Cyrus Guccione
Johnston
English 1B
10 February 2013
Pirsig’s Analytic Knife
In the sixth chapter of Pirsig’s book, he talks about an “analytic knife.” He speaks of it as a tool or an “…intellectual scalpel so swift and so sharp you sometimes don’t see it moving”( Pirsig 75). By using the examples given by Pirsig himself, what I would like make clear is the meaning of this knife and how it is used.
From the start, we can see that this knife is a tool that is used to separate things. More specifically used to separate groups of things from different groups. Pirisg uses a motorcycle as well as a pile of sand as props to discuss the purpose of the knife. As for a motorcycle, Pirsig states that the knife can split the motorcycle into parts: “A motorcycle may be divided for purposes of classical rational analysis by means of its component assemblies and by means if its functions”(73). So in explaining the uses and operations of a motorcycle, the knife is used to categorize.
However, when Pirsig delves into his example of sand piles in the ensuing chapter, it becomes more complicated. So to break it down, lets talk about the pile of sand first. Symbolically, this sand is what we consider consciousness. It is, in fact, what we are aware of at any given moment. The knife, which we have discussed, is a tool of splitting anything into groups. So when Pirsig says in chapter 7, “This is the knife. We divide the sand into parts. This and that. Here and there.”(79), that knife is splitting our consciousness into many, many piles.
What the knife does not do is split the conscious world from the unconscious world. I myself get tripped up from this opposing concept because it is so alike to the actual explanation. The knife does not differentiate between what we are aware of and what we are not, it only splits our awareness into groups. “The discrimination is the division