Introduction
Paul Bowles in his book, “The Sheltering Sky”, narrates a story about two people who are married, Kit and Port originally from New York, and this couple is in the company of their old friend by the name of Turner. These people travel through the Northern Africa region. The married couple is trying to move away from their lives at their home and also trying to move away from the problems that face them in their marriage. However, the journey of this couple is eventually made deceitful by their lack of knowledge of local culture and the risks that are around them. This book does not state exactly the place where this couple is traveling to but tends to give a clue that they might be moving in the direction of Northern Africa and towards Tangier City. The setting of the novel, “Sheltering Sky”, affects the plot and the characters’ decisions. This paper is going to look at how this is so.
How does the Setting of the novel affect the plot and the characters’ decision
“Sheltering Sky” was set in the year 1947 in North Africa after the Second World War. The setting of the story plays a very important part and this setting matches the way the main characters in the story interact with one another. The way Kit, Tunner, and Port interact with each other seems to be affected by the scorching sun and the unfriendly land directly. This is true especially when it is observed that the misunderstanding that comes about among these characters seems to be created by this environment that is unpleasant. These misunderstandings that come up tend to create a situation whereby each of these characters distances oneself from the other
In this story, despite the unconcealed claims that are presented by Port of him being a traveler and not a tourist, he does not show much concern about what goes on around him, and this trait results in his death that is brought about by typhoid.
He did not think of himself as a tourist; he was a traveler. The difference is partly one of time, he would explain. Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler moves slowly, over periods of years, from one part of the world to the other (6).
This belief that is held by Port undergoes test all through this novel as he interacts with the inhabitants of the land in which he now is. Although Port can be seen to give a reply to his wife in which he says that trying to get into the lives of the people of this land and trying to know what is on their minds is something that has no importance, at the time someone stills his passport, this untrue sense of friendship is soon driven away.
In this story, the biggest twist is that Port’s wife, Kit, who at no point presented any claim of her being a traveler but a tourist instead having ultimate plans to get back home, is a person who is in a true sense able to get used to the culture. She takes up a lover the moment Port dies and comfortably stays among these people. This gives an implication that those people who are just able to talk will at no point be in a position to prove neither to themselves nor to other people that they are praiseworthy of what they long for which is, in the case of Port, an identity Port at some point about identity said that.
I don’t have to justify my existence by any such primitive means. The fact that I breathe is my justification. If humanity doesn’t consider that justification, it can do what it likes to me. I am not going to carry a passport to existence around with me, to prove I have the right to be here! I am here! I’m in the world! But my world is not humanity’s world. It is the world as I see it” (88).
However, when Port loses his passport, first of all, he is upset and says that “ever since I discovered my passport was gone, I have felt only half alive. But it is a depressing thing in a place like this to have no proof of who you are, you know,” (154). Later in time, a conclusion is drawn that; “ it rather suited his fancy to be going off with no proof of his identity to a hidden desert town about which no one could tell him anything,” (163). At the end Port’s identity is lost by him losing his life and thus giving in to nothingness.
Conclusion
The setting of this novel, as it has been seen, affects the plot and the way major characters in the novel make decisions. The environment in which these characters have moved to has influenced the way they make decisions and this environment even causes differences in the way these characters believe.
Works Cited
Bowles Paul, The Sheltering Sky. London: Penguin books, 2006.