Modes of Tourist Experience in The Sun Also Rises and The Sheltering Sky

Both Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Bowle’s The Sheltering Sky illustrate the different modes of travel discussed in Erik Cohen’s “A Phenomenology of Tourist Experiences” and deal with the issues Cohen asserts these different modes can present.

In The Sun Also Rises the main protagonist, Jake, is an expatriate who has “lost touch with the soil,” (Hemingway 120). He spends much of his time drinking although he does also work as a writer. Jake can be seen as an experiential or experimental tourist. In Paris, as the role of an expatriate, he would be said to align with the experimental form of travel. He is “lacking clearly defined priorities and ultimate commitments,” (Cohen 189). He does not conform to the centre of the American society, which at the time had prohibition and his centre has been lost because of World War I, which undermined all of his beliefs in morality and justice; he is now “endowed with a ‘decentralized personality,’” (Cohen 189). The problem addressed by both Hemingway and Cohen about the expatriates of the Lost Generation and the experimental tourist is that both can “easily become an ‘eternal seeker,’” (Cohen 195).

Jake can also be said to be an experiential traveler – he travels to Spain because he is “unable to lead an authentic life at home” (Cohen 187) and he attempts to “recapture meaning by a vicarious, essentially aesthetic, experience of the authenticity of the life of others,” (Cohen 187). His aficion – or passion for bullfights – is Jake’s search for meaning through the experience of the bullfighters. Through Pedro Romero’s authentic bullfighting ("Romero never made any contortions, always it was straight and pure and natural in line…The others twisted themselves like corkscrews ... to give a faked look of danger" (167-68)), Jake gets the aesthetic experience that the experiential tourist seeks. Jake is also drawn to this Spanish masochism because he views this as the authentic masculinity that he is lacking. Through being an aficionado, Jake thus experiences this authenticity, although only aesthetically. This of course does not give Jake’s life any more meaning, as the “authenticity of others may reassure and uplift the tourist, but does not provide a new meaning and guidance to his life,” (Cohen 188).

Brett’s character can’t commit to anything and doesn’t seem to be sure of what she wants. She is an experimental tourist who is “in search of an in search of,” (Cohen 189). “The traveler in the ‘experimental mode engages in that authentic life, but refuses fully to commit himself to it; rather, he samples and compares the different alternatives, hoping eventually to discover on which will suit his particular needs and desires,” (Cohen 189). This is shown in her ambivalence towards men; she wanders from relationship to relationship just as she wanders from place to place. In the end when she leaves Pedro, she seems to “lose the faculty of making choices,” (Cohen 189) and to be unable to commit herself to one thing. The character of Brett again addressed the issue of the experiment tourist as an ‘eternal seeker.’

Robert Cohn’s reasons for travelling are seen as less authentic in The Sun Also Rises. He is still holds on to pre-war values of chivalry and honor but has felt alienated in society because of he was Jewish; especially when he attended Princeton. Cohn could at first be categorized as a recreational tourist since he doesn’t seem to be at first interested in the idea of authenticity – he wants to have an adventure like that of a book which was mostly fictionalized. Cohn is looked down upon by the other characters because he reminds the characters of the insecurity the feel about their search for the authentic that is missing in their lives and their absent value system. The characters in The Sun Also Rises represent the Lost Generation in many ways. The Lost Generation was full of ‘eternal seekers.’ The “inauthenticity of life in [their] own society, coupled with the ‘…reminder...of reality and authenticity elsewhere,’” (Cohen 188) fueled much of the Lost Generation to become expatriates in Europe. Travelers of the Lost Generation mostly fell into the experiential or experimental modes of tourism. Authenticity then must have been important for the Lost Generation who was trying to find meaning in the postwar world. The problem of commitment also seems to be a theme in The Sun Also Rises, as none of the characters seem to be able to stay grounded.

In The Sheltering Sky, Bowles presents us with Port and Kit. Both begin as experimental and experiential tourists – they consider themselves travelers not tourists. To them the difference was that “the traveler belonging no more to one place than the next, moves slowly, over periods of years,” as opposed to the tourist who has a specific time to get back home. This idea that Port and Kit don’t belong to any one place is typical of Cohen’s experimental tourist. Port and Kit definitely are “the more serious of the drifters, who, endowed with a decentralized personality’ and lacking clearly defined priorities and ultimate commitments, are pre-disposed to try out alternative life-ways in their quest for meaning,” (Cohen 189). They’re an example of “extreme cases (in which) the search itself may become a way of life, and the traveler an ‘eternal seeker’,” (Cohen 189). Because experimental tourism is concerned with an authenticity that cannot be found in the traveler’s own society, Port and Kit are also concerned with the authenticity of their experience – they travel further and further into the desert in search of something that hasn’t been westernized. Like the Lost Generation, Port and Kit feel their lives have lost meaning after the war (this time World War II).

In contrast to Port and Kit, is their companion, Tunner. Tunner considers himself a tourist and would probably fit in the category of a recreational traveler. Tunner experiences culture shock as the three travel further into the desert which is described by Cohen as when “the tourist, adhering to the ‘spirtual centre’ of his own society or culture, prefers its lifeways and though-patterns, and feels threatened and incommoded when presented with the different, unfamiliar ones of the host country,” (Cohen 197). Kit and Port, instead take on a more existential mode view – “they experience a ‘shock’ upon arrival at their ‘elected’ external centre…from the fact that this ‘centre’ is too much like home and hence does not correspond to their idealized image,” (Cohen 197). This shock pushes Port and Kit further into the desert to get away from any western ideals.

When Port dies he seems to go from being an experimental to an existential tourist. He becomes “fully committed to an ‘elective’ spiritual centre,” (Cohen 190). Although instead of committing to any society or culture, he commits to death or the abyss. Kit also turns into an existential tourist, in the more conventional way. After Port dies, she attaches herself to the spiritual centre of the natives of the desert. Cohen says of existential tourists that are “most deeply committed to a new ‘spiritual’ centre may attach themselves permanently to it and start a new life there by ‘submitting’ themselves completely to the culture or society based on an orientation to that centre: they will desire to ‘go native,” (Cohen 190). Kit does this by walking into the desert and submitting to the man on the camel. By doing these things she becomes “savage.” The questions that the existential tourist brings up – “is the ‘true’ life at the centre indeed commensurable to his high hope and expectations? Does it enable the traveler to live authentically, to achieve self-realization?” (Cohen 195) are not directly answered in The Sheltering Sky but Kit’s running away from Miss Ferry (and society) could lead one to guess that the “elective spiritual centre” is better than one’s native culture and ideals.