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In The Sheltering Sky, Kit could be said to have an epiphany towards the end of the novel. After Port’s death Kit just wanders off until she comes across a pool and gets in. Kit’s bath in the pool is a religious type of experience, a sort of baptism. “She felt a strange intensity being born within her. As she looked about the quiet garden she had the impression that for the first time since her childhood she was seeing objects clearly. Life was suddenly there, she was in it, not looking through the window at it….As she immersed herself completely, the thought came to her: “I shall never be hysterical again,”” (Bowles 241). She lets go of her fatalistic ideas and decides to be in control of her own destiny. However, this experience of realization also seems to be about something else not quite describable. This epiphany seems to be about a shift in Kit’s view of life. After the bath she describes how she had always felt being unhappy was “a natural condition of life,” (Bowles 242) but had now found the joy of living.

Before this epiphany, Kit is unhappy and worrying and felt that she had no control over own life. She felt that “all she could hope to do was eat, sleep and cringe before her omens,” (Bowles 120). But after she emerges from the pool and goes into the desert she has a complete change of mindset - “instead of feeling the omens, she would now make them, be them herself,” (Bowles 263).

Kit’s realization probably occurred because of Port’s death. After his death when she is lying on the floor and she thinks that “these were the first few moments of a new existence,” (Bowles 230). The epiphany then inspires travel as she walks into the desert. She comes across a procession and goes with them. As she spends more time travelling across the desert with the natives, she lives in the moment opposed to before when she would worry about the future. “She did only the things she found herself doing,” (Bowles 270). She begins to have a relationship with one of the merchants, Belqassim and eventually lives with him. Then when she is dragged back to civilization she resists. Miss Ferry, the American consulate, finds Kit to look like a “partially Europeanized servant,” (Bowles 309). In the end Kit refuses to return to the civilized European world and stays in the more “uncivilized” world.

The Escalator - Scott Mutter

“I am a pilgrim on the edge, on the edge of my own perception. We are all travelers at the edge, at the edge of our own perception.”

-Scott Mutter

Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart may include a story about the physical act of travelling; however, it is obvious that the travelling he’s really concerned with is that of a different quality. In this story, Murakami explores travelling to the unknown, to the “other side.” One of the most intriguing and mysterious parts of the book is Sumire’s telling of Miu’s experience of seeing herself making love to the Spaniard from the Ferris wheel. Miu explains that after the incident she felt that “I was still on this side, here. But another me, maybe half of me, had gone over to the other side… I was split in two forever… It’s not like something was stolen away from me, because it all still exists, but on the other side. Just a single mirror separates us from the other side. But I can never cross the boundary of that pane of glass. Never,” (Murakami 157).

This idea of travelling to the other side brings to mind a kind of trip to a mysterious, ghostly otherworld, but it could also be a psychological or spiritual journey that Murakami’s getting at. Miu’s story of splitting in two after the incident in the Ferris wheel mirrors Sumire’s transformation after meeting Miu - she trades in her thrift store clothes for more fashionable clothes and gives up writing to become Miu’s assistant. After writing Miu’s story, Sumire asks, “If this side, where Miu is, is not the real world – if this side is actually the other side – what about me, the person who shares the same temporal and spatial plane with her? Who in the world am I?” (Murakami 161). Sumire’s psychological search for identity and Miu’s mystical experience seem to be similar.

Sumire’s disappearance is also very mysterious and K seems to believe that she has travelled to somewhere intangible. His hypothesis is that she “happened to find this door, turned the knob, and slipped outside – from this side to the other...What lay beyond that door was beyond my powers of imagination. The door closed, and Sumire wouldn’t be coming back,” (Murakami 167).

The line between what is real and what is not becomes further blurred as the book nears its end. K hears music when he’s staying alone in the cabin on the Greek island. After he follows the music up the slope it’s hard to tell whether K is dreaming or awake. He feels unreal, saying “I knew this wasn’t my hand anymore. I can’t explain it. But at a glance I knew. My hand was no longer my hand, my legs no longer my legs… As if a voodoo magician had put a spell on me, blowing my transient life into this lump of clay… my real life had fallen asleep somewhere, and a faceless someone was stuffing it in a suitcase, about to leave,” (Murakami 170).

In travelling, these themes of unstableness in identity and reality are especially prevalent. When K is in the airport waiting for his plane he observes, “The world had lost all sense of reality. Colors were unnatural, details crude. The background was papier-mâché, the stars made out of aluminum foil. You could see the glue and the heads of the nails holding it all together…In the bustle of the airport, passengers dashing here and there, the world I shared with Sumire seemed shabby, helpless, uncertain. Neither of us knew anything that really mattered, nor did we have the ability to rectify that. There was nothing solid we could depend on. We were nearly boundless zeros, just pitiful little beings swept form one kind of oblivion to another,” (Murakami 84). This sense that reality is nothing more than a set made of papier-mâché and aluminum foil can be accentuated by travel. Everything is a little more uncertain as you’re being “swept from one oblivion to another.” This feeling of being “up in the air” when travelling, the feeling of no longer knowing who you are and what is real, is what Murakami is describing in Sputnik Sweetheart: “It made Miu see a second self. It took Sumire’s cat away somewhere. It made Sumire disappear. And it brought me here, in the midst of music – that most likely – never existed. Before me lay a bottomless darkness; behind me, a world of pale light. I stood there on the top of a mountain in a foreign land, bathed in moonlight. Maybe this had all been meticulously planned, from the very beginning,” (Murakami 172).

Ibn Fattouma could be seen as a pilgrim rather than a tourist. Erik Cohen describes “the original, archaic pilgrimage” as “as the quest for the mythical land of pristine existence, of no evil or suffering, the primaeval centre from which man originally emerged, but eventually lost it,” (Cohen 182). Ibn Fattouma’s purpose seems similar in his quest for the land of Gebel which is described by his teacher as “the miracle of countries…perfection itself, incomparable perfection,” (Mahfouz 6). However, Cohen goes on to say that the difference between the archaic pilgrim and the modern tourist is that modern tourism is about “the gradual abandonment of the traditional, sacred image of the cosmos, and the awakening of interest in the culture, social life and natural environment of others,” (Cohen 182). Since Ibn Fattouma seems to be seeking a place outside of his cultural center and into the social life and natural environment of other cultures, he could be argued to be an existential tourist instead. As Issa Peters says, “The Journey o f Ibn Fattouma, therefore, is a kind of pilgrim's progress, but the pilgrim here is more of a social reformer than a religious believer impelled by an apocalyptic vision of the divine,” (World Literature Today).

Cohen describes an existential tourist as a traveler “who is fully committed to an ‘elective’ spiritual centre, i.e. one external to the mainstream of his native society and culture,” (Cohen 189). This seems to fit Ibn Fattouma’s idea of the land of Gebel. Instead of existing in his culture’s center, it is his elected centre. Along his journey Ibn Fattouma can also be seen to be an experimental and experiential tourist. In the land of Mashriq, Fattouma observes the culture without really participating in it – the way an experiential tourist would. Then when he’s in Halba Ibn Fattouma becomes more of an experimental traveler as he marries and gets a job there. But in his search for the land of Gebel, Ibn Fattouma is essentially an existential tourist. He is searching for the ideal. Cohen says that “The pilgrim or the existential tourist ‘ascends’ spiritually to the ideal centre, but he necessarily arrives at the geographical one,” and asks, “How does one handle the discrepancy?” (Cohen 196). However, in The Journey of Ibn Fattouma, the geographical centre is actually never described and one doesn’t know if it really lives up to the idealist expectations. This suggests that the land of Gebel is really just an allegory for the soul’s ideal centre.

In the beginning of Death in Venice, Aschenbach encounters an apparition of a foreign traveler. The traveler’s existence is ambiguous and suggests that nothing is as it seems. The might-be apparition inspires in Aschenbach “the most surprising consciousness of a widening of inward barriers, a kind of vaulting unrest, a youthfully ardent thirst for distant scenes…a longing to travel; yet coming upon him with such suddenness and passion as to resemble a seizure, almost a hallucination,” (Mann 5). This foreign traveler may be the Summoner in disguise. The image of the Summoner in disguise reappears at the end of the novel in the form of Tadzio. Aschenbach is lying on the beach when he observes Tadzio standing on a sandbar. “It seemed to him the pale and lovely Summoner out there smiled at him and beckoned,” (Mann 73).

The idea of appearance and disguise is brought up again when Aschenbach is on the boat to Venice. He sees a group of youths but “One of the party…was no youth at all. He was an old man, beyond a doubt, with wrinkles crow’s-feet round the eyes and mouth; the dull carmine of the cheeks was rouge, the brown hair a wig. His neck was shrunken and sinewy, his turned-up moustaches and small imperial were dyed, and the unbroken double row of yellow teeth he showed when he laughed were but too obviously a cheapish false set,” (Mann 17). Aschenbach is disgusted by this man thinking that “he has no right to wear the clothes they wore or pretend to be one of them,” (Mann 17). However, in the end of the story Aschenbach gets a similar makeover himself. “The presence of the youthful beauty that had bewildered him filled him with disgust of his own aging body… he made desperate efforts to recover the appearance and freshness of his youth,” (Mann 67). He has the hotel barber dye his hair, pluck his eyebrows, and put on his makeup, disguising Aschenbach from himself.

The setting of Venice itself has indications of disguise as the city tries to hide the sickness from the tourists “under a fog of lies, official silence, sweet-smelling disinfectants,” ("Death in Venice": The Disguised Self).

Aschenbach seems to be in disguise all the time as he hides his passionate side and always remains stoic and disciplined. Even in his writing he isn’t passionate but labors over it “layer after layer, in long days of work, out of hundreds and hundreds of single inspirations,” (Mann 10). However his disguise falters as he is overcome with desire for Tadzio and becomes obsessed – losing his composure and discipline.

This imagery of disguise and ambiguity goes hand in hand with the descent and disintegration of Auschenbach. Mann seems to suggest that one cannot live a diacritical existence. “Either he lives in an impossible idealistic intellectuality or he lives as the most bestial of the beasts. To live as either, and not as both, is to invite destruction,” ("Death in Venice": The Disguised Self).

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.

How we dwelt in two worlds.

The daughters and the mothers

In the kingdom of the sons

-Adrienne Rich

In Ian McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangers, the main characters Colin and Mary are wondering lost around what once can assume is Venice when Mary notices a window display for a bed. There are two dummies “from the same mold” (21) but one dressed in pajamas and the other in a thigh-length nightie. “[The bed] was designed, on the pajama side at least, to resemble the control panel of a power station, or perhaps a light aircraft,” (21-22) and in the upholstery were objects such as a cassette recorder, radio, clock, and telephone. The nightie side, however, was “sparse by comparison” (22) and held items such as a mirror, magazine rack, and nursery intercom. On the street Mary also sees feminist posters; ““The women are more radical here,” [Mary says] over her shoulder, “and better organized,” “(23). Colin replies “They’ve got more to fight for,” (23). In translating she finds that the feminists want rapists castrated and Colin compares it to cutting off a thief’s hand as punishment. Mary responds that it’s a tactic to make people take rape more seriously as a crime and Colin refutes that it’s a way of making people take feminists less seriously. These two details introduce the theme of gender in The Comfort of Strangers. The setting of Venice, where women “have more to fight for” parallels the story’s themes of femininity and masculinity. The character of Robert shows misogynistic, hyper masculine tendencies from the start. He says of the feminists in the city, “These are women who cannot find a man. They want to destroy everything that is good between men and women,” (27). I

deas about masculinity and femininity become more complicated when Robert begins to talk about his childhood and especially his father. Robert describes his father: ““My father was a big man….all his life my father wore a moustache like this” – with forefinger and thumb Robert measured out an inch width beneath his nose – “and when it turned to gray he used a little brush to make it black, such as ladies use for their eyes. Mascara,”” (31). He also says that “Everybody was afraid of him,” (31). His father’s extreme masculinity is contrasted with the feminine act of using mascara. Robert goes on to explain his father’s controlling and misogynistic ways and how he was favored by his father over his sisters. Robert seems to respect his father and his stringent views of gender roles. He also seemed to have an unhealthy attachment to his mother (Oedipus complex) as he slept in her bed until he was twelve years old.

A description of Colin shows that he is more feminine that masculine. He has “slender, hairless legs”, “feet, abnormally small like a child’s”, “narrow waist”, “smooth white skin”, and his hair “fell into curls onto his slender, womanly neck,” (55-56). This depiction is in contrast to Robert who is described as muscular with large, hairy hands.

When Caroline is introduced into the story, she is portrayed almost immediately as submissive and passive. She describes love as “you’d do anything for the other person and… you’d let them do anything to you,” (62). Mary brings up to that she used to be in an all women’s theatre troupe and Caroline doesn’t understand how this could work asking, “I mean, what could happen?” (67). When Mary explains that the play could be about two women talking on a balcony Caroline refutes that, “they’re probably waiting for a man,” (67).

Robert’s overt misogyny is voiced to Colin when he talks of how men are not like they once were: “Now men doubt themselves, they hate themselves, even more than they hate each other. Women treat men like children, because they can’t take them seriously… But they love men. Whatever they might say they believe, women love aggression and strength and power in men. It’s deep in their minds. Look at all the women a successful man attracts…even though they hate themselves for it, women long to be ruled by men. It’s deep in their minds. They lie to themselves. They talk of freedom, and dream of captivity,” (72).

Mary and Colin’s conversations over the four days they remain in the hotel after meeting the couple also seem to center around the idea of gender. They talk about whether men and women experience a similar sensation during orgasms, the politics of sex, patriarchy, their parents’ relationships, and so on. Their conversations then take a more sadistic turn. They “joked about handcuffing themselves together and throwing away the key. The idea aroused them,” (81). “Mary muttered her intention of hiring a surgeon to amputate Colin’s arms and legs…and use him exclusively for sex,” (81) and “Colin invented for Mary a large, intricate machine…the machine would fuck her, not just for hours or weeks, but for years,” (81-82). This theme of sadism and masochism continues when Mary and Colin return to the Robert’s house. There Caroline describes to Mary her and Robert’s sexual perversions. She says, “Robert started to hurt me when we made love…and I had to admit, though it took a long time, that I liked it…It’s not the pain itself, it’s the fact of the pain, of being helpless before it, and being reduced to nothing by it,” (110). This idea of sadism and masochism mirrors the theme of masculinity and femininity to the extreme. Then

Colin’s murder is the culmination of it all. Robert kills him because of his own insecurities about masculinity. “Robert must prove that he is not weak like his sisters; indeed he must show that he is like the father, and he must be the father, whom he introjects as the sadistic superego. His conscious drive to destroy Colin, who is for him exemplary of the gender "confusion and unhappiness"(73) that pervades and undermines patriarchal culture, masks an unconscious drive toward his own humiliation and destruction,” (Sadism Demands a Story: Ian McEwan's The Comfort of Strangers).

When one is travelling, identity is something to be examined. In The Sheltering Sky, it is said of Port, “Whenever he was en route from one place to another, he was able to look at his life with a little more objectivity than usual. It was often on trips that he thought most clearly, and made decisions that he could not reach when he was stationary,” (98).

Bowle’s ideas about identity might be summed up nicely by Port’s exclamation that “I don’t have to justify my existence by any such primitive means. The fact that I breathe is my justification. If humanity doesn’t consider that justification, it can do what it likes to me. I’m not going to carry a passport to existence around with me, to prove I have the right to be here! I’m here! I’m in the world! But my world’s not humanity’s world. It’s the world as I see it,” (88). This is a very existentialist view on identity. “Existentialism believes that self-identity, in every case is a matter of choice. Jean Paul Sartre believed that there were no set standards for self-identity, either for individuals or for people in general. There is no such thing as "human nature" and what we are-and what it means to be a human being-are always matters of decision. There is no correct choice, there are only choices,” (Solomon). Port seems to hold the belief that self-identity is a choice.

In The Sheltering Sky, there is a loss of identity. This begins very literally with the loss of Port’s passport. At first Port is upset. He says, “ever since I discovered my passport was gone, I’ve felt only half alive. But it’s a very depressing thing in a place like this to have no proof of who you are, you know,” (154). Later on he decides that “it rather suited his fancy to be going off with no proof of his identity to a hidden desert town about which no one could tell him anything,” (163). Eventually Port loses his identity altogether by dying and therefore surrendering to nothingness. This could be seen as a choice, considering that he did not get vaccinated against any diseases. Port seems to be attracted to the unknown (“the abyss”) and in the end surrenders to it, losing himself.

After Port’s death, Kit also suffers an identity loss. She also appears to make a conscious choice to lose herself when she leaves Port’s dead body and walks into the desert. Her views also switch from superstitious to a more existentialist outlook; “instead of feeling the omens, she now would make them, be them herself. But she was only faintly astonished at her discovery of this further possibility in existence,” (263). In the desert, Kit eventually loses her identity. “She had no feeling of being anywhere, of being anyone,” (294). Kit’s loss of identity isn’t synonymous with death as it was with Port, but rather becoming “savage.” One can conclude this from Miss Ferry’s reaction to Kit in the end of the book. She says of Kit’s clothes (which were more like the native’s) that “her own cleaning woman, bought better looking ones in the Jewish quarter,” (309). Miss Ferry concludes about Kit that, “My God, the woman’s nuts!” (312).

The Sheltering Sky takes on a very existentialist approach to the idea of identity, and shows the loss of identity through its main characters. Port chooses to cease existing by giving in to death and Kit chooses to stop existing by disregarding society and becoming “savage” or “uncivilized.”

Duality is prevalent in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It can be seen with the characters Marlow and Kurtz. Kurtz is Marlow’s doppelganger; his double. This is illustrated by the opposite ways in which Marlow and Kurtz react to the wilderness:

“Both men are subjected to a moral test; by means of their reaction the resemblance and the basic difference between them are made clear. Forced by the wilderness to recognition of his kinship with primitive man, and granted the opportunity to gratify his primitive lusts to their absolute full, Kurtz succumbs completely. Forced to the same recognition, “what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar,” and granted something of the same opportunity, Marlow does precisely the opposite, does not succumb, does not “go ashore for a dance and a howl.” When he finds Kurtz fled away from the boat, gone to rejoin the native orgies, he feels a “moral shock... as if something altogether monstrous, intolerable to thought and odious to soul, had been thrust upon me unexpectedly.” The intensity of Marlow's revulsion in this scene may well be the result of recognizing the overwhelming pull of savagery—which could pull him into similar excesses—for in Kurtz's action he sees what is possible.... Feeling the same temptation, understanding Kurtz's actions, Marlow deliberately chooses a different course, “An appeal to me in this fiendish row—is there? Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced.”” (The Ultimate Meaning of Heart of Darkness)

Kurtz loses all morals to the wilderness whereas Marlow does not give in to primitive lusts. However, Marlow is tempted, and that is why he is haunted by Kurtz. Kurtz represents complete savagery, lack of strength, and darkness – all things that Marlow is trying to combat and make sense of. Kurtz’s existence causes Marlow to question himself. When Marlow catches him trying to escape back to the savages, he says “I before him did not know if I stood on the ground or floated in the air,” (149). He says that Kurtz’s soul had “gone mad” and that “I had…to go through the ordeal of looking into it (Kurtz’s soul) myself,” (150).By examining Kurtz’s soul, Marlow has to examine his own soul as well.

Another example of duality can be seen between the two women in Kurtz’s life. They could also be said to be doppelgangers of each other – opposite but at the same time akin.

“They are in a sense opposites; one the embodiment of primitive darkness:

savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress... the immense wilderness... seemed to look at her... as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul.... Suddenly she opened her bared arms and threw them up rigid above her head... and at the same time the swift shadows darted out on the earth... gathering the steamer into a shadow embrace... the barbarous and superb woman... stretched tragically her bare arms after us over the somber and glittering river.

The other, the embodiment of light:

all the sad light of the cloudy evening had taken refuge on her forehead. This fair hair, this pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surrounded by an ashy halo... her fair hair seemed to catch all the remaining light in a glimmer of gold... She put out her arms... stretching them back and with clasped pale hands across the fading and narrow sheen of the window... resembling in this gesture another one, tragic also... stretching bare brown arms over the glitter of the infernal stream, the stream of darkness. ” (The Ultimate Meaning of Heart of Darkness)

Although the images of these two women are contrasting, there still exist similarities – stretching their arms, their love of Kurtz, and their beauty.

By drawing connections between Marlow and Kurtz, and the savage woman and the Intended, Conrad gives the impression that perhaps the lines that separate darkness from light, savagery from civilization, and right from wrong – are not always so clear.

The narrative style of the story is also an example of duality in Heart of Darkness. The story opens with one anonymous narrator but most of the novel is really told by Charlie Marlow. This creates a kind of meta-narrative that further adds to the ambiguity and duality in the story. It also distances the author from the narrator, allowing Conrad to explore these themes more deeply without total rejection from his working class, imperialistic audience.

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In an interview Shirley Hazzard says in regards to criticism: ““Max Beerbohm said, when a very old man, "They explain because they can't understand." We're getting shorter and shorter on understanding. Not to generalize too much, but one still goes to Europe for that, for ready understanding, not having to explain. A relief, don't you think? You meet a person, you don't have to explain everything. And they don't look at you with that sort of assiduity, that concentration, as if to say "Well, what on earth does this mean?" Too much explication deadens the intuitions, deadens some shade of irony, perhaps; some sense of the absurdity of life.” (A Conversation with Shirley Hazzard)

Perhaps, this is what Evening of the Holiday is all about – and I’ll try not to explain this to the point of deadening the intuitions – but it seems as if Sophie’s love affair with Trancredi is so meaningful because it’s never fully realized. In their relationship, there was never a need to explain and even in the end, Hazzard leaves one with unanswered questions about Sophie and Tandredi – their intentions, the way the relationship ended, the authenticity of their feelings toward each other, its importance to both characters.

Even from the beginning, Tandcredi and Sophie are mysterious and unexplained to each other. When they meet for coffee it is said that “it was the most natural thing in the world that they should sit there without speaking, making no attempt to discover one another,” (33), suggesting that they want to remain mysterious to each other. Hazzard also continually gives us both Tancredi and Sophie’s points of view, displaying to the reader the misunderstandings between the two. On their first drive to the country, Tancredi finds Sophie “cold and unaccountable,” (44) while Sophie is thinking “It isn’t that I am unapproachable; it is the circumstances,” (44).

Throughout the relationship there is always an air of mystery and confusion. And at the end of the relationship, Tancredi and Sophie seem to be left without closure and explanation. Soiphie proclaims out of the blue to Tancredi that she’s leaving soon. Then when she comes back for Luisa’s funeral and stands by Tancredi’s car without encountering him. Luisa talks about how we all long that kind of mystery without explanation: “’...sometimes experience is like that, and that it matters to have committed to yourself at one moment, even at great cost and disorder, and to now that you have that capacity. We can’t be orderly all the time without becoming bores,’” (114). This suggests that experiences that cannot be completely explained in an orderly way are in a way more significant; or at the very least necessary in order not to become “bores.” It almost makes Tancredi and Sophie’s affair inevitable – adding to the kind of mystical mood.

This idea of the unexplained in Sophie and Tancredi’s relationship is further shown by their misunderstandings Sophie “always wanting to go home,” (43) and has “the solitary pang of the expatriate,” (42). Tancredi never feels as if Sophie is ever fully experiencing the situation. Tancredi says she is “following the score instead of listening to the music..” (53). Tancredi likewise can’t understand Sophie or her culture. “His forthright Italian sensuality found her behavior neurotic an absurd,” (59).

Hazzard says that one goes to Europe so one does not have to explain everything. This seems to be why Sophie retreats to Italy – for a break, a “holiday.” Because there’s a certain mystery about being in a new place, like “a traveller who stands one morning on the deck of a ship in a strange harbor, stuyding the country where she is to live; who wonders which of these grouped houses is to grow familiar, which of these streets most travelled, whether those parks, so attractive in the early sunshine, will become perhaps sinister by night,” (59).

None of the natives do ask Sophie to explain. This can be seen in the way she interacts with the natives. During the festival she observes them from afar and “from time to time someone, glancing upward, stared curiously at an unexpected detail – the foreign-looking woman in print dress, sunglasses, and sandals, her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands – on the otherwise deserted steps of the baptistery. The curiosity, however was brief; the crowd, engrossed, had no real interest in her judgment,” (60). Also, the family on the farmland that Tancredi owns also does not ask the two of them to explain their relationship.

In the same way one can never fully grasp a place one travels to, one can also never fully understand any love affair. One can ponder it forever and never really be able to explain it completely. Perhaps, that’s the point.

In travel, authenticity is something that most people desire. They want their experience abroad to be “authentic”; whatever that may mean. In The Sun Also Rises, the theme of authenticity is certainly evident in the characters and their actions.

Authenticity is brought up by Bill when he tells Jake that "You're an expatriate. Why don't you live in New York? ... Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing. Not even in the newspapers. ... You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes." (120) He mentions “fake European standards” and suggests that Jake is an inauthentic writer because he has lost touch with his roots. By living as an expatriate, Jake is somehow not being truly authentic. It seems that Hemingway felt that many expatriates were inauthentic.

In the article “Hemingway among the Bohemians: A Generational Reading of The Sun Also Rises”, Soto tells of Hemingway’s opinion on fellow bohemians in Paris: “The bohemians to whom Hemingway refers in the article, "the scum of Greenwich Village ... skimmed off and deposited in large ladlesful on that section of Paris adjacent to the Cafe Rotonde" (BL [By-Line] 23)… they have become precious, ruined by fake European standards; because they spend their time talking, not working. "You can find anything you are looking for at the Rotonde-except serious artists," reports Hemingway. Visitors to the Latin Quarter, he continues, do not encounter "the real artists of Paris"; instead, they find "loafers expending the energy that an artist puts into his creative work in talking about what they are going to do and condemning the work of all artists who have gained any degree of recognition. By talking about art they obtain the same satisfaction that the real artist does in his work" (24-25).” The characters in The Sun Also Rises seem to fit this stereotype: they hang out in cafes, drink, talk, and don’t write although many of them are supposedly writers. The characters' fakeness is shown throughout the novel. For instance, when Jake introduces Georgette as his fiancée, the singer Georgette Leblanc, there is an idea of fakery and pretense. Brett’s hat serves as a disguise – suggesting she is not really herself. “To take off her hat would mean self-revelation and vulnerability, which frighten Brett. Whenever she is nervous in the crowd, she pulls her hat down farther over her face, indicating her fear of exposure.” (Brett Ashley: The Beauty of It All)

Robert Cohen is hated by Jake (and the other characters, for that matter), not because he is Jewish, but ultimately because Jake views him as inauthentic. “According to the logic of The Sun Also Rises, one is either a bohemian who writes (authentic) or a would-be writer who dabbles in bohemianism (inauthentic).” (Hemingway among the Bohemians: A Generational Reading of The Sun Also Rises) Cohen is the latter; he only arrives at his ideas from other authors.

Pedro Romero is the opposite of the extradite characters – he is completely authentic. In his bullfighting, he is the only bullfighter who does not use tricks. “Romero is not a phony imitation of himself, and he does not use trickery: "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),” (Brett Ashley: The Beauty of It All). Romero is also cautious of talking in English, for he views it as inauthentic and says that the people wouldn’t like it.

Jake is seen as more authentic than his other “bohemian” friends by the hotel owner because he is an aficionado. “Aficion means passion. An aficionado is one who is passionate about the bull-fights. ... Somehow it was taken for granted that an American could not have aficion. He might simulate it or confuse it with excitement, but he could not really have it. When they saw that I had aficion, and there was no password, no set questions that could bring it out, rather it was a sort of oral spiritual examination with the questions always a little on the defensive and never apparent, there was this same embarrassed putting the hand on the shoulder, or a 'Buen hombre: But nearly always there was the actual touching. It seemed as though they wanted to touch you to make it certain,” (132). The bullfighting is the one authentic action in the book. It is “real” whereas everything else is seen as “surreal.” Jake describes the fiesta as “a wonderful nightmare,” (222).

The authenticity of the novel itself can also be brought up since the novel is based on “truth.” In “Hemingway among the Bohemians: A Generational Reading of The Sun Also Rises”, it is said that “the relationship between Hemingway's novels and his "true" experiences, as well as between his fictional characters and actual persons, has been a recurring theme of Hemingway criticism. Virtually all bohemian fiction tends more toward the confessional than the merely journalistic; the genre lives up to Emerson's prophesy (later deployed as the epigraph to Henry Miller's first bohemian novel) that "novels will give way, by and by, to diaries or autobiographies-captivating books, if only a man knew how to choose among what he calls his experience that which is really experience, and how to record the truth truly."” This makes The Sun Also Rises more authentic because it is more of a diary than a novel. Then again, one must wonder how much of what Hemingway “calls his experience” is really authentic and if he indeed did “record the truth truly.”