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Brave New World
The perfect thing to pack for a trip to Africa"'I want it neat.' She slipped into a backless gown of pale blue satin and went to make up in the mirror that hung on the back of the door. He decided that she should be humored; in any case it amused him to watch her building her pathetic little fortress of Western culture in the middle of the wilderness'" (pg 156).
I really loved The Sheltering Sky. After the first chapter I put down my highlighter and pencil and decided to enjoy it without the pain of focusing too hard on "annotating." It's a good novel to sit back with and let soak in. When I came to this quote, though, I got up to rummage through my drawer because I knew I needed to highlight it, underline it, and put a big asterisk off to the side of the page: this quote says so much about the issue of West vs. East.
Until this point, Kit and Port seemed admirably open to the adventure of traveling, as opposed to the voyeurism of being a tourist. Maybe I just haven't been out of the country enough, but the fact that Port would follow a strange man to a Turkish camp in the middle of the night, that they would rent bicycles and ride through the desert without a map or a destination, that they always knew nothing of the next African city along the journey other than what they had heard from locals of the current one, that they made due with whatever lodgings (i.e. a "hotel" that constantly smelled of a latrine) and transportation (i.e. the back of a fruit truck) they could all suggested that Kit and Port were much braver than I could ever be in a foreign country and much less of a spoiled American. In one especially memorable moment, Kit finds bits of rabbit in her soup still lined with fur, and aside from being a little disgusted, doesn't really make too big of a deal out of it. Why, then, does Port come back to the hotel one night to find her laying out all of her thoroughly Western possessions - her "fortress of Western culture" - as if to reassure herself that she still exists as a civilized human being, despite being caught in the middle of a very uncivilized Africa? Maybe this was a visceral reaction to Africa; maybe anyone conditioned to a more sheltered (no pun intended) way of life would reach a point where the different culture they were immersed in stopped being interesting and began seeming cruel. Perhaps this was where Kit realized that she and her fellow travelers were much more interested in the desert than it was interested in them. It made me wonder if, after having been brought up in the West, can we ever truly assimilate? Will we always, no matter how hard we try not to, subconsciously reject the rawness and differences of the East?
Poor Kitty
I definitely agree with you that The Sheltering Sky was a great read, and it’s funny because I decided to just sit back and enjoy this book too. But that idea of a “pathetic little fortress” struck a cord with me too. As to the reasons why Kit decides to just lay out all her belongings and totally bring the West back into the East, I think there’s a deeper psychological motive behind it all. I think, as they venture deeper into the unknown and vast Sahara, and farther from Western civilization, they begin to lose parts of themselves, parts of their familiar home. They make the journey from tourist to traveler in their journey into the heart of the desert. But this clearly comes with its sacrifices. I think Kit’s character slowly breaks down tragically as the novel progresses. In the middle of it all she turns to the only thing that bears a shred of her old life, her familiar and comfortable home—her valise and clothes of the West. Kit has trouble letting go, and her lipstick, mirror, and perfume are a testament to that even to the end. Kit can’t surrender herself to the mystery (and nothingness) of the desert like Port can, and thus in that scene she explores her buried regret. I think Kit’s character is really tragic in this novel, for the reader watches the breakdown of her character as she gets swallowed and engulfed by the vastness of the desert. I guess this is a factor that de-romanticizes the art of travel and the mystery of the Orient, giving the novel its not-so-happily-ever-after spin.