Abstract
Paul Bowles's The Sheltering Sky (1949) narrates the story of Port Moresby and his wife Kit, a married couple originally from New York who travel to the North African desert accompanied by their friend Tunner. Parting from a highly American commercial civilization, the Moresbys' journey, initially an attempt to resolve their marital difficulties is later made fraught by the travelers' ignorance of dangers that surround them. The desert is a real and imaginary geographical place which takes part in the process of identity of its pursuers. The desert in this novel can be realized as either the actual desert or the inner desert of human psyche. The indeterminate, expansive environment of the desert testifies the Moresby's love and bound to each other. The desert thus gives scopes not only to the impressive solitary landscape for travellers, but also to the deepest desire hidden in human's psyche.
Highlights
Travel, often regarded as a productive movement inclusive of departure, arrival and multiple possibilities of events and experiences, takes various forms
There is no equivalence between two travellers; their representations of psyche are unique and particular
Travellers’ desire motivates them to travel, which later becomes a repetitious scrutiny of individual desire
Summary
Often regarded as a productive movement inclusive of departure, arrival and multiple possibilities of events and experiences, takes various forms. He treats his company with Port and Kit as a training of his personality since both of them are of different backgrounds: “Doubtless the principal reason why he had been so eager to accompany Port and Kit on this trip was that with them as with no one else he felt a definite resistance to his unceasing attempts at moral domination, at which he was forced, when with them, to work much harder; unconsciously he was giving his personality the exercise it required” [6] He has a purpose for this journey: to seduce Kit. Unable to comprehend Kit and Port’s apparent acquiescence to the situation, Tunner continues his efforts and hopes “someday to have intimate relations he considered Kit the most unlikely, the most difficult” [6]. Such differentiation is evident in the setting of the extensive Sahara desert area where the characters’ interrelations and perceptions of space would be respectively reformulated and reshuffled
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