The Road Less Traveled

The Road Less Traveled As I read through Bowles The Sheltering Sky, I kept returning to the idea of whether where we travel actually matters, or whether it is just the idea of “being on the move” that we yearn for. In the previous novel we read, The Sun Also Rises, Jake makes the statement early on that all places are like a series of moving pictures, and there is very little difference or importance of where you end up, and then in this novel, Kit essentially makes the same claim in chapter II, as she says, “The people of each country get more like the people of every other country. They have no charm, no beauty, no ideals, no culture--nothing, nothing,” referring to how everything has become the same as a result of the war.

When reading The Sun Also Rises, I was less hesitant to accept the claim, because most of the places Jake traveled were popular European locations that were beginning to become highly concentrated with Americans, and therefore it made sense that they all seemed to carry the same aura. However, in Kit’s case, I needed a little more convincing before I could accept her comment as truth. Is the whole tourist industry that has developed all a scam and are we just searching for something that doesn’t exist? Does it make a difference of whether we travel through “tourist” communities or unchartered territory?

As I read along further with Kit and Port’s adventures through the road less traveled, that of North Africa, in The Sheltering Sky, it occurred to me that maybe it is not a problem with the land, but rather with the travelers. The reason Kit is unable to really experience the change in scenery and culture is not because it doesn’t exist, but rather because she doesn’t know how to look for it. As it says in chapter 16, “because neither she nor Port had ever lived a life of any kind of regularity, they both had made the fatal error of coming hazily to regard time as non-existent.” Kit can’t appreciate the land she’s in, because she has nothing concrete to compare it to. As she bounces from place to place, she doesn’t know what she’s looking for, so instead focuses on her relationship with Port, because that is the only thing she can recognize. On the contrary, Port seems to be the one carrying the maps and more focused on seeing the way the natives live, so he is experiencing each location to a greater degree, and is able to appreciate some of what he sees. Still, he too has his moments of only focusing on his relationship with Kit, because after months of traveling, with no home base, the closest thing he has to a “stable environment” is his relationship with his wife.

All of this just shows that the beauty of a place may not exist on the surface, but instead in the eye of the beholder. Additionally, the beholder must have the vocabulary to speak of a place, in order to truly appreciate it. While reading, I felt that I could really appreciate the beauty of the desert land they come in contact with and the nomad Arab villages, because I witnessed similar sights when I was in Israel last year, and now have something to compare it to. To put it in context of the class, because this is the third travel novel I’ve read, I feel that I have developed a certain vocabulary and can come to realizations now that I would not have reached two weeks ago with Daisy Miller, purely because I had nothing to compare it to.