Extreme circumstances bring about substantial changes in people. At least that is what Paul Bowles and Cormac McCarthy seem to be saying in the writing of their respective books, The Sheltering Sky and Blood Meridian. Both authors place their characters in difficult locations, dealing with difficult people and expect them to emerge changed, for better or for worse. In The Sheltering Sky, Bowles takes his American trio and places them in the desert lands of the African continent where the wide, dry impossibly desolate terrain …showed first 85 words of 1027 total…
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…showed last 85 words of 1027 total…her rape and subsequent loss of her identity in the Arab community sending her flying back to the state we first encountered her. Kid, in McCarthy's novel, grows to manhood in a short span of time due to the vast amount of grief and hardship he meets with along his travels. I enjoyed this device and think that placing everyday characters in outlandish surroundings really forces them to become "real", forcing them to really look at themselves as their true colors finally begin to show.
