ipl-logo

Theme Of Suffering In No Exit Sartre

1478 Words6 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Importance Of Interpersonal Relations

Psychological suffering versus physical torture is one of the central themes in No Exit by French playwright Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre’s famous quote that “hell is other people” (45) is illustrated through the interactions among Garcin, Inez and Estelle. Through psychological suffering the characters’ self-destructive flaws are revealed which ultimately emphasizes how each of them are responsible for their own fate. The characters have the freedom of will to help redeem each other but choose not to. To subtly reinforce this theme, Sartre uses the setting of a locked room and the furnishings that cannot be moved to symbolize eternal suffering and the stare of the characters to judge and torment each other. Garcin arrives first in hell, and he is expecting physical torture, but soon realizes that his personal hell is about psychological torture. Garcin asks the Valet “[w]here are the instruments of torture . . . the racks and red-hot pincers?” (4). He slowly begins to experience the small irritating details …show more content…

She says “you’ve no right to inflict the sight of your fear on me” (9). Actually, the characters do become each other’s mirrors, and they are each other’s torturers. When Estelle arrives, she complains about the garish colors on the sofas in the room, which bother her. The details add up to layers of irritation that will drive the characters mad over time. Garcin is horrified by the prospect of being constantly observed by Inez and Estelle. Garcin asks: “You will always see me?” Inez responds: “Always” (45.) Garcin suggests that each person should stare at the carpet and forget about the others. Inez responds: “How utterly absurd! I feel you there, in every pore. Your silence clamors in my ears… [You’re] everywhere, and every sound comes to me soiled, because you’ve intercepted it . . .”

Show More
Related

Analysis Of Jimmy Santiago Baca's Who Understands Me But Me

764 Words | 4 Pages

Immediately from the start, the unknown oppressors attempt to isolate the author by “build[ing] walls higher” and “paint[ing] the windows black” so that he does not establish communication with the outside world. Subsequently, the oppressors locking of his cage represents his imprisonment (Constantakis lines16-17: 278). In lines 5-9, the author’s “heart” gets “rip[ped] open” and his life “crush[ed]”, so that he does not have any goals to live for, and so that he does not live his life as he wants. The captors describe him as “beastly and fiendish”, which serves as a mental restraint to the author’s outward attitude; while having “no passage out of hell” indicates that the author will remain stuck with his woes until he can no longer handle them. The imagery creates an idea of superiority for the oppressors over the author, and their cruelty through torture.

Read More

Rhetorical Analysis Of Hell Hole By Atul Gawande

625 Words | 3 Pages

In his essay, “Hell Hole” Atul Gawande informs his audience how damaging solitary confinement can be to the human body and character. To make his argument he uses examples of prisoner’s solitary confinement stories and people who have been similar situations. Gawande explains to his readers the difference phases and problems the human body goes through considering the lack of human interaction. The writer makes a compelling argument that solitary confinement is detrimental to the human’s mental state and physical well-being. His argument includes impressive diction, vivid emotional appeals, and logos appeal to guide his readers through his essay.

Read More

Edward Hirsch's Execution Poem Analysis

566 Words | 3 Pages

The feeling of astonishment and awe are directed into the speaker’s impersonal tone. During the poem, the speaker leaves out emotional ties in

Read More

Overview Of C. S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters

789 Words | 4 Pages

In C.S. Lewis’ acclaimed “masterpiece,” The Screwtape Letters, an uncle and the devil’s worker by the name of Screwtape wrote an abundant amount of letters to his nephew, Wormwood. Both Screwtape and Wormwood are “tempters” who are trying to lead Wormwood’s “patient” into their “father’s home,” also known as hell. The Screwtape Letters, greatly told during a crucial time in Europe, portrays the main characters as imperfect, conflicting uncle and nephew, who’s biggest conflicting issue are themselves. The Screwtape Letters, written in the perspective of Screwtape, helped depict the three main characters’, Screwtape, Wormwood and “The Patient” personalities and actions throughout the story.

Read More

Research Paper On Night By Elie Wiesel

1079 Words | 5 Pages

Everybody has experienced a life changing moment at some point or another, but nothing compares to the nightmare Elie Wiesel went through. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie attempts to survive through hell on earth while living during the holocaust. Elie Wiesel lives in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, and he is a very religious Jewish teenage boy who studies Torah and Kabbalah, and has faith in God. Elie and his family, being very optimistic, don't believe that the Nazis will come to their town once they hear that there is Nazi invasion. But they do, in 1944, and things change drastically.

Read More

Christian Religious Beliefs In Dante's Inferno

1247 Words | 5 Pages

Dante’s Inferno is an epic poem by Durante “Dante” degli Alighieri, written in the 1300s. He wrote a trilogy, known as the Divine Comedy, consisting of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. Dante was inspired by many events and issues happening at that time, such as the war between Guelphs and Ghibellines, the Battle of Montaperti, and Christian religious beliefs. In this paper, I will explore the first book, Inferno, on the topic of Hell and how the sinners had a significant impact on Dante’s journey through Hell. In Circle 5: Styx, Canto VIII, Filippo Argenti, a sinner of Wrathful, helped Dante to symbolize to readers his anger towards Black Guelphs, political enemies of the White Guelphs.

Read More

The Great Divorce: A Literary Analysis

1235 Words | 5 Pages

On the bus, the narrator encounters various people who reveal what the nature of Hell is. First, the narrator meets a youth. After a puzzling comment from the boy, the narrator asks, “Do they like [Grey Town]?” (Lewis 469). The youth is convinced that the damned like Hell “as much as they’d like anything” (Lewis 469).

Read More

Allusions In Frankenstein

1639 Words | 7 Pages

Victor’s feelings of both “anguish and despair” reflect the severity of the emotional and mental turmoil that Victor is enduring due to the monster. “Despair” means the loss of hope. “Hell” is where there is an absence of God. Both “Hell” and “despair” reflect Victor’s stray away from religion, hope, and humanity because of his own creation. The consequences of Victor’s actions are not only the death of the people he loves, but also involves Victor’s guilt, and the feelings that result out of his guilt.

Read More

The Bubonic Plague In The 19th Century

1484 Words | 6 Pages

There is no escape from the war with Death in “The Triumph of Death.” Men and women in the landscape on fire attempt to run away from death but they are outnumbered and their efforts are useless. Artists like Bruegel, during the Black Death never tired of showing their audiences and viewers that death is perversely creative and at the same time unavoidable and cruel to civilization (Museo Nacional Del

Read More

Women In Jean Paul-Sartre's No Exit

1324 Words | 6 Pages

However, in hell the Estelle and Inez shift the power dynamics, disrupting the typical power balance Garcin experienced on earth. This changes how he acts. Instead of possessing superiority and abusing women, he transitions into a “peacekeeper” in hell. However, his real insecurities eventually come to the surface. Thus, while Garcin seemingly redeems himself in hell of his emotionally abusive behavior on earth, he ends up revealing his true, insecure nature.

Read More

Contrapasso In Dantes Inferno

1345 Words | 6 Pages

The prisoners receive a thematically equivalent punishment to their actions in their previous lives. As the deeper circles of hell are populated by the worst inmates, the concept of contrapasso elicits exceedingly jarring punishments the further Dante travels. The nine total circles of hell are large enough to populate a lifetime 's worth of the world’s sins. When Dante is introduced to the first circle of hell, reserved for pagans, it is clear that the inmates are bound eternally to live in the Inferno, for even those who did not conciously commit sin, are forced to stay in this realm. In his real life, Alighieri was highly vocal about political stances.

Read More

Analysis Of Dante's Inferno: A Comparison Of Greek

1040 Words | 5 Pages

The “intellect” itself can be deduced as being God. This version of Hell, however, was born from Dante’s mind after being banished from Florence. Much of the Inferno is written as satire, but the morals it holds still present themselves within the larger Catholic ideology. In Thomas Thayer’s The Origin and History of the Doctrine of Endless Punishment, he conducts a detailed analysis of the Bible’s hell and it’s origins.

Read More

Isolation In The Yellow Wallpaper

570 Words | 3 Pages

In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the female narrator is greatly troubled by the suppression of her imagination by her husband and her ultimate isolation due to this subordination. These feelings are reflected through the author’s use of setting as the narrator’s dreary and malicious descriptions of the house and the wallpaper mirrors her emotional position. Throughout the reading, the reader is exposed to the narrator’s in-depth loss of touch with reality as she sinks further and further into her own reality. As she becomes more isolated, her descriptions of the house become more abstract as she begins to focus on the wallpaper and starts to see herself as being hidden behind it.

Read More

What Is Feminism In The Yellow Wallpaper

1155 Words | 5 Pages

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a first-person written feminist short story that critiques and condemns the nineteenth-century American male attitude towards women and their physical as well as mental health issues. In the short story, Perkins Gilman juxtaposes universal gender perspectives of women with hysterical tendencies using the effects of gradually accumulating levels of solitary confinement; a haunted house, nursery, and the yellow wallpaper to highlight the American culture of inherited oblivious misogyny and promote the equality of sexes. The narrator and her husband, John, embody the general man and woman of the nineteenth century. John, like the narrator’s brother and most men, is “a physician of high

Read More

No Exit By Jean Paul Sartre Existentialism

1197 Words | 5 Pages

The voices of history and tradition are present in quite a few of Jean-Paul Sartre’s pieces. Jean-Paul Sartre, born Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, was a very complex man. In the 1940’s, Sartre served in the military during World War II. The war heavily influenced Sartre, causing him to relate many of his pieces to his experiences in World War II. Sartre was a French philosopher, and was a major contributor to existentialism - the 20th century way of thinking.

Read More

More about Theme Of Suffering In No Exit Sartre

Related Topics

Open Document