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A Quest for Identity
While reading The Sheltering Sky, I found myself drawing comparisons to Hemingway’s The Sun also Rises, as both novels “dramatize[] a frightening quest for the buried self” that comes from an initial sense of feeling placeless. In both cases, the main characters, Port and Jake, struggle with disillusionment after the war and set off to travel, hoping to find some sort of meaning in another country. Bowles explains these motives for travel by defining a traveler as he who “rejects elements [of civilization] he finds not to his liking,” which includes war, “one facet of the mechanized age he [Port] wanted to forget” (6). Port, then, travels to find a replacement civilization, one untainted by the horrors of the mechanized age and one that might help him uncover his true self. But as Port and Kit dive further and further into the interior, the Sahara, Port begins to lose his identity rather than find it, which Bowles expresses through the symbol of the passport.
After Port discovers his passport is missing, he claims he feels “only half alive,” as “it’s a very depressing thing in a place like this to have no proof of who you are, you know” (154). Even though the passport is just an identification document, it is the one tangible piece of identity that Port has, something that confirms his existence. In Bou Noura, where there are few travelers and no Americans, it is easy to feel lost, as there is nothing to remind him of home. But the passport reminds him of America, a place that is part of his identity whether or not he wants to acknowledge it. It serves a similar purpose to Kit’s valise, which she unpacks to build a “pathetic little fortress of Western culture in the middle of the wilderness;” both act as comforts and reassurances of their homes (156).
To illustrate the importance of such objects, Bowles uses the passport as a turning point in the novel. When the lieutenant informs Port that Tunner will be arriving with his passport, Port decides to flee, moving further into the Sahara and escaping from anything connected to his home and identity—the passport and Tunner. Shortly after he makes this decision, however, Port falls ill and never recovers, perhaps indicating the necessity of maintaining a connection to one’s home and initial self. One, it seems, can never truly escape. By attempting, Port only kills himself, losing rather than gaining his identity in the process. As Kit remarks when Port is close to death, “he’s stopped being human” (208). He has just become a sick body without the normal functions of a human—just a hollow shell like Kurtz in The Heart of Darkness. Africa has not nourished and sustained Port as he hoped, providing him with some sort of meaning and purpose, but has depleted and devoured him, leaving Port with nothing.
Port is flimsy
I think it is really interesting to look at the passport as a symbol of Port's journey. I had never thought of that either. Another way it could relate which you sort of pointed out but not directly is that one minute he cared about it so much and the next minute he didn't care about it at all. He has no real stable goals or desires, he is constantly changing his mind, especially concerning Kit. At some points he seems to be reaching out to her and wanting to rekindle their flame and other times he engages in activities which he knows are destructive to their bond (whether it is simply not acknowledging her own attempts to appease him, or going out and sleeping with the whore). It is funny how an object, thing or person can be so important to us one second and so unimportant the next.
What Does He Really Want?
I hadn't considered the passport symbolism quite so deeply. In fact, as your blog points out, the passport situation portrays Port's quest for self: he travels to escape his American identity, but as he loses it, he loses himself. It is almost as if Port wants to torture himself at times (when he gets almost intentionally gets lost at the beginning of the novel, etc.). His own narcissism and masochism negatively affect his relationship with Kit, the one thing he supposedly cares about.
Finally, how ironic that Port, who is basically a moral criminal, should define himself by such a legal document and grasp for any sense - even false - of security during the darkest time of his life.