Choices and Consequences

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In No Exit, the characters find themselves condemned to hell due to the choices they made during their lifetimes. Each character engaged in irresponsible and immoral behavior while they were alive. Garcin ridiculed and mistreated his wife, even going as far as bringing another woman home to sleep with while his wife served them coffee in bed. Estelle, although married, ran away with her young lover, had a child with him, and ultimately killed the child in front of him, which drove him to suicide. Inez, a sadist, lived with her cousin and his wife, Florence, and lured Florence away from her cousin. After her cousin died in a tram accident, Inez tormented Florence by insisting their affair caused his death, leading Florence to turn on the gas stove while they slept, resulting in both their deaths. The actions of each character sealed their fate, condemning them to eternal torment by each other's presence.

Appearances vs. Reality

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In No Exit, two characters spend much of the play hiding behind facades, reluctant to acknowledge the real reasons for their damnation. Only Inez is forthright from the beginning, admitting she is a cruel person. Although Garcin is disturbed by his cowardice from the start, he claims ignorance about why he is in hell. He defends his actions by stating he was executed for standing up for his pacifist values. However, the truth is that Garcin tried to escape to Mexico to avoid the war and treated his wife with extreme cruelty. He only admits these truths after being provoked by others.

Estelle initially thinks her presence in hell is a mistake, believing she is there due to dying of pneumonia. Similar to Garcin, she only reveals the truth—that she killed her baby and drove a man to suicide—when pressured by the others. In this play, confronting reality means facing the truth about oneself.

Self-definition and Interpersonal Relationships

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In the ongoing conversations within No Exit, the characters are forced to define themselves through their interactions with each other. Their eyes remain constantly open (there is no blinking in hell), and the lights are perpetually on, with no mirrors present. Trapped in the same cramped, stifling room, they are compelled to engage with one another, seeking some form of validation for their identities. Garcin wants Inez to perceive him as courageous. Estelle desires Garcin to fulfill the role of a man for her. Inez yearns for Estelle to be attracted to her. Since none of them can achieve what they desire from one another without creating conflict with the third, their interconnected desires ensure endless suffering. Garcin hopes that through cooperation, they might find some form of redemption. However, their conflicting personalities make this impossible.

Death and Permanence

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The grim scenario in No Exit arises from the fact that Garcin, Inez, and Estelle are deceased. They find themselves eternally imprisoned in hell, confined to a drawing room together. During the play, an opportunity to escape arises when the door unexpectedly opens. However, they are too scared of the uncertain outcomes to leave. Likewise, they are incapable of evolving or changing as individuals since they are no longer alive. For eternity, they must "exist" with the decisions they made during their lifetimes, endlessly defending these choices to one another.

Existentialism and Self-Definition

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No Exit is not about traditional punishment for sin. There is no consideration of God, and the functionaries of Hell are seen less as demons than as bureaucrats. Jean-Paul Sartre uses the concept of Hell as a semihumorous frame. Here is a torture chamber in the guise of an overheated hotel salon. The bellboy has an uncle to visit in off-hours, the head valet...

(This entire section contains 92 words.)

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in Hell. This ironic frame serves to explore ideas about self-definition and interpersonal relations drawn from existential philosophy. Everything serves in definition of the characters or their situation.

Character Dynamics and Interpersonal Relations

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The details of interior decoration are calculated in terms of the personality triangle Sartre presents. The colors of the sofas are set by Estelle’s dress; her reaction defines her superficial character. Estelle can contemplate infanticide with equanimity but is horrified by blunt speech. She is the vagina dentata incarnate, incapable of love or nurture, seeking to fill herself, a slimy morass into which Garcin fears to sink. Garcin, at the opposite end of the scale, is a macho bully, a man’s man, whose women are only witnesses for his masculinity. Inez holds the sexual middle ground; as a lesbian, she is female, but she competes with the man for the erotic favors of her fellow woman. She is invariably the only one who forces confrontation, while Garcin seeks peace and Estelle admiration.

Vision and Objectification

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The characters are not fully rounded, nor are they meant to be, since they represent concepts of the self seeking its validation in the sight of other people. Sartre did not believe in an afterlife. His attention focused upon human life in the here and now. In his Hell, there is no future, only an eternal present in which to contemplate the past lives that have frozen the characters into cautionary figures. Vision is the sensory metaphor for the process by which each character is rendered an object, frozen and dead to personal freedom and change. The open eyes of the characters are paralyzed; there is no escape from seeing and being seen. Moreover, there are no mirrors, thus no possibility of escaping the vision of others in self-observation. Each character is “onstage” for his fellows, doubly so, since they are actors actually on a stage and caught in the vision of the audience.

Responsibility and Bad Faith

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Garcin put off real life with heroic intentions until he lost his nerve in front of the firing squad; Inez froze herself in the role of lost woman; Estelle chose to live for surface appearances. They all neglected the responsibility of choosing and living authentic lives. There are possibilities of redemption in their attempts at solidarity in nonaggression and love, but they cannot profit from them. Sartre has loaded the dice by presenting them as already dead. The spectator is intimately involved in judging each one for his crimes and bad faith. Yet the spectator also must recognize his own situation of bad faith, with the fundamental difference that continued life gives him the ability to change. When the curtain falls on Garcin’s call to continue, the audience is compromised. Each individual has been warned of the responsibility to choose life in good faith or suffer the hell of other people.

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