Pick an Algerian character whose inclusion in the narrative does the most to increase your overall understanding of The Sheltering Sky.
write a four-page paper. You can stretch out to a fifth page if necessary. Besides the quotes I will provide on Orientalism and Existentialism.
there are no external sources I encourage you to use. Instead, please work within Bowles’s novel and take inspiration from our class discussions as you share your own opinion and perspective.
Be sure to cite key passages as evidence for your thesis, placing page numbers in parentheses. Use the introduction and conclusion to announce and reinforce the stakes of your topic (i.e., why it matters), suggesting key questions or resolutions as you see fit. Don’t forget a cool title!
Existentialist quotes
Use these quotes to understand some basic tenets of existentialism. The see whether you can apply any of this understanding to the characters or events described in The Sheltering Sky.
“Hell is other people” (Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit. 1944).
“Man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet, in other respects, is free: because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. The existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts and is therefore an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion” (Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions, 1957).
“In certain situations, replying ‘nothing’ when asked what one is thinking about may be pretense in a man. Those who loved are well aware of this. But if the reply is sincere, if it symbolizes that odd state of soul in which the void becomes eloquent, in which the chain of daily gestures is broken… then it is … the first sign of absurdity…. At the end of the awakening comes, in time, the consequence: suicide or recovery” (Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 1955).
“Those hordes of vital statistics, those hysterical masses, those faces bereft of humanity, those distended bodies which are like nothing on earth, that mob without beginning or end, those children who belong to nobody, that laziness stretched out in the sun, that vegetative rhythm of life – all this forms part of the colonial vocabulary… The native knows all this, and laughs to himself every time he spots an allusion to the animal world in the other’s words. For he knows that he is not an animal; and it is precisely at that moment he realizes his humanity that he begins to sharpen the weapons with which he will secure his victory” (Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 1961).
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