“…the bottom of that ocean out there…” (Zane Mandell)

I can honestly say that I really didn’t see the ending coming. I definitely should have given all the time one has to think during the boring Chautauquas. It is true that while the narrator has time to reflect on the thoughts and ideas of Phaedrus that the reader will trail off on their own and think or their past thoughts and idea. We reflect. We are always reflecting in some way or another. We are trying to find ourselves, trying to find that which cannot be defined but makes us the way that we are. You don’t really know what it is, but “You can sort of tell these things” (531).

Phaedrus and the narrator are one. The duality of this is present all along, interwoven into the Chautauquas on quality, the Greeks, stuckness, and more. But quality, that which the narrator and his past self, Phaedrus, are seeking is always there, right in front of them it is just one of those things that you know, you can sense it, you can feel it, but it is indescribable. The indescribable is approached time and again throughout the journey that the narrator takes, trying to find himself. But he is unable to accept it for so long until he sees it in the eyes of his son. Chris shows him the light for everything that he has thought about throughout the novel. The time he spends thinking has allowed Chris stew until the whole issue boils to a head and then reveals itself. It is the narrator focus on what he is looking for that creates the situation where he is able to find that which he is looking for, and it is right beside him the whole time. It is this underlying apparentness that strikes me as a reader at the end. The question then becomes not of how the narrator could not have seen it all along, but how I could not have seen it all along.

How deep is to the bottom of the ocean out there? That is the question we all ask ourselves, trying to find that which cannot be found. It doesn’t matter how deep the ocean is or whether there is a distinguishable depth at all. All that matters is that some things are how they are and we must simply accept it. The bottom is somewhere, even if I can never see or know of it. You just have to, in the words of Chris, “let it be” (522).