Analysis of Jean-Paul Sartres No Way Out (2023)

It's a kind of death in life to be surrounded by constant preoccupation with judgments and actions that you don't even want to change. In fact, as long as we live, I wanted to demonstrate through the absurd what freedom means to us, that is, H. the importance of changing our actions through other actions. Whatever circle of hell we live in, I believe we are free to get out of it. And if people don't escape, they stay there voluntarily. This is how they choose to live in hell.

—Jean-Paul Sartre, Preface to the Deutsche Gramaphon recordingNo Exit

Although the drama was only a small part of Jean-Paul Sartre's remarkable body of work, which spanned the central texts of French existentialism—the philosophical movement he named and led—in the form of novels, essays, and an almost continuous stream of articles, en Sartre is the only philosopher to illustrate his ideas in literary works. Of your nine piecesNo Exitit is central, both as a crucial text applying the philosophical principles that dominated the post-World War II era, and in formulating a new kind of drama that profoundly influenced the theater of the second half of the 20th century. Scholar Robert Solomon calledNo Exit"one of philosophy's most profound contributions to theatre", while the Irish critic Vivien Mercier has suggested that all of Samuel Beckett's great works, and thus the theater of the absurd, are ultimately descended from him.No ExitThus, it commands attention as a vehicle for his influential ideas and dramatic methods that opened up new possibilities for the theater.

No Exitand the ideas that generated it stem from Sartre's attempt to understand the moral and metaphysical implications of the German occupation of France during World War II. Born in Paris in 1905, Sartre was the only child of a naval officer who died when Sartre was just 15 months old. His mother, a second cousin of German-born theologian, musicologist, humanist and Nobel Prize winner Albert Schweitzer, raised her son with the help of her grandparents. One of Sartre's early intellectual influences was his grandfather, Charles Schweitzer, a professor of German studies who raised his granddaughter and stimulated Sartre's love of literature and his intellectual ambition. The central trauma of Sartre's childhood occurred when, in 1916, his mother married a man Sartre despised. Sartre would feel abandoned and bereft in his home, feelings that would later figure prominently as an existential fear of a life without purpose. Sartre attended the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied philosophy and met fellow student Simone de Beauvoir, with whom he had a lifelong personal and intellectual relationship. Sartre spent much of the 1930s teaching philosophy and studying the works of the German philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, who, along with Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard, anticipated many of the key concepts of existentialism. Sartre's prewar philosophical writings reflect the influence of Husserl's phenomenology and focus on the functioning and structure of consciousness. sartre's first novelnausea(1938;nausea), describes a man's reaction to the absurdity of existence and his collection of stories.Wall(1939;Wall) offers various explorations of relationships, sexuality, madness, and the involvement of human agency, scenarios that presage an analysis of the human condition that Sartre would develop in existentialism.

At the outbreak of the war, Sartre enlisted in the army, was captured by the Germans, and spent nine months in a prisoner of war camp. There he began his career as a playwright, writing, directing and acting in a Christmas play for his prisoners of war.Bariona or The Son of Thunder(Bariona or The Son of Thunder). The work adapts the nativity story as a context to illustrate the imperatives of human freedom and the need to resist oppression. Sartre will later insist that his experience as a prisoner of war was a crucial and positive experience in his personal and philosophical development, and the work anticipates a new commitment that was beginning to dominate Sartre's thought. Released in 1941, Sartre returned to occupied Paris and joined the Resistance. Working on the Basic Existential Treatisebe and nothing(be and nothing) Sartre conceived his second work in 1942,To fly(the flies), like the first, on the theme of freedom and resistance, but based on a rereading of Aeschyluslibations. In Sartre's version, the fly-ridden community of Argos, tormented as divine punishment for permitting the murder of Agamemnon and accepting Aegisthus' tyranny, is redeemed and freed by Orestes, who defies supernatural authority and takes responsibility for his revenge against his mother and her lover. Assume Sartre later argued that his interpretation of the Orestes story was intended to offer moral support to resistance fighters, while also reflecting a critique of the French moral dilemma under occupation that would provide the key concepts of existentialism. In response to the sense of helplessness and despair felt by the French under German occupation, existentialism recognizes that even in the worst circumstances, people still have choices, and therefore freedom. Human consciousness, Sartre argues, gains meaning through choices, and each is responsible for considering the implications of choices made or not made and for fully accepting the consequences. Evasion leads to inauthentic action, deceit, or what Sartre calls "bad faith." A call to action and responsibility under an oppressive regime that denied existentialism as expressed by Sartre and fellow writer Albert Camus, whom Sartre met at a performance.the flies,it would serve as a persuasive response to the horrors of war, which reduced free will and responsibility.

Sartre's next workNo Exit, is a haunting parable that embodies key concepts of existentialism. In it, Sartre made a virtue of the conditions of the French theater under occupation. Censorship limited what could be said on stage, and practical considerations, including curfews and limited resources, limited how. Actress Gaby Sylvia, who played Estelle inNo Exit, he recalled that the play arose when Camus Sartre asked for a short play with four characters to be staged at friends' houses:

What can you find in each room? A sofa, a small table, armchairs, a fireplace and sometimes a Barbedian bronze sculpture. So much for the whole. There would be no rest due to the curfew. next need. There must be a reason these four characters are in a living room together and they can't leave it. "We are going to throw them to hell," Sartre told himself. And in two weeks at a table in [Café] Flore wroteNo Exit.

(Video) Sartre: "Hell is other people" EXPLAINED | Philosophy & Psychoanalysis

Sartre's own account, which he recalled many years later, differs slightly:

When writing a play there are always random circumstances and deep needs. The accidental circumstance when I wroteNo ExitIn 1943 or early 1944 it was the fact that he had three friends for whom he wanted to write a play without giving any of them a bigger role than the others. In other words, I wanted them to be on stage together all the time, because I said to myself, "If one of them leaves the stage, he thinks the other two will have better roles in his absence." , and I said to myself: "How can you put three characters with no way out and keep them on stage forever until the end of the play?" That's when I came up with the idea of ​​putting them through hell and turning each of them into a torturer to turn the other two. This is the incidental cause.

Originally called "Les Autres" (The Others), about characters trapped in a cellar during an attack, Sartre changed the setting to Hell, which resembled the Parisian hotel room where the play was first rehearsed. Directed by Camus, who also initially played the role of Garcin,No Exitit eventually opened with a different cast and director at the 335-seat Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier on the eve of the Normandy invasion, to hostile reviews. One reviewer commented that "the play self-censors because it's too dull", while others used adjectives like "outrageous", "lazy", "venereal" and "sickly dark" to describe it. After the liberation of Paris in August 1944, the play became considerably more appreciated as a defiant drama that represented both the spirit of war and a new type of drama.

Sartre described this new French drama in a lecture he gave in the United States in 1946, Forgers of Myths, in which he called for the nineteenth-century psychological theater of characteres (personalities) to be replaced by "a situation theater“:

Since we are primarily concerned with the situation, our theater shows exactly where it peaks. We don't waste time on scholarly investigations, we don't need to record the imperceptible development of a character or a plot: one doesn't come to death gradually, one finds it suddenly - and as one slowly approaches politics or love degrees, so acute problems that appear suddenly do not require progression. By taking our dramatis personae and launching them at the height of their conflicts from the very first scene, we return to the familiar pattern of classical tragedy, which always springs into action at the exact moment that it is heading for catastrophe.

In which it can serve both as a summary descriptionNo Exitand many of the works that would follow, Sartre summarizes:

Our works are intense and short, focused on a single event; There are few players and the story is compressed into a short time, sometimes just a few hours. As a result, they obey a kind of "three-unit rule", which has only been slightly rejuvenated and modified. A single stage, few appearances, few exits, intense discussions between characters who passionately defend their individual rights: this is what separates our works from the brilliant Broadway fantasies.

(Video) Sartre/No Exit/summary and analysis

No Exitit begins with the South American journalist Garcin being shown by a servant to a bright, windowless living room, where three sofas are placed in front of a fireplace with a heavy bronze statue. Garcin asks where the "red-hot shelves and tongs" are, and despite the respectable establishment and care of the valet, it quickly becomes clear that this is hell where Garcin was buried for all eternity. He is soon joined by Inez, a lesbian, and Estelle, a fashionable socialite. Everyone sits on one of the sofas and tells the cause of death: Estelle from pneumonia, Inez from smoke from a gas stove, and Garcin from 12 bullets. To pass the time, Garcin suggests they speculate why they were convicted. Estelle says that despite being married to an older man, she had an affair and Garcin, who ran an anti-war newspaper, claims that he was executed for his treacherous views. Inez accuses the two of not telling the whole truth, insisting that "the three of us are criminals, murderers. We're in hell, my pets; they never make mistakes and people don't get convicted of anything." Inez sensitively suggests that they torture themselves. To counteract this possibility, Garcin suggests that "each of us stay in his corner, ignoring the others" and thus "work on our salvation by looking within ourselves." forced into a sense of interdependence, but in a love triangle that guarantees their suffering. Inez is attracted to Estelle, who has long relied on men to validate her self-esteem. Correspondingly attracted to her former lover of women Garcin, Estelle (and Garcin) find themselves constantly thwarted by the scorned and misanthropic Inez. Aware of the futility of her situation, Garcin takes the opportunity to reconcile with himself and proposes that they sincerely confess why they were convicted. He admits that he abused his wife and was shot not because of his pacifist principles, but because he tried to save himself by running away; Inez confesses to having betrayed her cousin by seducing her wife and torturing her with her death; Estelle admits that she had a child with her by her lover, whom she murdered, causing her lover to commit suicide.

A philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre

Main theories of Jean-Paul Sartre

Existentialist movement in literature.

Faced with the shared knowledge of these shocking truths about themselves, each yearns to escape and shake off the other's criticism, but when the living room door is flung open, they make no move to get out. Garcin explains that he must stay to prove himself to Inez and reverse her judgment of her cowardice: "Only you two have to think of me. She-she doesn't count. They're the ones that count, you're the one." only". who hates me, if you believe in me, I am saved. Driven to the brink of self-awareness and genuine self-acceptance, Garcin achieves a harrowing realization that ends with the play's most famous line:

So this is hell. She would never have believed it. Do you remember everything they told us about the torture chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning loam”? fairy tale! No need for red-hot pokers. Hell is - other people!

When validation and identity come from others, others become Hell, a state where torture is not inflicted by demons, but rather self-inflicted and unavoidable. As Sartre noted, “Relationships with other people, rigidity and freedom. . . are the three themes of the work. I want you to remember that when you hear that hell is other people."

No ExitAn intense and condensed dramatic parable, it presents the central existential truth that each individual must ultimately face their own truth and consequences, forced into an inevitable encounter with others who provide the standards for moral judgment. In the closed space of the stage that reflects the closed self, Sartre presents a modern moral game by foreseeing the themes and methods that emerge from the implications of an absurd universe and a search for new meanings.

What: Daniel S. BurtThe Drama 100 A ranking of the greatest plays of all time

Categories:dramatic criticism,literature,Philosophy

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