[In the following essay, Braun studies "The Wall" in an effort to better understand Sartre's psychoanalytic theories, particularly those concerning the emotion of fear.]

Finding a number of similarities between Sartre's short story "Le Mur" and Andreyev's "The Seven Who Were Hanged," this writer wrote Sartre some time ago to ask whether, in fact, he had been inspired by the Russian writer. Sartre, much too occupied with more important literary duties, did not have time to reply; but Simone de Beauvoir, who has often acted as his secretary, answered for him. In her courteous but direct reply, in which she denied the influence of Andreyev, she wrote: "En fait il a été inspiré pour le Mur par . . . le Traité de psychologie de Dumas au chapitre des émotions: la peur."

The clue supplied to the elusive search revealed two important bits of information: the name of an important psychologist who, during Sartre's stay as a student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, was the latter's professor of psychology and, secondly, the fact that fear was the principal theme and framework of reference for this short story, first published in the Nouvelle Revue Française (July 1937, pp. 38-62). This information did raise, however, in the mind of the present writer several questions. Why, for one thing, was the indicated source not common knowledge? Why, too, in the several psychological studies on Sartre, studies which include the names of those psychologists who had influenced him, was the name of Georges Dumas never referred to? Finally, why did Simone de Beauvoir, who, in her La Force de l'Age, scrupulously indicated (even in footnotes) the sources of Sartre's works, including those of the other short stories in the volume Le Mur, not shed any light on the genesis of the short story we are presently considering?

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These are indeed interesting questions. More important, however, than finding the answers to these questions are the problems relating, first, to Sartre's psychology—since his almost exclusive preoccupation prior to 1938 was with psychology—and, second, to the way in which Dumas' notion of fear influenced Sartre. An examination of the latter problem is basic, of course, for a proper evaluation and explication of Sartre's "Le Mur."

Simone de Beauvoir sheds some biographical light in La Force de l'Age on Sartre's intellectual formation. He had read Freud, Adler, and Jung at a time when, in the late Twenties, his generation was being drawn to psychoanalysis; but he was opposed to the psychoanalytic view which "decomposed" man instead of understanding him, and to the theory of the unconscious which, according to him, crushed human liberty. If, therefore, he was more drawn in 1927 to Jaspers (whose treatise on Psychopathology, written in 1913, had just been translated), it was because the latter "saisit des relations singulières, par des intuitions, plus affectives que rationnelles." With regard to Georges Dumas, it is interesting, to say the least, that Simone de Beauvoir, referring to his psychology and to his theory of the "monisme endocrinien" (associated by him with a "dualisme cartésien"), calls it "inacceptable"! As she sees it, then, Sartre viewed the individual as a "totalité synthétique et indivisible," whose conduct was to be judged "globalement." Expressed differently, "l'individualisme est une prise de position par rapport à la totalité du monde."

On the plane of emotions, therefore, Sartre tried to prove that they do not determine our actions but rather that they constitute a certain way in which we choose to live these relations. This is the significance of his early psychological studies as well as of his basic Esquisse d'une théorie des emotions (1939). As an "experiment in phenomenological psychology," the latter work is a psychological interpretation of emotions, which are a form of existence of consciousness. To recapitulate, then, Sartre's existential psychoanalysis rejects the theory of the unconscious and believes that man is conscious of all his acts. Of course, what Sartre has in mind is that an emotional (i.e. non-reflective) consciousness is a certain way of apprehending the world; but a non-reflective action is not an unconscious one.

Dumas' position on emotions, though stated less clearly, is not basically different from that of Sartre. In his Traité de Psychologie, he says, in part: ". . . notre état affectif est à chaque instant déterminé par les rapports du donné matériel, sensoriel ou représentatif avec nos tendances et nos inclinations." (italics mine)

On fear, as one of the emotions, Dumas leaves no doubt as to his interpretation. Although he distinguishes between active and passive fear, he finds that the depressive form of fear is characterized "par une dépression subite de l'appareil neuro-musculaire volontaire." (italics mine) And the only positive reactions he finds associated with this type of fear are "less spasmes des muscles de la vie organique, muscles intestinaux, muscles vésicaux, muscles vasomoteurs, d'ù évacuations fécales et urinaires." Such acts, then, if we interpret them correctly, are, even when the subject is immobile and incapable of fleeing, conscious on the non-reflective level.

Sartre, too, sees the body as using a form of incantation when it wishes to free itself of fear; in other words, it transforms itself in order to transform the object of fear. This act, too, is a conscious one on the non-reflective level, since the body is directed by the emotional consciousness to change its relationship to the world so that the qualities brought on by the world be changed. Fear is the individual's freedom and so is his choice of "flight."

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It is well to remember, then, that, prior to World War II, Sartre published studies in psychological theory and that, at least with regard to the emotion of fear, he gave evidence of having been influenced by his psychology teacher. When, then, he gave up these studies in order to write "Le Mur," the subject of this investigation, as well as the subsequent stories that were to appear in the volume Le Mur (1939), his interest in and unique approach to psychology were to be their main source. This is true, of course, even of his La Nausée. In a word, what we hope to underline is the fact that critics have often missed the point that Sartre's existential psychoanalysis is important as a psychology, in theory and, especially, in its application to his stories.

"Le Mur" contains a wealth of psychological observations, and its real subject is that of fear. The physical reactions to fear are presented within an existential framework as the narrator describes his own experiences as well as those of his two comrades who, like himself, have been taken captive and are waiting to die. Juan's trembling lips and nostrils, Pablo's (the narrator's) perspiring in the cold, his shirt sticking to his skin, while he feels nothing, Tom's incessant talking, his urinating in his pants without apparently being aware of it; later, when the lieutenant comes for him and Juan who are to be shot, his spontaneous jumping and the tears rolling down the cheeks of Juan—all this is presented as banal physical disorders provoked immediately by a non-reflective—in Sartrean terms—emotional consciousness. These reactions, on this plane, are those of fear of something on the outside that is not controlled by the self, and follow pretty closely the theory of Dumas, who states that fear can assert itself "devant un danger possible, avec un minimum de représentations, et son expression physiologique . . . peut être cependant très accusée." In other words, the body uses its own incantation to free itself of fear. But Sartre views these reactions, in the words of Simone de Beauvoir, as those of "la complaisance," the equivalent, for him, of "bad faith." (La Force de l'Age)

More important for Sartre, as Simone de Beauvoir puts it, is "la signification d'un visage." The fact that he regarded seriously the interpretation of physiognomy is clearly seen in "Le Mur" when the narrator, referring to Juan, describes the latter's fear in the following manner: "il avait un visage trop fin et la peur, la souffrance l'avaient défiguré, elles avaient tordu tous ses traits . . . Il . . . était devenu gris: son visage et ses mains étaient gris." And the narrator himself wonders about his own facial expression and whether Tom is afraid to see him as he was, "gris et suant."

Following Sartre's phenomenological psychology, fear, then, is not, at first, consciousness of being afraid, but rather a physical or non-reflective emotional consciousness. Only when passing from this stage to that of awareness does fear become a reflective emotional consciousness, as can clearly be seen in "Le Mur." This, of course, involves the play of consciousness upon consciousness, of mind upon mind, the relationship between the "en-soi," "pour-soi," "autrui"—the whole interplay effected by the Look, and the role of the human body as flesh which loses its transcendency before death, end of all "projects."

Not ever having been faced with death before, the narrator declares he had never before thought of it. There is, in other words, no previous memory of such an experience which could induce fear in him. It is only when he begins to observe Tom's bundle of flesh, a "masse de chair tendre comme dans une motte de beurre," and to imagine gunshots or the bayonet going through it, that Tom's body becomes an Object ("en-soi") for him.

It is well to recall, in this connection, that the body itself is at first revealed to us in its immanence by the Other, its possibilities being replaced by probabilities, and that only in the subsequent process of reflection, resulting from the Look of others, do we discover the "en-soi" dimension of our own body.

Hence, the consciousness of Tom's body is then associated with that of his own body—or lack of it since, as he puts it, "je ne sentais plus mes épaules ni mes bras . . . j'avais l'impression qu'il me manquait quelque chose." Not yet fully "aware" of the situation, he wonders whether one suffers a great deal in dying and, bringing imagination rather than memory into play, pictures to himself the "grêle brûlante" of the bullets going through his body. What he wishes, however, is "to understand"—that is, what Death does to the body. Only when the doctor appears on the scene, and when he realizes that he is being observed by him, does the narrator begin to feel crushed by an enormous weight; neither the thought of death nor fear accounts for this feeling; rather, as he puts it, "c'était anonyme. Les pommettes me brûlaient et j'avais mal au crâne." Looking at Tom, with his head now buried in his hands, and at Juan, whose arm the doctor takes, slyly running his hand down to the wrist to get his pulse, he reacts with anger. Sensing, moreover, that he is being looked at, he returns the look. The more conscious he becomes of being the Object of the doctor's fixed gaze, of being watched as drops of perspiration, in spite of the cold, roll down his cheeks, and, at the same time, of feeling nothing while the doctor appears proud just because he feels cold, the more does his anger rise and the more humiliated does he feel. To the doctor, he is an Object, a piece of flesh manifesting a quasi-pathological state of terror; but, apparently assuming a rôle, he tries to convince himself that "ce n'était pas la crainte de souffrir qui me faisait transpirer." Unlike his comrades Juan and Tom, both of whom are obsessed with the fear of suffering which, to them, is associated with death, the narrator watches them both. Juan is asking the doctor whether the pain lasts for a long time, and Tom keeps speaking incessantly, without daring to lift his eyes toward Pablo (the narrator), for fear of seeing him "gris et suant." The play of consciousness upon consciousness—the "pour-soi" having become an "en-soi"—is clearly brought out when the narrator, echoing the Sartrean theme of "l'enfer, c'est les autres," says: "nous étions pareils et pires que des miroirs l'un pour l'autre." As the awareness grows on all that the doctor "était venu regarder nos corps, des corps qui agonisaient tout vifs," Tom, trying desperately to understand the meaning of death, sees his own facticity with eyes that view his body as a corpse. Listening to the latter's visual articulation of the body's disintegration, the narrator now sees him, for the first time, as something strange: "il portait sa mort sur sa figure." Death begins, in effect, to take on a dimension of reflective awareness as the three now look at the doctor who, representationally speaking, is life. "Il avait les gestes d'un vivant, les soucis d'un vivant; il grelottait dans cette cave, comme devaient grelotter les vivants; il avait un corps obéissant et bien nourri. Nous autres nous ne sentions plus guère nos corps—plus de la même façon en tout cas." The fact that consciousness of fear takes hold of the hitherto "brave" narator is now brought out in another contrast—between his imagination and memory, his future and past. Not wanting to die "comme un bête," but wishing to "understand," he tries to dismiss from his mind the thought of what would happen the following dawn, with death; he has in his imagination a vivid picture of the cannon shots, sees himself being dragged to the wall and resisting. And he suddenly remembers, very much like Camus's "L'Etranger" how he ran "après le bonheur, après les femmes, après la liberté." Previously he has also recollected his joys on the beach, in the sun and shade, at the bar. Death now begins to appear to him through objects which he sees as "moins denses qu'à l'ordinaire"; and his own body he now observes as that of an Other, as "une espèce de pesanteur." The thought of his own perspiring and "grey" body leaves him with a feeling of horror—a realization of his being cut off, even from the Look of the Other that has hitherto sustained his existence.

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At the heart of this story, then, fear exists by virtue of concrete facts of consciousness. This consciousness, as depicted by Sartre, is dependent upon the Look, through which conflict in human relationships and the domination of the Object are also brought out in bold reilef. Death as a theme has always been one of Sartre's concerns, witness his Huis-Clos, Les Mains sales, and Les Morts sans sépulture. But the fear of death, which is the central theme in "Le Mur," is the fear of physical pain on the more immediate level; in the final analysis, however, it is, as Jolivet reminds us [in Le Problème de la mort chez M. Heidegger et J. P. Sartre, 1950], "de tomber sans rémission 'sous un insupportable regard.'" And since fear of death is also fear of the unknown, the reflective emotional awareness of it is brilliantly dramatized in this story thanks to the Sartrean psychology of the Look or of consciousness. In so doing, Sartre, bearing the initial stamp of Dumas' influence, has succeeded in adding to it his own approach and originality.