We'll Catch Up

For a great amount of time while I was doing this reading, I felt slightly incompetent. I could not seem to grasp the philosophical component of the novel. I knew for a fact that it was going to be insightful with regard to values since the cover says exactly that. While I was reading the beginning all I could get out of it was the narrator’s slightly egocentric tone and self-praising attitude.

Aside form failing to see any philosophical component I was starting to really hate the narrator. I could not find anything that he said agreeable. However, when he mentioned the knife that cuts the world into pieces I began to like him a little bit. I agree with the belief that any division (obviously not a literal one) only leads to more divisions. There is not a set way to define and categorize the world. Any cut will only lead to more cuts- not more, but rather an infinite amount of cuts. The world is so conditional and so greatly about perspective that it cannot be divided fairly.

I know it could be a stretch, but the philosophical part of the novel that I think I have begun to see comes out when the narrator tells John that he will go slowly so that John and Sylvia can catch up. I know that he literally meant he would not drive too quickly on the road but I think that John is behind him literally and figuratively. John is not only behind him on the road but also in thought. John seems to have a mentality and a set of ideals that are much more behind than those of the narrator. When I say this, I am not referring to the narrator’s views on maintaining motorcycles; I am referring to the narrator’s thoughts on what rationale is.

Regardless of the fact that the narrator gets many, if not all, of his thoughts from Phaedrus he has come to recognize that rationale is actually what drives people to irrationality. He speculates that Phaedrus became so irrational because of his pursuit for rationality. I myself do not know if I believe that something like rationality exists, at least not a common rationality. Each person has their own set of morals, who’s to say one set of morals is more rational than any other? Again, when the narrator said he was waiting for John to catch up he meant it literally but, I think that unknowingly he was waiting for John to catch up on a mental level. I think he awaited John’s recognition of his stunted mental growth.

-Talia Akerman