"The floor to this ramshackle civilization that we have built cannot bear much longer our weight. It was Bowles's genius to suggest the horrors which lie beneath that floor, as fragile, in its way, as the sky that shelters us from a devouring vastness."
- Gore Vidal, "Introduction" to The Collected Stories by Paul Bowles, 1979.
"An Allegory of Man and his Sahara," Tennessee Williams's Review of The Sheltering Sky appeared in the New York Times on December 4, 1949.
1. What is the true reason behind Ports constant travel?
ReplyDelete2. What is the purpose or idea behind the mechanization that comes up throughout the novel?
1. In what ways does civilization affect Port?
ReplyDelete2. In what ways does the desert represent Port as a character?
How the feeling of pioneering of Port influences his thinking of the unknown and the hostile consciousness?
ReplyDeleteHow the desert acts as the role of protagonist to cause characters’ disintegration of ego?
1. Do we have to physically leave civilization in order to escape the disorder and misery that comes from modernization or can we obtain the same serenity by just changing our state of mind?
ReplyDelete2. Do third world countries really have an uncomplicated life style, or do their dilemmas just differ from those of a more civilized and modern country?
1. Both Pym and Port seem to rely on a reversion to primitivism externalized in their geographic travel in order to annhilate their identity, but are they more running from themselves or the self they think society/civilization has forced them into?
ReplyDelete2. Are Pym and Port really pioneering the west if they are seeking destruction rather than creation? Historically colonizing the American west has led to advances in technology and infrastructure.
“Everything looked unfamiliar: the houses, the streets, the cafes, even the formation of the town with regard to the hill” (20)
ReplyDeleteThis quote comes from the paragraph right after Port starts to walk with the Arab, Smail. Port observes that while walking with a native, “no one stared at them.… the Arab beside him made him invisible” (20). These two quotes raise the question, what do you have to do in order to fully experience a different culture and truly see everything in a different way? These quotes seem to suggest that by becoming friends with a native and letting him show you around you are able to see and experience true culture. It is almost like taking a walk in someone else’s shoes. Port can only see things differently because not everyone is staring at him, he is able to relax act as part of the culture. But the only reason everyone is not staring at him is because he is with Smail.
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ReplyDelete"Their European clothes were worn and gray; it would have been hard to tell what the cut of any garment had been originally" (5)
ReplyDeleteThe quote is from the beginning of chapter 2 in which readers do not know Port and Kit yet. The author, Paul Bowles, seems to question what is the true authenticity and the binary system that divides the colonizer and the colonized. The author describes the clothes of European who were colonizers in past history as "worn and gray."The relationship between Europe and other colonies in fact is not black and white but "gray," the mix of both colors. Neither the empire nor the colony can not prevent its own unique culture from being influenced by another. As the culture becomes unable to be totally new or totally old, people like Port are "worn" out, for they do not know where they should exactly belong to. Questioning the existence of exact and perfect place that one ideally fits, the author informs readers that we should keep thinking that has there ever been ideal home for us as Elizabeth Bishop questions us in her "Questions of Travel" poems.
"This is not the first time she had been sent to be officially kind to a sick and stranded female compatriot. About once a year the task fell to her, and she disliked it intensely ... She asked herself what possible attraction to the parched interior of Africa could have for any civilized person."
ReplyDeleteBook 3, The Sky: Chapter 30, p. 308
The end of the book, The Sheltering Sky, is quite shocking. The book ends on a perplexing note when Kit paradoxically finds peace with herself after being captured, abused and even raped. In the above quote, Mrs. Ferry is dumbfounded at the hundreds of "civilized" American travelers like Kit who are more attracted "to the parched interior of Africa" rather than their own lives back at home. Kit would rather live in her devastating Stockholm Syndrome than return to her world of inner misery and, at the same time, comfort with Port. Perhaps the attraction of the parched interior of Africa is that one finds comfort in its uncivilized nature. Everything is so simple. Kit, instead of worrying about the petty problems of the modernized world with Port, only has to care for herself in the African Environment.
Kit and Port are driven by fear and regret and these impulsions drive them into suffering. Port goes to the least hospitable regions of the Sahara because of his fear that he is losing his wife. With Kit, it’s a fear of some doom combined with guilt over her one time infidelity with Tunner that sends her into madness. Although Port loves Kit, he cheat on her with Marhnia and tries with the blind dancer. He longs for something outside of his life but the only happiness he feels is in experiencing adventures with Kit. When Port suspect that Tunner is attempting to sleep with Kit, he goes into panic and sends Tunner on a separate rout to Messad. In his haste to ride himself of Tunner, Port does not even realize that Eric is stealing his passport. When Port got sick, his fear of losing Kit is transformed in to a deep regret. He came to realize that he has always lived for her but he never realized it until his death. Kit is driven by intense paranoia for omens. She feels that every gloomy happening such as a dream, an unpleasant visitor, a chaotic train trip is a sign of approaching disaster, while a pleasant day with no omens is just an attempt by the heavens to throw her of guard. In the beginning of the story, Kit is convinced that Port will one day leave her and decides to give in to Tunner’s seduction and sleep with him. After Port separated Tunner from them, Kit is wracked with guilt. She realizes that port is making an effort to rebuild their marriage but she is no longer interested. Port’s bad treatment drove her to Tunner, and even when Port was in his deathbed declaring his love for her, she didn’t accept it. Only when she is in the sands with Tunner after being locked out of the Sba military hospital can Kit admit her love for Port. By then he is dead, and causes kit to descent into madness in the desert.
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DeletePort as a character is defined by his status as a traveller, which in turn is defined by Ports own distinction between travelers and tourists. He says that travelers belong not to any one place, but to all places that they visit. They are always flowing through their travel, never with a definite plan. As, Port moves deeper into Africa, he becomes even more involved in this idea, “and it occurred to him that a walk through the countryside was a sort of epitome of the passage through life itself. One never took the time to savor the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day was unique and final, that there was never another time.” This fits very neatly in with the idea that travelers absorb culture and themes more than they see the sights, and it is this idea that Port lives by, and it eventually kills him.
Delete"I often have the sensation when I look at it that its a solid thing up there, protecting us from what's behind"(101).
ReplyDeleteThe it Port refers to is the sky. Port's view of the sky, as something protecting us from something terrible, is a reflection of his truly pessimistic view of life. Rather than assuming that the "something" beyond what a human can know is positive, as most people do- reflected by a tendency for religions to feature positive Idols and Gods- Port chooses to assume that what he can not see is horrible, and therefore people need "protection." However, when Kit presses the point and asks him what is behind, he says that it is "nothing... just darkness. absolute night"(101). Port finds fear in the idea of nothingness, which leads us to the reason he travels: Port needs to find meaning for him to feel secure.