Bad Travelers

The Essential ThingsThe novel The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan begins with a quotation on traveling by Cesare Pavese, a 20th century Italian poet and author. It goes, ”Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things-air, sleep, dreams, the sun, the sky-all things tending toward the eternal or what we imagine of it.” This statement sums up the experience of Colin and Mary on their vacation. In the end, they find travel to be unbearably brutal, but I think that they lose control of everything along the way, including the “essential things”. They control no aspect of their lives and do not seem to even care.

Mary and Colin seem to go on this trip to escape from their daily lives. They do not seem particularly interested in doing anything, nor do they appear to enjoy themselves. They simply let time pass them by and wait until the end of their trip. They probably took the vacation hoping to find a way to have fun, but they can’t seem to find the energy to do anything. The reason for the trip is never explicitly stated, but I got the feeling that they went on it because they either wanted to fix their troubled relationship (just like Kit and Port in The Sheltering Sky) or because they had nothing better to do.

If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that they both suffer from depression. They do nothing but eat, sleep, and smoke, and have lost interest in the things they used to enjoy (like each other’s company). Even though they are comfortable with one another, they begin the story essentially ignoring each other. Once they meet Robert, they begin to change. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell if they were coming out of their funk or just digging themselves in deeper. They begin, to put it politely, to enjoy one another’s company once more, but only enough to interact physically. They do not seem to reconnect much emotionally. They do nothing but stay in bed all day. This is one failing of the modern traveler.

I think far too many travelers today find travel exhausting and dull. These people travel simply for the sake of doing something new or for bragging rights. Mostly, however, these people follow the example demonstrated by our protagonists and just lay around a bunch. I have found, upon occasion, that traveling can be tiring and not entirely pleasurable. Sometimes all I want to do is hide under my covers for the first couple of days, but I try my hardest not to. I so rarely get the opportunity to travel that I try to take advantage of my time abroad while I can. I suppose it is in this way that I maintain my control over the “essential things”. I take advantage of the air, sun, and sky while controlling my sleep patterns and allowing myself a little time to dream.

Pravese suggests that in travel one must “trust strangers”. This is absolutely true. Whenever we travel, we are entrusting our safety to our pilot, our valuables to the hotel staff, and our selves to those around us. Travel is remarkably dangerous and we do unconsciously trust strangers with more than we realize. It is not something I think most people are comfortable with, and for this reason some prefer to simply stay at home. Too bad Mary and Colin didn’t just stay home.

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