ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the role of bicycles in the novel, both as symbolic attributes and as structural devices in the narrative. It examines O'Brien's use of the bicycle in The Third Policeman in three stages, from the concrete fields of sports and mechanics to its metaphysical dimension in the narrative. The love of the Irish for their bicycle is not devoid of an obsessive quality, considering how ubiquitous the image of the bicycle is throughout twentieth-century Irish literature, in novels, short stories and poetry alike. It tells of a nameless first-person narrator obsessed with a universal scientist-philosopher, De Selby, whose theories, strongly affect the hero's daily actions, and as a consequence, the narrative itself. It also compellingly stages the contradictions of Irish imagination in its quest for identity, as it finds itself caught between the advent of technical modernity and the crippling conservatism of Catholic nationalism.
