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?