to those that are all talk

In the story, The Sheltering Sky, despite Port Moresby’s blatant claims to being a traveler rather than a tourist, he pays little attention to what is truly going on around him, a trait that lead to his death from typhoid. “He did not think of himself as a tourist; he was a traveler. The difference is partly one of time, he would explain. Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler … moves slowly, over periods of yeah, from one part of the world to another” (Bowles 6). This underlying pretentiousness that Port holds is tested throughout the novel when he comes into contact with the people of the land he inhabits. Even though he can be seen replying to Kit saying that getting into the natives’ lives and knowing what they are thinking is unimportant, that “this town, this river, this sky, all belong to me as much as to them” (113), when his passport is stolen, this false sense of camaraderie immediately dispelled.

Upon the theft of his passport, Port is quick to accuse a native, Monsieur Abdelkader. When questioned by Lieutenant d’Armagnac asks why the thief must be native, Port replies that, “Apart from the fact that no one else had the opportunity to take it, isn’t it the sort of thing that would naturally turn out to have been done by a native – charming as they may be?” (151). Port, for all of his posturing regarding his closeness with the land and the people, reverts to his original American sentiments of paranoia towards foreigners, subsequently insulting and offending those individuals he claims to have a kinship to. The irony in this situation is that the thief is really an American, Eric Lyle whom Port doesn’t even think to accuse, despite his dislike for the individual who, coupled with his mother, are the major irritants in the novel. The mother, in particular, is more racist and judgmental than the son, saying “The stupidity of the French!... They’re all mental defectives…. Of course, their blood is thin; they’ve gone to seed. They’re all part Jewish or Negro. Look at them!” (47).

That judgmental, negative attitude that the Lyles display is what Port so openly scorns, together with Kit, but the truth is that for all of his bluster, Port is still, at heart, just as critical as the Lyles. This proves to impede his connection with the land, and leads him to live in ignorance of what is around his, including diseases or epidemics spreading across the land. Before he has a chance to understand what is going on, he contracts typhoid and dies accordingly. The greatest twist in the story is that Kit, who never claimed to be anything but a tourist with eventual plans to go home, is the individual who truly manages to assimilate into the culture, taking up a lover once Port passes and lives amongst the people, even though it is as a member of an Arab's harem. It just goes to show that those that are only capable of talking will never be able to prove to themselves or others that they are truly deserving of what they desire which is, in Port’s case, an identity.