The Sheltering Sky

Port’s wife, Kit, has her own set of troubling psychological disturbances. She experiences intense bouts of dread and anxiety over what she terms “omens” and feels out of control—both of herself and her husband. She is also self-absorbed, like Port, in her way: “She was capable of sitting all morning long, attempting to recall the details of a brief scene or conversation, in order to be able to try out in her mind every possible interpretation of each gesture or sentence” (38). Additionally, she is privileged and snobbish in much the same way as Port is—also without fully recognizing it. In a parenthetical aside about Tunner, she thinks, “[t]he blatantly normal always infuriated her” (61). Her attachment to Port is somewhat inexplicable, though she mentions his steadiness in a crisis and her constant anxieties as an explanation. It is also the case that women’s choices were more limited at this moment in history. In America, for instance, many women who had gone to work during the war were forced to give up their positions to the returning soldiers. Though there is no indication that Kit was educated or trained to take up any professional position, it is clear that Port offers her a kind of freedom of movement that she would otherwise have been hard-pressed to find on her own.

It is not until Port’s death—engendered, the novel hints at but never directly states, by her neglect (and infidelity and deceit)—that Kit finds a sense of self separate from her desire to please Port: “Life was suddenly there, she was in it, not looking through the window at it. The dignity that came from feeling a part of its power and grandeur, that was a familiar sensation, but it was years ago since she had last known it” (258). However, the tension between Port and Kit is clear and seemingly irreconcilable, so Kit’s gestures of devotion and love throughout the book ring false. Indeed, when she sobs into Tunner’s shirt, “throwing both arms around him desperately” and frantically claiming that she loves Port, Tunner “smiled” (245). Kit lacks self-awareness and the emotional maturity to become a self-sufficient person; Tunner’s smile in the face of her sorrow smacks of triumph, of a conquest made.

Her behavior after Port’s death—offering up her body to whichever male will protect her—is both the result of her character (or lack thereof, an absence of self-respect) and the author’s choices. While both Port and Kit have committed adultery, Port’s fate is the result of his self-involvement and arrogance, not his philandering, while Kit’s transgressions—particularly when she crosses the unspeakable line of consorting with natives—are all sexual in nature and must be punished in a particularly brutal fashion. She is repeatedly raped, imprisoned, assaulted, choked, robbed, and deceived—only to end up being delivered into the care of the man who first claimed her as his conquest.

Tunner is mainly seen through the eyes of the two main characters, Port and Kit. The reader is not given much access to his internal motivations and thoughts until the end of Book 2 after Kit has disappeared. Notably, Tunner is just “Tunner”; he is never given a first name or a full name. Tunner believes himself to be an affable, adaptable fellow whose loyalty and transparency cover over some less than noble motives: “Tunner himself was an essentially simple individual irresistibly attracted by whatever remained just beyond his intellectual grasp” (62). The fact that Kit is a mystery to him—and likely more intelligent—makes her attractive to him—not to mention the challenge. When he finds out that the two are to travel alone on the train together, “he moved about the room whistling” and “he had decided she needed him” (63). However, “of all the women with whom he hoped some day to have intimate relations he considered Kit the most unlikely, the most difficult” (63). This makes her irresistible, inspiring him to push his advantage when he has the opportunity.

What is trifling to Tunner is earth-shattering to Kit. When Kit is reunited with Tunner as Port lay dying in his hospital room, she is overcome: “She did not want to be involved again: The taste of guilt was still strong in her memory” (241). When Tunner brings up their liaison on the train, he does so only to note that it was the last day they had seen rain. To him, the event is concluded; to Kit, its burden weighs heavily on her conscience. In addition, it is only after Port’s death that Tunner considers him “his closest friend (how had he failed to recognize that before?)” (264). Tunner is reckless and charming but devoid of a fully developed personality (as he lacks a full name). Still, he is, unfortunately, the only one left to memorialize his friends: “Without thinking too much about it, eventually he came to the conclusion that their lives must have been worth living” (169). Leaving that final, trivial thought to Tunner reveals much about how the author views his hapless protagonists, doomed by their own overheated thoughts and pointless meanderings.