Chapters 11 and 12 reaction.

The narrator seems to know much more about Phaedrus than I had expected him to. I am not so sure anymore that the narrator and Phaedrus are the same person. Phaedrus seems to be a generation older than the narrator, possibly his father’s age. This has become evident to me as the narrator states that Phaedrus took part in the Korean War which ended in 1952 and this story, from what I can tell takes place in the late sixties or early seventies. I have noted that as the characters get closer and closer to the mountains, the images and stories of Phaedrus get clearer and clearer. For example, the narrator shares that Phaedrus used the Red Lodge route to access backpacking areas in the mountains. We also get information about Phaedrus’ army career, we get information about some kind of turning loin he had while in Korea and a confusion between Phaedrus and the Koreans which he described in his letters. These pieces of the puzzle have completely ruled out the possibility that Phaedrus is an idea or an actual ghost, we are now certain that Phaedrus is an actual person. What is still unclear is his relationship to the narrator and his actual name. 

Apart from the information about Phaedrus, the mountains seem to bring about a sense of calm and happiness to all of the characters. This relates closely to the lecture we recently had on Kafka. In this lecture we talked about the importance of escaping the structure and rigid nature of society and going off to the mountains to be free and happy. It seems that the characters in this novel truly needed a break because all four of their moods became much better once they arrived in the mountains. Now in chapter 12, we get information about the type of relationship the narrator had with Phaedrus, the narrator seems to think that Phaedrus and DeWeese are superior to him and he becomes somewhat anxious in their presence. The last impression I got of Phaedrus after the first twelve chapters is that he is an enlightened hippie.