Why We Travel

Bus In Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky, Port explores the reasons that people travel. While on the bus from Boussif to Aϊn Krorfa it occurs to Port that it is “often on trips that he thought most clearly.” It is interesting to consider that maybe rather than for the sights or the exposure it is for clarity that people leave home. It is in many ways logical though, when one is away from a situation it is much easier to put things in to perspective. Similarly to how Hemingway found he could only write about Paris or Spain when he was no longer there. There is something about being away from everything familiar that makes reflection much easier. I suppose it is because most of the small worries of one’s everyday life are left behind therefore the things that one can still contemplate are logically the larger troubles of one’s life. In The Sun Also Rises it seemed that many of the characters were using travel as a means of escape, but Port suggests that travel could be used as a means to an end. In his case the end is finding the clarity to make “the decisions he could not have reached when he was stationary.” Yet if one must journey in order to be able to reflect on a situation then maybe one is in a way fleeing after all. Then the question becomes is it acceptable to run in order to obtain a new perspective on a situation.