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A "Shelterin" Sky?
French Postar: French Tourism Poster“The Sheltering Sky”—why did Paul Bowles call his piece this?
A title can have more than one meaning; it can suggest an idea to the reader, or ask its welcomed guest a question whose answer may reveal itself in the pages that follow; sometimes the avenue of query branches off into separate discourses—in the end, the reader determines his own coarse, how far he will travel, and when he is satisfied.
Characters have no such power of will that can contest with the pen of the authors—their journey is his to dictate, their actions fated by his choice and moral code. The Sun Also Rises saw figurative representations of post-war disillusionment retrace their humanity back to its most primitive roots in an attempt to discover the rules and purpose of modern life; the blooming of the American age in the resumption of the modern era finds expatriates, emboldened by the new world order, delving farther into the empty spaces of the map to solve personal problems. Port needs a definition to give his life meaning. Kit needs a reason to believe that there’s something worth sticking around for, something to replace that ominous dread which hangs over her sense and messages her in omens. As a couple they need to sort out if what they have left is love or a passport. Tunner just needs something to do.
Why do these people go to the Desert and travel into beauty, filth, and plague? They have no objective, no purpose to hold them except the human relationships that are strained in this strange environment. Away from America they all cheat on each other. None of them are remotely honest. They don’t have a religion like the wise man on the rock; there are no gods that they would admit to anyway. They say they’re not tourists—the word appears to have a disgusting connotation of a moocher with the intellectual respectability of a one-night-stand. I agree. They’re travelers, searching for another way to live and another motivation to live for. New settings, new philosophy, new scenery to distract from the problems, which follow the crew everywhere. But travel hasn’t solved anything; it seems to be the lesson more so than ever that there’s a billion ways to live but only one way out of life, that there’s nothing to cling to that can stop time from taking you away. Still restlessly they journey until they search for some higher form of answer or contentment.
I’m only two –thirds way through the book; I don’t know the ending, what lies in store for the characters, if they reach any kind of absolution…There is one clue though: the title. It infers the smallness of all the events surrounding the seemingly important lives of these characters, and solidifies perhaps one of the most eternal themes for all of us who trudge through our own existential Sahara:
When a man travels, he leaves the things that give him the illusion of identity; a man without identity is a traveler, and all any traveler has is a sheltering sky.
Title
I also found the title particularly interesting, especially its use at certain times throughout the novel. The first time it is used Port sits in a desolate area and stares up at the sky thinking that it seems impenetrable. The title is also mentioned as Port is dying on p. 229 when the narrator says, "A black star appears, a point of darkness in the night sky's clarity. Point of darkness and gateway to repose. Reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose." Indeed the sheltering sky is penetrable. However, as we see in the novel's culmination once broken through things seem to devolve. When Kit is being brought back to civilization in a plane she comments that, "Before her eyes was the violent blue sky--- nothing else...Like a great overpowering sound it destroyed everything in her mind, paralyzed her. Someone once had said to her that the sky hides the night behind it, shelters the person beneath from the horror that lies above." The sky, now broken through, takes on this violent erasing image for her to the point where she does not even remember it was Port who said those words. Since Port's death and the inevitable "breaking" of the sheltering sky Kit's life has been so traumatic that she essentially loses herself somewhere along the way. I found this interesting because earlier in the novel she seemed to think that perhaps she didn't need Port at all. Now that he is gone, she finds that she was truly dependent on him. In fact, he was her shelter from evil, whether it be what lies beyond the atmosphere or the people all around her
I liked the bit about them
I liked the bit about them lacking any shade of honesty in their travels. I found the whole thing a little strange, especially in Kit. She seemed so conflicted and tormented by her lack of honesty; she claimed to hate deceit, and indeed felt terribly guilty after cheating on Port, and yet she would not own up to it to clear her conscious. At the same time, she felt guilty about deceiving Tunner, though she disliked him, and was constantly trying to decide whether to be true this time to Tunner or to Port. Port seemed not to care at all for honesty or fidelity; rather, he practiced infidelity every chance he got, without any signs of remorse. Tunner betrayed Port and possibly used Kit, in a sense, and he too felt no remorse. All three of them are a little too human in all the wrong ways to be admirable.