Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Quality
Identity
Rationality and Irrationality
Duality
Zen
Summary
Analysis
The narrator moves away from “stuckness” to discuss a problem of a different nature: the romantic aversion to technology produced by classic reason. Technology and its materials, the narrator says, are not inherently bad. What can be objectionable about technology is when humans are not invested in its creation, when it is not regarded as an art form of its own. For technology to have Quality, its creator must rebel against the 20th-century mindset that prevents a craftsman from identifying with his work.
This Chautauqua explains John and Sylvia’s motivations for refusing to learn motorcycle maintenance. They aim to avoid the Quality-less technology that has become a defining characteristic of the 20th century. However, simply negating this technology, as John and Sylvia attempt to do, is not the solution to the predicament. Rather, one must attempt to imbue technology with Quality once again.
Themes
The rational tediousness of technology is superficially remedied by stylization—a strategy the narrator finds ineffective. Instead of veneering classic understanding with romantic esthetics, the two modes of thought should be more deeply connected. The narrator stresses that “peace of mind” is necessary to achieve this synthesis, in which one understands what is good as well as the reasons why it is good.
Quality presents itself as a means of reconciling the classic and romantic viewpoints not just philosophically, but practically, as well. However, this practical reconciliation does require the appropriate philosophical mindset: “peace of mind.”
Themes
“Peace of mind” requires a calmness of body, of mind, and of values, which requires one to perform one’s work without desire. In order to perform Quality work, one must not let the subject/object duality cloud one’s work, and instead enter a state of “just doing.” When conducted properly, the act of motorcycle maintenance prevents one from separating one’s self from one’s surroundings. This reformed individual consciousness is, to the narrator, the starting point for more sweeping improvements to life worldwide.
Achieving “peace of mind” is no simple task. It requires unifying the physical, intellectual, and preintellectual principles advocated by Phaedrus’s philosophy of Quality. When achieved, this “peace of mind” allows not just for exemplary motorcycle maintenance, but also sets the stage for more sweeping improvements to the contemporary human psyche.
Themes
The narrator and Chris camp out for the night and prepare to head into Oregon the next day. The narrator reflects that his son often feels both familiar and unfamiliar to him, and wonders whether genuine interpersonal connections are ever possible.
Even as the narrator espouses a method of connecting with one’s environment, he still finds himself unable to connect with his son. This dilemma indicates that he has yet to fully incorporate the principles of Quality into his own life.
Themes
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