“The Sheltering Sky” by Paul Bowles (post 2): Kit Moresby, following death of her husband, has dissociative fugue and winds up in harem

At the end of the novel, Katherine “Kit” Moresby, an American who had been traveling with her husband in northern Africa for most of the novel, has been wandering around in a state of confusion following her husband’s death, but is finally taken in hand by a woman from the American Consulate, who says to herself, “My God, the woman’s nuts!” (1, p. 312).

As usual, neither the novel nor most reviews (for example, 2) say or care what kind of mental disturbance Kit has.

She probably has multiple personality, since she has been wandering around northern Africa in a dissociative fugue since her husband died. And a dissociative fugue is just the largest form of memory gap, which is a cardinal symptom of multiple personality. (Search “dissociative fugue” and “memory gaps.”)

In the prototypical dissociative fugue, a person suffers a psychological trauma, forgets who she is, wanders off to where people don’t know her, and assumes a new identity. That is what Kit has done when she joins a caravan and winds up in a harem.

1. Paul Bowles. The Sheltering Sky. 50th Anniversary Edition. New York, Ecco/HarperCollins, 1949/2000.

2. Dwight Garner. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/books/31bowles.html