freedom and adventure. The protagonists expand their borders in search of a flexible space to establish a fulfilling identity, free from the conventions of mainstream culture. When On the Road was published in 1957, American society was flourishing economically. National identity markers included an industrious protestant work ethic and middle class materialism. Yet particularly the younger generation was dissatisfied with the culture they perceived as spiritually empty. The youth were losing faith in the community they saw as abandoning traditional identity markers such as mobility
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and authentic adventure in favour of greedy consumerism and complacency. Within this context of questioning Kerouac and his fellow Beats decided to explore an alternative lifestyle in fifties America. As Morris Dickstein notes: “The Beats conveyed to their young followers a new social spirit, communal, antinomian, and sexually liberated” (86). This countercultural searching continued into the Sixties and Seventies, as America’s national political unrest heightened through the Cold War, Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War. The alternative lifestyle that the Beats had ushered in morphed in the late Sixties into the Hippie Movement, which set the stage for Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
On the Road and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance are recognised within the literary canon as defining cult works, capturing the discontent and confusion of their
generation. However, the recognition for these two novels was not immediate or undisputed. At first, the traditional publishing establishment rejected both Kerouac and Pirsig’s
manuscripts. For both writers, the possibility of these works becoming cultural touchstones was discarded. Even after publication, the critics were far from unanimous in their praise. For example, Truman Capote criticised Kerouac’s free form and improvisational prose as:
“Typing, not writing” (Quoted in Ritchie 1). Such criticism is still seen in contemporary analysis: “The general critical perception of Beat writing, still very much in evidence, as self-absorbed, confessional, and intellectually irresponsible” (Quinn 155).
However, despite rejection and disputes over the literary merits of these works, both novels have been heralded as capturing the zeitgeist. Una Allis underlined the success of Pirsig’s Zen: “Its title causes ripples of excitement wherever it is mentioned, and, it seems, it is mentioned everywhere. It has gripped the imaginations of all strata of society. By any standards it is a success” (260). Instead of simply surviving as dated curiosities, both Zen and
On the Road have continued to resonate in contemporary society. Pirsig and Kerouac’s cult
compulsory reading amongst hippies and backpackers. Furthermore, Zen and On the Road have been embraced by mainstream culture and firmly embedded in the literary canon.
Academically, recognition for the Beats and On the Road has continued to grow. However, as critical interest has heightened, the question has been raised whether academic attention and complex theoretical concepts undermine the Beat Movement’s improvisational nature. Matt Theado is an example of a critic that has questioned this academic attention: “Now the academics are producing complex, theory-driven, and at times jargon cluttered essays whose existence may seem to contradict the original Beat impulses. Does this critical activity undermine the impulsive freedoms upon which Beat literature is founded?” (749).
Such questioning adheres to the first thought, best thought perspective that did indeed play a pivotal role in shaping the Beats’ views on literature. Kerouac described his preference for this style of writing: “If you don’t stick to what you first thought, and the words the thought brought, what’s the sense of bothering with it anyway?” (Quoted in Lott 178). However, even though this may have been Kerouac’s ideal approach towards writing, it disguises the fact that although Kerouac produced a first draft of his autobiography in a three-week burst of
creativity, years of revision took place before On the Road was published. Moreover, Theado’s questioning defines literature with an improvisational, free form background as exempt from criticism. Pirsig’s Zen on the other hand has not attained the place given to Kerouac’s On the Road in academia. Particularly Zen’s philosophical treatise of Quality has been overlooked. It is a lack of recognition Pirsig highlights: “Most academic philosophers ignore it, or badmouth it quietly, and I wondered why that was. I suspect it may have
own personal identity was reconstructed and critiqued by the media through their
interpretations of the book. These interpretations led to the creation of a cult image, which was a distorted media myth defined by singularity and unrepresentative of Kerouac’s true self. This misrepresentation created the celebrity, yet discarded the source. An inferior image was created that lacked the substance or quality of the original. Ronna C. Johnson emphasises this act of simulacrum: “Kerouac’s writing is ‘secret’ because his immense cultural visibility foregrounds only itself […] Kerouac’s reputation relieves us of his work, a fundamental postmodern negation in which his fame disappears its source” (24). The media labelled him the creator and curator of this counterculture and the spokesman of the counter cultural movement. However, this was a role the writer did not envision for himself. As Amburn highlights:
He was stunned by the implied responsibilities of being named the leader of his generation by the Times. In the past, he had dreamed of being a spokesperson for the entire world, but in the intervening years, his alcoholism and publishing failures had filled him with fear and dread; down deep, he knew that he was bored and no longer had anything of value to say. (275)
Singular expectations were created concerning Kerouac’s identity and the other Beat writers, often with negative connotations. Jennie Skerl notes the consequences:
Although influential in many artistic circles and bohemian enclaves and celebrated in the burgeoning youth culture, these writers and many other less famous Beats were condemned and ridiculed by mass media journalists, the then-reigning public
1960s and ’70s, and the Beats were largely excluded from academic discourse. (1)
In fact, Kerouac’s On the Road did not propagate a singular, rebellious identity. Instead, it embraced the freedom of the road as it created an open space to explore different roles within a multi-layered identity.
In comparison, Pirsig’s journey in Zen is an attempt to reconcile his present self with his past identity, represented by the ghostly figure of Phaedrus. Through temporarily leaving the domestic sphere for a life on the road, the protagonist attempts to reconcile his former and present self. It is a reconciliation that provides not only a complex personality, but also a multifaceted journey. As Richard R. Rodino observes: “The three separate ‘journeys’ that Pirsig undertakes, simultaneous epistemological metaphors for different facets of one man’s life, enact the sheer contradictoriness of a single life, its cross-purposes and counter-impulses” (62).
The following chapters will focus on two cult works, namely Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and On the Road. Both works are semi-autobiographies, which incorporate autobiographical elements into a literary form. Clearly, the two protagonists in these works represent the authors. Therefore in chapter three, I refer to the protagonist as Pirsig. However, as Jack Kerouac ascribes the name Sal Paradise to the protagonist in On the
Road, I refer to the protagonist in chapter two as Sal.
plural identity defined by change and transition. Clingman underlines the importance of rejecting singularity when he says: “Any formula ‘You are y’ leads to closures and exclusions in relation to others […] The idea, rather, is to develop a sense of the ‘x-y’ within ourselves, which might connect with the ‘y-x’ in others, or even the ‘y-z’ ” (15). So in the following chapters, Clingman’s multidimensional concept of identity is central to questioning whether the protagonists succeed in establishing a pluralistic identity through their journeys.
Chapter one provides the backbone of my identity investigation in On the Road and Zen. This chapter contextualises each novel by describing the historical and social settings that influenced the authors and their works. I then focus on the line of argument that will be explored in-depth in each subsequent chapter, which is that these two novels expand personal boundaries through the journey motif. This provides a space to explore new roles and shape singular identities into what I call a plural sense of self. I will argue that the protagonists’ create a new set of identity markers, such as jazz, philosophy and Zen, which they utilise in their quest for a satisfactory identity. These new identity models are not a rejection of
conventional culture. They are created during the journey and can ultimately be utilised when the protagonists return to mainstream society.
journeys to escape cultural constraints that impose an identity on them and instead create a new identity that is pluralistic. Identity is not unchangeable or static; instead it can be moulded. For many critics, there is a sense of forgery when the protagonists perform and explore different roles. However, I wish to underline that role playing in these three works plays an inherent part in the growth of awareness that leads to identity change. Identity develops into a multidimensional structure, that subtly interweaves various roles, however transitory, to create a multi-plural sense of self. By doing so, identity is no longer perceived as a conflicted entity.
Chapter One
A Changing American Landscape
When Jack Kerouac left in 1947 on his journey exploring the untamed expanse of the road, fundamental changes were occurring in American society. During WWII, families had been torn apart as young men were uprooted and sent away to fight, while many women found employment in wartime occupations. As the war came to an end and the men returned home, traditional roles were reinstated with the men as providers and women as nurturers. As
Dickstein notes: “The home front was almost as dramatically affected as the men who went to war” (21). Even though American society was changing, traditional roles were reinforced and many families still lived in isolated communities. This homogeneity is underlined by
Dickstein: “Despite the new mobility made possible by the automobile, despite the new mass culture of tabloids, newsreels, films, and radio, despite the gradual migration from towns to cities, many Americans still lived in isolated, relatively homogenous communities” (21). Although tradition was reinstated in the domestic sphere and many communities were homogenous, the post-war society that was taking shape could not simply return to pre-war isolation and confinement.
A new post-war America started to emerge, defined by affluence, materialism and traditional ideas of family and the home. The Fifties were a decade of relative peace and prosperity, in which technological innovations were rapidly appearing and social mobility was increasing, in part due to the GI Bill. The economy flourished and the middle class expanded: “With a surge of economic growth, including a housing boom, a shift to the suburbs, a
Americans were moving into the middle class” (Dickstein 33). Women returned to the role of housewife and the birth rate exploded. Undeniably, it appeared to be a decade of optimism and success. However, discontent started to simmer under the surface. The Cold War began, and nationally many ethnic minorities were still confined to outsider roles. In reality, racial segregation was still in place. Many women felt the return to domesticity repressing after experiencing a relative sense of freedom during the war. Most strikingly, the younger
generation’s discontent rose against this post-war society they deemed to be spiritually empty. They believed that society was placing materialistic values and possessions over mobility, freedom and spiritual enlightenment. Within this culture the stage was set for the publication of On the Road in 1957. Kerouac’s novel developed a cult following and showed the youth a new path, free from mainstream society’s stifling constraints.
As America’s economy continued to flourish, economic concerns that had dominated the Great Depression were no longer relevant. Therefore writers started to investigate the flip side of America’s newfound affluence and materialism. Works as varied as Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch were published in 1947, 1952 and 1959 respectively. These authors explored the post-war representation of identity and often rejected convention and responsibility in favour of individuality and freedom. So instead of emphasising domesticity and security, an
improvisational, free style of living was embraced.
were particularly popular in the counterculture, often seen by users as a tool to deconstruct and expand boundaries in the search for identity: “Mind-altering drugs offered access to a state of mind or way of experiencing in which the individual’s identity came unfixed, as did language and other conceptual structures”(Belgrad 37).
Yet it was also a spiritual quest, a search for meaning in a society perceived as increasingly materialistic. During this search, Eastern religions were often deployed as a means to
complete their spiritual search. Kerouac’s friend John Clellon Holmes recognised the reality of the countercultural quest:
Though they rushed back and forth across the country on the slightest pretext, gathering kicks along the way, their real journey was inward; and if they seemed to trespass most boundaries, legal and moral, it was only in the hope of finding a belief on the other side. (Quoted in Charters xxix)
These outsiders embraced a spontaneous way of life and attempted to follow their own
creative path that they hoped would lead to some form of self-transformation. The Beats were on a quest to challenge constraining identity models and redefine their spiritual sense of selves. Lisa Phillips notes their search:
The drifter central to On the Road would appear countless times over the following decades and influence both film and literature, including Pirsig’s novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Although Pirsig’s inquiry was published fifteen years after On the
Road in a decade with a new set of historical events and cultural heavyweights, it is not
disconnected from Kerouac’s work. On the contrary, the historical and social contexts that influenced these writers and their works were interconnected, through a shared discourse and social history. The youth culture that exploded during the Fifties and which was represented through the Beats created the foundation for new countercultures such as the Hippie
Movement that emphasised the connection between On the Road and Zen. Dickstein highlights this connection:
The radicalism of the 1960s, which once seemed to surge up out of nowhere, reveals its sources in the turbid cross-currents of the post-war years […] they were vital elements that bound together the whole period from 1945 to 1970 and beyond, a creative reaction against the official values of the period. (16)
Central to On the Road and Zen is the quest for identity in a countercultural context. Before the protagonists of On the Road and Zen abandon the safety of convention to embark on their journeys, their identities are characterised by conformity and tradition. In Kerouac’s novel the protagonist is living with his aunt, diligently writing away, while the narrator in Zen has abandoned his former self, represented as the ghostly figure Phaedrus. The narrator has deserted the quest for quality that dominated his thoughts and instead taken on a more conventional role as middle-aged family man, conforming to society’s expectations. Certainly, the electroshock therapy has eradicated the philosophising that once shaped his identity.
Yet when boundaries are broken and physical displacement occurs, the protagonists start to challenge their roles shaped by mainstream society. As conventions are discarded, singular ideas of identity are also slowly rejected. When Sal Paradise departs from his aunt’s home in On the Road, he embraces a new counterculture, in which his various roles include father, lover and labourer. Through these new roles the protagonists are able to create an expansive identity model that is multi-layered.
To achieve this new identity model, diverse activities and subjects such as jazz, Zen, arts and sexual freedom play a role. As the protagonists perform new roles, they explore various activities that assist them in choosing the identity markers that will shape their new identity models. However, critics have argued that although the protagonists may explore new roles through various activities on their journeys, they do not lead to transcendental discoveries or a heightened sense of self. An example of such a critic is Janis. P Stout:
20th century journey is one of uncertain destination or duration, the journey to no
movement as moving purity. (Quoted in Laderman 22)
Yet in all three novels the protagonists do not just explore spiritual paths, they also achieve epiphanies through their new roles. These moments of strong emotion are attained in various ways. For example, Kerouac’s protagonist Sal hopes for “it”, the moment when time stops and the ultimate high is reached through spiritual ecstasy: “Uproars of music and the tenorman had it and everybody knew he had it. […] They were all urging the tenorman to hold it and keep it with cries and wild eyes” (179).
As the protagonists explore different roles a flexible identity model starts to take shape that is all-inclusive and continuously evolving. By embracing new roles the former self is not simply cast off and mainstream society abandoned forever. The protagonists’ journey is not less successful if they do not fully reject conventional culture. This is what critics such as Laderman seem to imply: “Overt concern with rebellion against traditional social norms is consistently undermined, diluted or at least haunted by the very conservative cultural codes the genre so desperately takes flight from” (11). Instead it is a temporary break through which distinctive roles are explored to create pluralism within the protagonists’ sense of self. The break is essentially a rite of passage, through which a more satisfying identity can be attained. As Jacqui Smyth says:
The male tradition of the road is often used as a vehicle for discovering the self and if the journey to adulthood is successful, transcendent moments of self discovery occur: Jack Kerouac’s ‘it’. For a brief time these male wanderers must leave the domestic in order to find the true home of brotherhood; the road
The journey is an essential tool in forming a new language of identity, one in which a multidimensional sense of self is central. Throughout this dissertation, the theoretical framework that will underline this argument is Stephen Clingman’s concept of identity, explored in his work The Grammar of Identity. Clingman stresses that a plural definition of identity is necessary to allow a more satisfying sense of self. This definition of identity creates space for the protagonists to investigate different roles and various aspects of their characters. It also creates a new approach in the analysis of identity, in which a successful identity is portrayed as embracing multiple layers and perceiving identity as a collective of different roles and experiences. Identity in this theory discards inflexible boundaries and is constantly evolving, in contrast to previous forms of compromise. Clingman emphasises such
compromise:
Some have attempted to modulate these principles through versions of
reconciliation: often, naïve celebrations of hybridity or the multicultural. There are also melancholic views of the hybrid as a space of the perpetual ‘in-between’. But it seems we need a new form of negotiation in the face of this complexity: one that will recognise difference without assuming anything like hard and fast
boundaries, which will cater to the reality of differentiation without cutting off the possibility of connection. (6)
According to The Grammar of Identity, identity has been seen too long as a singular entity, resistant to change or multiplicity. People are identified in singular terms, simply according to their religion, nationality, or ethnicity, an enclosed space with strict boundaries and far
Around the world we witness its pathology: raging battles over territory and boundaries; the call to ‘purity’, or religious orthodoxy or fundamentalism; walls which go up and are (inevitably) pulled down; the ritual of sacrifice, whether of self or others, to enforce or reinforce that singularity. (5)
Such categorisation resists change in identity and discards the possibility of identity as continuously evolving. Instead, by approaching identity as a fluid concept with multiple layers, the concept of identity is no longer singular. Yet there is a risk in this approach. As Natter and Jones note: “The mere assertion of diversity within the category can be
problematic, when, for example, instead of rethinking the process of categorization, it merely reinscribes a new system of boundaries around increasingly differentiated subjects” (144). As The Grammar of Identity emphasises, to attain a plural redefinition of identity mobility is invaluable, as it leads to boundary crossings and opportunities to perform new roles. By doing so, boundaries can be crossed, whether personal, physical or cultural. These border crossing experiences can then lead to an identity characterised by diversity, outside a rigorously structured sphere.
The traversing of physical boundaries is clearly seen in these semi-autobiographical
novels: Sal and Pirsig leave the confines of their original locations to explore untraveled roads and experience new surroundings. Their transient lifestyle creates an open space in which they are free from oppressive locations and instead can rethink and discover multiple identities.
Clingman underlines: “Any version of identity, ‘I am x’, where ‘x’ equals the sole and total definition of the ‘I’, is inimical to transition, possibility, change. It prevents combination within the self, and also any combination with others beyond the self” (15). Through their journeys, the protagonists reject such an unsatisfactory sense of self and create a new, multidimensional identity.
For my purpose, Clingman’s identity concept provides a practical navigation tool that acknowledges the multiplicity and complexity of human identity. Critics such as Stout and Laderman argue that these journeys on the road have little direction and do not lead to pluralistic identities. Frequently voiced criticism underlines that the protagonists leave mainstream culture in the hope of self-transformation, yet only participate in temporary role-playing. A disillusioned and disappointed return to dominant culture is inevitable. Yet a multi-dimensional approach towards identity supports the idea that division and conflict within identity can be a positive trait. As Clingman notes: “There is the larger question of how many possibilities of ‘self’ are sacrificed for the sake of singular identities. That tendency to the one or singular is consistent in its orientation: a way of ruling out transition, change, interaction, modulation, morphology, transformation” (5). By deploying Clingman’s theory of
Chapter Two
Identity in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road
When Jack Kerouac’s On the Road was finally published in 1957, Kerouac’s improvisational style influenced by spoken word and jazz was hailed as illustrating the rebellious energy of the youthful counterculture. Fellow Beat William Burroughs highlighted this energy:
After 1957 On the Road sold a trillion Levis and a million espresso coffee machines, and also sent countless kids on the road […] The Beat literary movement came at exactly the right time and said something that millions of nationalities all over the world were waiting to hear. You can’t tell anybody anything he doesn’t know already. The alienation, the restlessness, the
dissatisfaction were already there waiting when Kerouac pointed out the road. (Quoted in Charters xxvii)
Yet despite On the Road’s popularity, the overwhelming consensus amongst the literary establishment and leading intellectuals was that Kerouac and his fellow Beats were of little literary importance. Undeniably, the majority of critics were unimpressed by the Beats. Paul O’Neil describes the consensus: “Talkers, loafers, passive little con men […] writers who cannot write, painters who cannot paint” (119). Consequently, the Beats received little
all about form and restraint, ignored them, and the New York intellectuals, whose ethic was all about complexity and responsibility, attacked them” (2). However, when texts such as On the Road were rediscovered, their literary merits were recognised: “Dozens of books on the Beats, including a steadily increasing number of biographies, were published in the 1990s and gave expression to the academic awareness of the Beats as a group of writers firmly rooted in the American literary tradition” (Van der Bent 2). Nevertheless, these investigations often concluded that Sal’s journey outside mainstream culture did not lead to a truly successful development of identity.
However, with Clingman’s identity model emphasising a successful identity as fluid and pluralistic, Sal’s journey into the new emerging counterculture is seen as providing a space where the protagonist undergoes a successful change of identity. This new concept of identity does not reject the protagonist’s cultural history or exclude him from mainstream society. Instead it is an inclusive model that is fluid and defined by inclusion of apparent opposites. Sal does test boundaries and searches outside mainstream structures for an appropriate definition of his own identity. However, he never completely rejects his social and cultural identity markers. This is evident through Sal’s references to his Americanness and his embrace of the traditional American frontier mentality through a life on the road.
Improvisation is the traditional American trait that has been lost; a characteristic Sal hopes to rediscover, by reshaping his identity through appropriating different roles in a flexible
structure. The road is the destination yet simultaneously the stage where his performance takes place.
protagonist adheres to the building blocks of post-war America that mainstream society is advocating. However, it is a society that has left him confused and disconnected, as he feels that: “Everything was dead” (Kerouac 3). As Sal stands on the eve of his own journey, his sense of self is close to absent and he doesn’t even recognise himself: “I wasn’t scared I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost” (Kerouac 15). When Sal meets Dean Moriarty, the youthful personification of the untamed west, Sal starts to revere him, as he adheres to the type of person that the protagonist worships:
I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing. (Kerouac 7)
Dean is introduced as such a mad, untamed character, straight out of reform school. His youthful enthusiasm and unpredictable behaviour in the pursuit of kicks provides a foil to Sal’s own structured personality and cautious behaviour. Undeniably, Dean is represented as an untrustworthy person that may end up abandoning the protagonist.
essential for the rebels to: “Divorce oneself from society, to exist without roots, to set out on that unchartered journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self” (II). In contrast, Sal does not completely break all ties from society or reject his roots. Yet if Sal is to rediscover himself, flexible structures are necessary to accommodate the search for a new theory of identity, which is defined by pluralism, freedom and improvisation.
So with alter ego Dean Moriarty as his catalyst, a man who represents to Sal “holy con man” and “saint”, Sal leaves New York and starts his journey West by travelling towards Denver, the birthplace of Dean. Sal envisions the birthplace of his saint as the Promised Land, a holy site where he will mysteriously arrive as a prophet after his first adventures on the road. “I pictured myself in a Denver bar that night, with all the gang, and in their eyes I would be strange and ragged and like the Prophet who has walked across the land to bring the dark
Word, and the only Word I had was ‘Wow!’ (Kerouac 33).However, once Sal has arrived in
Denver, he continues in the role of observer and has little to tell his fellow Beats. Sal’s journey has just begun and he has not acquired the necessary tools to share spiritual
enlightenment as a prophet, or truly escaped the passiveness of his role as bystander. “‘It isn’t that I won’t tell,’ I protested. ‘I just don’t know what you’re both driving at or trying to get at. I know it’s too much for anybody.’ […] ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ I said and laughed. I had on Carlo’s hat. I pulled it down over my eyes. ‘I want to sleep,’ I said”’ (Kerouac 44). Clearly Sal’s understanding of his own identity is near absent as he envisions an artificial role for himself as a spiritual leader and refuses to engage in dialogue with his fellow Beats.
as San Francisco and LA, in the hope they will provide his much sought identity development. However, as the protagonist finally arrives in San Francisco, he is disillusioned because he struggles to return to convention and explore roles within an everyday, mainstream context. Whereas Sal enjoys his detached life on the road, disappointment and feelings of loss overshadow his thoughts when he attempts to settle into more permanent roles in the urban landscape: “The whole mad thing, the ragged promised land, the fantastic end of America […] red brick, dirty, characters drifting by, trolleys grating in the hopeless dawn, the whorey smell of a big city” (Kerouac 74). It is in this urban jungle that Sal distrusts ‘the other’
represented by the Mexican Terry. Yet when the protagonist leaves the urban confinement for the countryside and immerses himself in the Mexican community, his faith in his quest is restored and he embraces various roles as father, lover and field hand. “A man of the earth, precisely as I had dreamed I would be, in Paterson […]. They thought I was a Mexican, of course; and in a way I am” (Kerouac 88). Evidently place and identity are closely linked, as the untamed expanse of the road provides the physical and symbolical space Sal requires for his development.
Appropriations through role-playing are temporary, as permanency is repeatedly discarded on the identity quest in favour of mobility and the freedom it entails. When Sal decides to leave the Mexican community behind to continue his journey, he underlines the transient, mobile nature of his search, a search that rejects stability in favour of mobility. By favouring mobility instead of stable roles, the protagonist rebels against confining identity expectations. Clingman underlines the importance of the journey: “This is the journey as syntactic, the syntactic as journey, accepting displacement from identities and locations that enclose us, and it can be taken without necessarily knowing the destination” (165). Yet rejecting enclosing identities is by no means a simple rejection of all previous identity markers. Through
desire to remain connected to his traditional identity markers, as symbolised through the rug his aunt has made for him: “She worked on a great rag rug woven of all the clothes in my family for years, which was now finished and spread on my bedroom floor, as complex and as rich as the passage of time itself” (Kerouac 97). This demonstrates the identity that Kerouac’s protagonist is slowly shaping is a redefinition; a fluid sense of self that unites the riches of tradition with a new countercultural sense of self.
Sal’s desire for an identity applicable for both mainstream and countercultural contexts is clear when after the frantic and exhilarating jumping from coast to coast, it is over a year before the protagonist returns to the road. Sal’s growing maturity is evident through the awareness that a successful identity is valid in variable contexts. Therefore he is hesitant to blindly follow Dean and leave mainstream life behind again: “‘I want to marry a girl,’ I told them, ‘so I can rest my soul with her till we both get old. This can’t go on all the time – all this franticness and jumping around. We’ve got to go someplace, find something’” (Kerouac 220). However, Sal’s identity quest is not yet complete, as he realises himself: “I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion” (Kerouac 113). So Sal must resolve this
confusion by continuing his development and returning to the freedom of the countercultural space. As they speed off across the American landscape, Sal reconnects with the road. This is the space where new identities and roles can be explored unstilted by mainstream culture. It is a masculine place where women are subjected to passive roles and the men’s behaviour is defined by extreme actions deemed unacceptable in mainstream society, such as excessive drinking, stealing cars or taking drugs. Even clothing is temporarily rejected whilst on the highway in an ultimate act of rebellion against social norms:
caught a glimpse of a golden beauty sitting naked with two naked men: you could see them swerve a moment as they vanished in our rear-view window. (Kerouac 146)
As Sal participates in these acts of rebellion, extreme by mainstream standards, he voices his rejection of conservative social norms. By doing so, he is liberated from society’s
confining constraints and the journey becomes not only the path towards identity development but also a social critique. However, even in such rebellious acts, Sal never completely
disregards his connections outside the counterculture, as his foil Dean does. When they arrive at the Mexican ruins, Sal conforms to the extent of putting on his overcoat, symbolising a relationship with mainstream culture that is completely absent for Dean:
We got out of the car to examine an old Indian ruin. Dean did so stark naked. Marylou and I put on our overcoats. We wandered among the old stones, hooting and howling. Certain tourists caught sight of Dean naked in the plain but they could not believe their eyes and wobbled on. (Kerouac 146)
Whereas Dean is completely disconnected from mainstream morals and expectations, Sal’s behaviour indicates that he wants to shape a fluid identity that can function in various environments.
The second day everything came to me, EVERYTHING I’d ever done or known or read or heard of or conjectured came back to me and rearranged itself in my mind in a brand-new logical way […] these green tea visions lasted until the third day. I had understood everything by then, my whole life was decided. (Kerouac 167)
Dean creates his ‘beatific’ vision of identity through these markers and particularly jazz becomes an essential part of his new identity model. The jazz performances take on a symbolic meaning due to their improvisational progression mirroring the protagonist’s free-formed development. For both Sal and Dean, the musicians are the high priests, conjuring up the rhythms and exploring the paths that lead them to “IT”, a state of ecstasy that they wish to achieve in their own lives: “Something would come of it yet. There’s always more, a little further – it never ends […] They found it, they lost, they wrestled for it, they found it again, they laughed, they moaned – and Dean sweated at the table and told them to go, go, go” (Kerouac 220).
If Sal’s developing identity model is analysed within a singular, homogenous framework, it is indeed unsuccessful. However, when a successful identity is defined as a continuously changing patchwork of roles and ideas, a new picture emerges. Because then strict
characterisations are discarded and opposites are unified: Sal is not a Buddhist, rejecting his Catholic roots. Deshae E. Lott underlines that we should not:
Separate his spirituality into an either/or dichotomy. Just as we accept
Sal is not solely an American, forgetting his French-Canadian identity, or a rootless hipster, roaming across the American landscape. Instead, these identity markers are all facets of himself that he attempts to coordinate and integrate within the countercultural framework, an experiment that is easier within a liberating context. Sal sees that American society is cut off from its traditional frontier way of life: “I wanted to sit on the muddy bank and dig the Mississippi River; instead of that I had to look at it with my nose against a wire fence. When you start separating the people from their rivers what have you got? (Kerouac 134). Therefore Sal has to keep on moving along the road to regain lost characteristics such as freedom and adventure and structure a sense of self that is satisfactory in various contexts. Clearly, the journey motif provides the essential structuring device for the novel’s identity quest.
As Sal’s journey brings him back to Denver alone, he attempts to heighten his cross-cultural understanding through trying to connect with the other. After previously embracing a role in the Mexican farming community, Sal wishes he could immerse himself in another
community:
Wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night. […] I wished I were a Denver Mexican, or even a poor overworked Jap, anything but what I was so drearily, a ‘white man’ disillusioned. All my life I’d had white ambitions, that was why I’d abandoned a good woman like Terry in the San Joaquin Valley. (Kerouac 164)
misrepresentation is rooted in Sal’s loneliness and discontent with his own cultural context. These feelings can be linked to the author’s own identification as an outsider in America due to his French-Canadian background. Ellis Amburn underlines Kerouac’s role as an outsider: “Kerouac was one of many gifted outsiders – Jews, blacks, southern women, homosexuals, children of working-class immigrants – who laid siege to American literature after the war (41). However, despite Sal’s identification with the other and the criticism that has seen this part of the novel as racist, it has little to do with race. Instead it is a recognition of
marginality. As Clingman emphasises, “all those asymmetrically marginalized and excluded people of whatever origins whose routes cross in ways that shift from the complex and complementary to the jagged, tangential and disjunctive” (77). By attempting to communicate with ‘the other’, the protagonist continues his navigation towards a new identity. “This is not the correspondence of equation, but the correspondence of
communication – the transmission of meaning across difference, distance, time. As the transmission of meaning it is also a form of navigation in a transnational setting” (Clingman 72).
So the navigation through various communities and countercultural settings is the route that Sal takes to reconnect with the patchwork of American culture. When the protagonist leaves Denver and reunites with the revered Dean in San Francisco, he realises that Dean needs him, a reversal of roles that reveals Sal’s identity development: “I was glad I had come, he needed me now” (Kerouac 170). As they speed off together on the American roads, Sal even stands up against “the holy man,” an event that exposes Sal’s growing confidence and awareness of his sense of self, whether positive or negative:
don’t know what to do with these things. I hold things in my hand like pieces of crap and don’t know where to put it down. Let’s forget it. (Kerouac 194)
This event also foreshadows that once Sal’s identity development is complete, he may have to leave Dean behind. Sal and Dean are connected through the movement that they both crave, yet once Sal’s identity quest ends, the return to mainstream society and the domestic sphere is inevitable and even desirable. Sal is continuously aware that he can never fully escape mainstream culture. There is, as Raymond Steiner emphasises: “No exit from the system” (94). However, Steiner presumes that these young rebels want to remove themselves from society. Yet the protagonist does not attempt to exit society. Throughout the novel, Sal remains an “American angel” or “American saint” reconnecting with the traditional American national identity that has been lost. Robert Holten observes this reconnection:
The search for a new and authentic space is closely related to the recurring American impulse to round an identity on the bedrock of the naked self, free of compromising cultural accretions, an Adamic desire for an experience of freedom, integrity, and authenticity generally unavailable within conventional culture. (17)
So despite the frantic and exhilarating jumping from coast to coast, Sal is in a transitory stage and wishes to ultimately return to mainstream society. This is a multidimensional approach that Clingman also emphasises:
function of, and permits, navigation. (16)
Sal’s desire to navigate through different arenas, both mainstream and countercultural, provides him with a stage where he can explore different roles and experience various
environments. These roles play a critical part in Sal’s development from a singular to a plural identity. In comparison, Dean’s continuous self-destructing cycle of creating and abandoning families – even the ultimate abandonment of Sal in the final pages of the novel – only leads him to the singular role of exile.
The reversal of roles continues as Sal’s identity awareness heightens in comparison to Dean’s increasing madness. While Dean and Sal drive a borrowed Cadillac back to Chicago Dean’s irresponsible behaviour intensifies and his erratic driving puts them both in danger. So when Dean finally crashes the Cadillac, Sal cannot hide his anger towards his friend now identified as the angel of terror: “I was so mad and disgusted with Dean” (Kerouac 206). Additionally, whereas Dean wants Sal to pretend that the Cadillac is his and embrace the role of a rich man, Sal refuses such role-playing. Undeniably, throughout the novel Sal
appropriates various roles. However, these roles are authentic and play a pivotal role in shaping his identity. Sal’s growing maturity rejects role-playing simply for kicks, a stance Dean disagrees with:
He wanted me to go along with him in the fiction that I owned the Cadillac, that I was a very rich man and that he was my friend and chauffeur. It made no
Towards the end of the protagonist’s life on the road, it becomes clear that Sal’s imminent return to mainstream society is not only a natural progression after identity development on the road, it is also, ironically, essential to maintain identity markers of freedom and adventure. At the beginning of Kerouac’s novel, Sal had to leave his structured life in New York to escape convention and achieve freedom. Yet as Sal’s development nears completion, he must return to society or the road will become conventional and spontaneity will slowly disappear. “I realized I was beginning to cross and re-cross towns in America as though I were a
travelling salesman – raggedy travelings, bad stock, rotten beans in the bottom of my bag of tricks, nobody buying” (Kerouac 223).
Therefore to maintain his identity change, Sal must avoid such repetition and utilise his newly acquired cultural baggage to find meaning in his original setting. Certainly, with his newly shaped identity, Sal can integrate characteristics such as Zen and jazz into a more mainstream existence, creating his own plural path: “What’s your road, man? – holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It’s an anywhere road for anybody
anyhow. Where body how?” (Kerouac 229).
In the final pages of On the Road, the protagonist has exhausted all the possibilities that the American road holds. So to complete his identity development, he traverses the final physical boundary that remains, namely, the border with Mexico. When Sal and Dean
So Sal continues to plunge the battered Ford into the dense Mexican jungle, slowly inching towards the Mexican mountains. As they ascend the mountainous roads, Sal discovers that in this wild, untamed landscape awaits the paradise he has been dreaming of:
We had reached the approaches of the last plateau. Now the sun was golden, the air keen blue, and the desert with its occasional rivers a riot of sandy, hot space and sudden Biblical tree shade […] Now the shepherds appeared, dressed as in first times, in long flowing robes, the women carrying golden bundles of flax, the men staves […] ‘Man, man,’ I yelled to Dean, ‘wake up and see the shepherds, wake up and see the golden world that Jesus came from, with your own eyes you can tell! (Kerouac 273)
However, as they finally arrive back in the urban landscape of Mexico City and Sal falls into a delirious state, Dean completes his abandonment of Sal by leaving him behind as he returns to America. This rejection initiates Sal’s return to mainstream culture that will complete his development, a maturity and awareness of identity that Dean is unable to attain.
With the final chapter of his journey finished, Sal returns home, a successful homecoming assisted through his newly shaped identity. In contrast, as Dean returns to New York to find Sal, it becomes clear that Dean is even more unintelligible and detached from reality:
He couldn’t talk any more. He hopped and laughed, he stuttered and fluttered his hands and said, ‘Ah – ah – you must listen to hear.’ We listened, all ears. But he forgot what he wanted to say. ‘Really listen – ahem. Look, dear Sal – sweet Laura –
To continue his own successful return to mainstream life, Sal realises that he must break the ties with Dean, or his newly shaped identity will not succeed:
So Dean couldn’t ride uptown with us and the only thing I could do was sit in the back of the Cadillac and wave at him. […] Dean, ragged in a motheaten overcoat he bought specially for the freezing temperatures of the East, walked off alone, and the last I saw of him he rounded the corner of Seventh Avenue, eyes on the street ahead, and bent to it again. (Kerouac 280)
To conclude, in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, the protagonist develops a multidimensional identity through his journey in the Beat counterculture. At the start of his journey, Sal is disillusioned and disappointed with his role in American society and sees the untamed American landscape as the space to create a new identity. So by leaving mainstream culture for a life on the road, the protagonist hopes to attain the freedom and independence to redefine his identity. As boundaries are expanded and broken down through physical displacement, Sal not only explores new identity markers such as jazz, Zen, arts and drugs, he also reconnects with the traditional American mentality characterised by freedom and adventure.
So as the journey develops, a new expansive model takes shape in which identity is no longer represented as singular. Instead, the journey provides the path through which an identity is created that is fluid and continuously changing. With this new sense of self, Sal is able to return to mainstream society without Dean and appropriate a healthy role in a
Chapter Three
Identity in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
In the opening page of Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the protagonist is already speeding along on his motorcycle towards a redefinition of identity. With his son Chris along for the ride, Pirsig starts weaving his way through the back roads of America to reach the West Coast. The stability of everyday life in the domestic sphere is temporarily sacrificed in favour of mobility, as Pirsig hopes that once he is on the road expanding boundaries, he will have the freedom to reflect on his identity. Since identity is intricately tied to place he must leave for a life outside mainstream society where he will have the space to develop and navigate towards a redefinition of identity. It is a withdrawal from everyday life that is essential for the protagonist to redefine his sense of self, as within conventional culture he is expected to conform to society’s expectations and play the roles of domesticated family man and writer of technical manuals. Pirsig has adapted to society, yet these roles are in sharp contrast to Pirsig’s former identity that he refers to as Phaedrus. His name clearly refers to Plato’s Phaedrus, who pursued the art of rhetoric in his dialogue with Socrates. Pirsig used to be a brilliant intellectual, characterised by intellectual reasoning and the lofty pursuit of philosophical ideas. However, his former self was eradicated after electroshock therapy following a mental breakdown. The disconnection between Pirsig and Phaedrus is so severe that he describes his former and present self as two separate entities in conflict with each other:
acquaintances. He sees that the narrator doesn’t want to be honest anymore, just an accepted member of the community, bowing and accommodating his way through the rest of his years. (Pirsig xiv)
So the journey on the road becomes the means to achieve well being and reconnect with his former self.
Zen’s physical journey is shaped through Pirsig’s motorcycle trip with his son Chris, which provides a framework for the protagonist’s quest into his past. Yet Pirsig’s internal conflict and his development towards a redefinition of identity is the journey that I wish to investigate in the following pages. In this chapter I will argue that the protagonist’s
representation of identity evolves from a singular and restricted entity, rejecting his former self, into an integrated identity. For critics such as Daniel Levinson, Pirsig’s
semi-autobiography is characterised by disconnection:
Pirsig does not organize a long trail of cogently reasoned arguments concluding with precise conceptual formulation. The ideas he exposits have been expressed more cogently by others […] Quite often the narrator admits he might not have Phaedrus' arguments exactly right - and he is not sure if Phaedrus himself was correct. After all, he was plunging toward a psychotic break. The book is telling a story, and the rhetorical license he takes is successful as a literary ploy but renders the philosophical speculation suspect […] The book's philosophy often degenerates into overly general homilies, similar to everything, agreeing with nothing. (269)
However, such criticism overlooks Zen’s resolve to integrate dualisms into both
is focused on his Quality theory; a theory in which he advocates resolving the divide between a romantic and technological outlook on life. Pirsig’s theory is all-inclusive, an approach that he is at first unable to integrate into his relationship with his son or his own identity. Yet by breaking down spatial boundaries through the journey, Pirsig acquires the space to redefine his identity. Parallel to Sal’s journey in On the Road, Pirsig embraces the road as the location to create his new identity model. This liberating space adheres to Clingman’s idea that there is no external perimeter: “There are unending chains of connection, but no outside from which to locate self, meaning, or place […] Our navigations have to take place within and not beyond our horizons in a world without end” (176). By embracing mobility and exploring the untamed frontier of the American landscape on his motorcycle, Pirsig’s identity develops into a multidimensional form, inclusive and not fixed in time but instead, constantly evolving. Clearly, society attempted to silence Phaedrus by locking him up in a psychiatric ward and submitting him to electroshock therapy so that he would fit into mainstream culture:
Destroyed by order of the court, enforced by the transmissions of high-voltage alternating current through the lobes of his brain […] a whole personality had been liquidated without a trace in a technologically faultless act that has defined our relationship ever since. I have never met him. Never will. (Pirsig 77)
location. Since identity is intricately linked to location, change is easier in a fluid space where the protagonist can freely explore a reformulation of identity. In this space, boundaries are no longer solid. Clingman highlights the danger of solid borders: “Human boundaries, therefore, when they become ‘hard’ boundaries of enclosure and exclusion, militate against this
transitive notion. Asserting singularities of ownership, identity, location, they refuse any connective syntax of difference” (23).
The freedom of the natural landscape provides the ideal space for the protagonist’s identity reconciliation. However, this is not an exit from society. As Pirsig foreshadows in his
introduction to Zen: “Above all, he does not want to be isolated from you – the reader – or from society around him. He maintains a careful position within the normal boundaries of his surrounding society because he has seen what has happened to Phaedrus who did not” (xiii). Parallel to Sal in On the Road, Pirsig wishes to maintain a sense of belonging towards the community that he will ultimately return to. Yet if Pirsig is to return to society with a unified identity he must temporarily remove himself from his self-contained location and depart on his journey.
As the protagonist is on an identity quest that will ultimately lead him back to mainstream culture, he does not alienate himself from society by embarking on a solo motorcycle journey. Instead, Pirsig departs on his identity quest with his son and friends John and Sylvia
obscured by his father’s back, there is little interaction on this journey. The motorcycle helmets act as a barrier for conversation, making it difficult to instigate the interaction that is necessary for father and son to re-establish their relationship that has fallen apart after Pirsig’s mental breakdown. Even simple dialogue is fraught with difficulties when on the bike: “I whack Chris’s knee and point to it. ‘What!’ he hollers. ‘Blackbird!’ He says something I don’t hear. ‘What?’ I holler back” (Pirsig 11-12). Such miscommunication and broken dialogue reveals the necessity for Pirsig’s identity quest, which once completed, will enable him to successfully interact with his son again.
As the protagonist and his fellow travellers slowly approach the Dakotas, they become increasingly immersed in the natural wild landscape, away from domesticity and confining structures. Through the space of the road and the freedom of expanding structures, the protagonist’s suppressed memories slowly start to return. It is a menacing awakening emphasised by the storm:
A flash and Ka-wham! Of thunder, one right on top of the other. That shook me, and Chris has got his head against my back now. A few warning drops of rain…at this speed they are like needles. A second flash – WHAM and everything brilliant … and then in the brilliance of the next flash that farmhouse…that windmill… oh, my God, he’s been here! Throttle off… this is his road. (Pirsig 36)
It is the ghost of Phaedrus, an apparition that the narrator has suppressed since his psychiatric treatment and that he has been conditioned by mainstream society to see as an unhealthy entity.
also necessary so that he can successfully fulfil his role as father and stabilise Chris’
psychological state, which is in the early stages of mental illness. The necessity of this role is emphasised when the travellers camp that evening. As Chris misbehaves and storms off, Pirsig shares a poem by Goethe with his friends. In this poem a father does not believe his son can see a ghost, which leads to the death of the child. This rejection is paralleled in Pirsig’s behaviour towards Chris, as until Pirsig reunites with the ghost of Phaedrus, he will be unable to assist his son: “But that’s another land and another time,” I say. “Here life is the end and ghosts have no meaning. I believe that” (Pirsig 68). Even though the protagonist refuses to acknowledge the importance of ghosts, the ghost of Phaedrus starts to appear with increasing frequency:
And in the fog there appears an intimation of a figure. It disappears when I look at it directly, but then reappears in the corner of my vision when I turn my glance. I am about to say something, to call to it, to recognize it, but then do not, knowing that to recognize it by any gesture or action is to give it a reality which it must not have. But it is a figure I recognize even though I do not let on. It is Phaedrus. Evil spirit. Insane. (Pirsig 69)
For the protagonist, Quality is seen as an indefinable concept that is achieved through integrating a romantic and classical outlook on life. Pirsig criticises mainstream society, which he sees as divided into a classic culture and romantic culture, detached from each other: “Two worlds growingly alienated and hateful toward each other with everyone wondering if it will always be this way, a house divided against itself” (Pirsig 75).
However, despite exploring this theory and advocating a solution for the disconnection in society, the protagonist continues to evade facing the divide within his own identity. As the journey continues, Pirsig’s openness towards the theoretical concepts that Phaedrus developed is in sharp contrast with his fear of the man himself. Instead of attempting to reconnect with Phaedrus he sees him as the other and hopes to “bury him – forever” (Pirsig 72). However, he is yet unable to fulfil the roles that are essential to his present identity development, for example the role of father to Chris. When Chris returns to the camp and attempts to engage his father in conversation, he is rebuffed; a rejection that the protagonist justifies by his belief that he is unaware how he can help his son. Clearly the protagonist, despite his growing theoretical clarity, is not yet able to successfully engage with his son and take on the parenting role that can restore Chris’ mental health. Until the protagonist can replace the division
between his former and present self with a carefully reconstructed identity, he is unable to break through the dichotomy that is hindering his development and the relationship with his son.
A key element of creativity is replacement of ‘either/or’ with ‘both/and’ thinking. Instead of taking literally the simplistic ‘logical’ partition of a subject into
‘either’ the first ‘or’ the second of two categories, creative breakthroughs are often achieved by perceiving that in reality the subject consists of ‘both’ the first ‘and’ the second parts. (317)
Yet as the ghostly Phaedrus appears with increasing frequency, the protagonist slowly starts to explore his former self. Pirsig starts his exploration with the fragmented memories that remain of his previous identity. The protagonist describes Phaedrus as in pursuit of a redefinition of his identity, one that was not defined by the Quality divisions so clear in his own culture. This pursuit had slowly led him towards his mental breakdown: “He wanted to free himself from his own image. He wanted to destroy it because the ghost was what he was and he wanted to be free from the bondage of his own identity. In a strange way, this freedom was achieved” (Pirsig 89).
Pirsig embraces Eastern philosophy, an approach parallel with On the Road. Similar to Sal, Pirsig sees Eastern philosophy and religion as embodying the harmony that has been lost in Western culture and which they wish to achieve in their own identities. Pirsig even sees technology as a manifestation of Buddha, an outlook in sharp contrast with the Sutherlands, who pursue a singular, romantic way of life. Evidently the protagonist’s quest for a
redefinition of identity is closely linked to his desire for spiritual meaning in modern society, a culture that has discarded many of its traditional identity markers in favour of consumerism and material wealth. However, it is a connection that he cannot yet fully apply in his own personal life. The protagonist must continue his motorcycle trip, so that as the American landscape unfolds and his boundaries continue to expand, he can continue his emotional growth.
Nonetheless, while the protagonist proceeds with his journey, he is oblivious of the urgency for a redefinition of identity. Despite his increasing awareness of the division between
romantic and classical thought, a division he is determined to resolve, he continues to ignore the disparity of unification in his own life. As Pirsig continues to rebuff his son’s attempts at conversation and speaks less and less as he develops his theory, it is not until the last
moments that the narrator acknowledges his vulnerability and sees a car heading straight towards his motorcycle:
I’m braking, honking, flashing. Christ Almighty, he panics and heads for our shoulder! I hold steady to the edge of the road. Here he COMES! At the last
This demonstrates that Pirsig is so deep in thought and out of touch with the community he intended to remain embedded in that he is completely disconnected from his surroundings and unaware of the danger ahead.
As the journey continues to the places the protagonist used to inhabit, a shift occurs in Pirsig’s approach to his past. Whereas up till now Phaedrus has been haunting the protagonist through flashbacks and ghostly premonitions, Pirsig now actively starts seeking out his former identity to initiate the reconciliation process. As he reunites with former friends such as De Weese, the protagonist emphasises that he has been impersonating and role playing since his identity break, to cover up for the disappearance of his former self:
I don’t know how well DeWeese knew him, and what memories he’ll expect me to share. I’ve gone through this before with others and have usually been able to gloss over awkward moments. The reward each time has been an expansion of knowledge about Phaedrus that has greatly aided further impersonation, and which over the years has supplied the bulk of information I’ve been presenting here. (Pirsig 140)
“There was someone, a person who lived here once, who was creatively on fire with a set of ideas no one had ever heard of before, but then something unexplained and wrong happened and DeWeese doesn’t know how or why and neither do I” (Pirsig 159). This
acknowledgement of Phaedrus’ positive traits reveals Pirsig’s growing awareness of Phaedrus and a willingness to reconcile his former and present self.
After perceiving an ideal identity in DeWeese, the narrator continues his own identity development by embarking on a mountain climb with his son. As they steadily progress on their journey up the mountain, the trail disappears and they find themselves in unchartered territory, a terrain symbolic of the narrator’s unmapped identity quest. Despite his admiration for DeWeese’s identity, the protagonist continues with his abstract thoughts and remote behaviour towards Chris. There is little communication between Pirsig and his son, and the dialogue that they do engage in is sparse. Indeed, the difficult relationship does not seem to be resolving, with the narrator clearly disappointed in his young son: “When an ego-climber has an image of himself to protect he naturally lies to protect this image. But it’s disgusting to see and I’m ashamed of myself for letting this happen. […] There’s still disgust and resentment in my voice which he hears and is shamed by” (Pirsig 219). The barrier between the protagonist and his son even extends into Pirsig’s dreams, in which he is separated from his son by a glass door, and instead of attempting to engage with his son, he turns and walks away. This
Clearly, the detour into the mountains does not re-establish the relationship between the protagonist and his son. In contrast, as they return to their motorcycle journey the protagonist feels as if he is travelling alone. With the Sutherlands back home and Pirsig’s disconnection towards his son, the narrator feels disengaged from any form of community, similar to Sal’s feelings of detachment in Kerouac’s novel. Yet whereas Sal latches onto Dean in On the
Road, Zen’s protagonist attempts to escape his detachment and loneliness through theoretical
investigations: “Everything is so different now without the Sutherlands – so lonely. If you’ll excuse me I’ll just talk Chautauqua now, until the loneliness goes away” (Pirsig 263). Until Pirsig resolves the divided identity perception he has of himself, he is unable to redefine identity as a multidimensional, constantly evolving concept. Ironically, the unified
philosophical ideas that Phaedrus developed become increasingly clear. This foreshadows the possibility of the protagonist integrating unity into his own identity perception.
Pirsig hesitantly starts to reconnect with Phaedrus instead of discarding him as a harmful entity and begins the process of integrating Phaedrus into his present identity: “I’ve noticed since this trip has started and particularly since Bozeman that these fragments seem less and less a part of his memory and more and more a part of mine. I’m not sure what that means… I think … I just don’t know” (Pirsig 302). However, even though Pirsig is yet unsure how to integrate his former and present identity, the act of thinking about his former self is already shifting his perception towards a new identity. As Clingman emphasises: “Is this self exactly the same self, we might ask, identical beginning and end in every respect? Is the self that exists not changed by the act of thinking? Perhaps the process of thinking (not to mention engaging with the world) alters the inner lineaments of the self” (16).
consumer culture and obsession with material wealth. The protagonist finds in the untamed expanse of the American landscape a connection to nature and way of life that he admires:
The conversation’s pace intrigues me. It isn’t intended to go anywhere, just fill the time of day. I haven’t heard steady slow-paced conversation like that since the thirties when my grandfather and great-grandfather and uncles and great-uncles used to talk like that: on and on and on with no point or purpose other than to fill time, like the rocking of a chair. (319)
Once Pirsig and Chris finally reach the West Coast and re-enter the impersonal urban landscape, the protagonist rejects the role that everyone else seems to be performing in the materialistic mainstream culture: “The funeral procession! The one everybody’s in, this hyped-up, fuck-you, supermodern, ego style of life that thinks it owns this country. We’ve been out of it for so long I’d forgotten all about it” (Pirsig 326). However, to succeed in shaping a new identity that can continue to evolve in mainstream culture, the protagonist must develop an identity that is adaptable to both the urban and natural surroundings.
As the end of the protagonist’s journey approaches, the urgency to resolve his identity crisis intensifies. The journey has revitalised Phaedrus and if the narrator is going to succeed in his return to society and reconnect with Chris, he must now integrate his former and present self: “He’s waking up. A mind divided against itself … me … I’m the evil figure in the
