NO EXIT

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

SARTRE’S WORKS

• Plays: No Exit, Nausea, The Age of Reason, The Reprieve, Typhus (The Proud and the Beautiful)

• Philosophical essays:Existentialism is a Humanism, Being and Nothingness

• Autobiographic:The Words, Sartre by Himself

WORLD WAR II

• Sartre joined the French army

• Captured and imprisoned

• Was allowed to go back to Paris under German reign

• He then joined the French resistance

• No Exit relation

• No Exit has been compared to living in Paris during the German occupation

Sartre and

HUIS CLOS

• Literally means “in camera” or “in private”

• But it is a French idiom meaning “all doors closed”• So no one can exit, and no one can get in

HEGEL

• Very influenced by Hegel’s philosophy

• Takes Hegel’s master/slave dialectic (and mostly, his

ideas of communication with others) and places it in a

different setting—Hell

WHERE DID

YOU SEE

HEGEL IN

NO EXIT ?

A PHILOSOPHICAL IDEA:

BAD FAITH• Being-for-itself

ff

• Being-for-others

THE CHARACTERS

V a l e t

G a r c i n

I n e z

E s t e l l e

JOSEPH GARCIN

• Occupation: journalist

• Means of death: shot via firing squad for deserting

• Dealing with damnation: leaving each other alone, being with own thoughts

• “I’d rather be alone. I want to think things out, you know; to set my life in order, and one does that better by oneself ” (80)

• Does not question his damnation

• Obsessed with courage and cowardice

HOW DOES

GARCIN

LIVE IN BAD

FAITH?

INEZ SERRANO

• Occupation: a postal worker

• Means of death: gas stove

• Avoids self-deception to an

extent

• Has some self-realization

HOW DOES

INEZ LIVE

IN BAD

FAITH?

ESTELLE RIGAULT

• Occupation: society woman

from Paris

• Means of death: pneumonia

• Lives in denial

HOW DOES

ESTELLE

LIVE IN BAD

FAITH?

LACK OF EYELIDS

“You can’t imagine how restful, refreshing, it

[blinking] is. Four thousand little rests per hour.

Four thousand little respites—just think... so that’s

the idea. I am to live without eyelids… no eyelids,

no sleep; it follows, doesn’t it? I shall never sleep

again. But then—how shall I endure my own

company?” (7)

MIRRORS

Inez: “Am I not nicer than your glass?”

Estelle: “Oh, I don’t know. You scare me

rather. My reflection in the glass never did

that; of course, I knew it so well. Like

something I had tamed…” (19)

DISCUSSION

QUESTIONS

WHY DON’T

THEY EXIT?

WHEN IS

HELL

OTHER

PEOPLE?