All Is Lost: The Inescapable Encounter with “the Other” in Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky

Emmanuel Lévinas’ philosophy of “the Other” has a resounding echo in Paul Bowles’ magnum opus The Sheltering Sky. Kit Moresby, the American heroine, who has a dehumanizing (totalizing) attitude toward the North African natives, experiences an allegorical pilgrimage from the comforting shelter of “the same” toward the unfamiliar world of “the Other.” This article offers a close-reading of the novel based on Lévinasian concepts such as “the Other” and “the Face” and attempts to show that how Kit is deprived of her worldly possessions and is compelled to desist from her totalizing attitude toward “the Other.