摘要：Bertullocci in his film adaptation of Sheltering Sky portrays Kit, Port, and Tunner who make a journey to Morocco to escape dehumanizing ambience of post war America. In this movie, Port and Kit’s identities undergo drastic change while the Tunner does not. As a professional writer and the devotee of travel himself, Port immerses himself in traditional Oriental space and gradually melts in it, and his death is the culmination of this process. His wife, Kit who is initially unable to understand the depth of his relation the Orient, later succumbs to it, and this finds its full expression in her love of the young Belquassim, her psychosis, and her final decline of returning to American Embassy. By contrast, Tunner’s identity remains unchanged because his main object of travel has been winning Kit’s heart rather than seeking philosophical solutions for his soul in the traversed world. Accordingly the current article argues that travel is interconnected to the concept of identity, depending on the characters’ participation and response to the source culture and its environment. Thus, Port and Kit’s identities experience metamorphosis albeit violently for their receptiveness and deep involvement with the alien culture while Tunner’s disengagement and obsession to retrieve Kit from the Orient does not lead to his identity transition.
关键词：identity; travel; orient; culture; and receptiveness
