Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The narrator dreams that he is standing in a room with white walls and that a glass door separates him from his two sons and wife. It is a recurring dream, and every time, Chris has a pained smile on his face. He asks his father to open the door, but the narrator always turns and walks away. The narrator admits that the dream signifies Chris’ fear of being unable to relate to him. When they awake the next morning, Chris tells the narrator that he had been talking in his sleep about the trip and the hike. He had been talking about meeting Chris on the mountaintop and that they would be able to see everything from there.

In another recollection, the English faculty asked Phaedrus whether Quality is a subjective or objective phenomenon. Phaedrus was smart enough to know that he could not answer hastily. The question was meant to put an end to all of his speculation by positing two impossible outcomes, a logical dilemma. If he said Quality was objective, he would admit that it must be subject to scientific rules of identification to be a truth.