The Sheltering Sky

“He was somewhere, he had come back through the vast regions from nowhere; there was certitude of an infinite sadness at the core of his consciousness, but the sadness was reassuring, because it alone was familiar.”

The author sets the mood for the book through the character of Port, who broods upon the nature of existence and the purpose of life. He is awakening from a dream—or, rather, the absence of a dream—to confront the “sadness” and purposeless of his life.

“Their faces are masks. They all look a thousand years old. What little energy they have is only the blind, mass desire to live, since no one of them eats enough to give him his own personal force. But what do they think of me? Probably nothing.”

Port contemplates the “natives” he encounters in North Africa with a set of stereotypes: They are ageless and inscrutable. This passage also dehumanizes the native by taking away individuality—they are all the same—and by reducing their aspirations to the mere animal instinct of self-preservation. They think of nothing, not even the central figure of the Western interloper, but the will to live.

“The voices went on as before, an uninterrupted flow of expressionless sounds.”

Again, this view of the native robs them of independent or coherent thought. They are not unique individuals but rather all the same. Only the Westerner can impart meaning to the native’s tongue.