Jean Paul Sartre No Exit Essay

In ‘No exit’, Jean-Paul Sartre constructs a version of hell where three characters, Garcin, Estelle, and Inez are trapped together in a room for all of eternity with nothing except each other’s company. The characters and the complex relationships they build in ‘No Exit’ are representative of Sartre’s existentialist philosophy.

Each of the three characters in ‘No Exit’ represent their success and failure through an existentialist viewpoint. Inez, the self proclaimed sadist, was a postal worker in her life and was murdered after she seduced and turned her cousin’s wife against him. Out of the three characters her outlook on life is closest to Sartre’s existentialism. Sartre believed that one’s actions and how they took responsibility for them

Instead of realizing one’s own nature and dealing with it, Estelle choses denial and acceptance through others to be satisfied with her own life. Estelle’s denial is highlighted when she begs, “Please, please don't use that word [the dead]. It's so – so crude. In terribly bad taste, really… If we've absolutely got to mention this – this state of things, I suggest we call ourselves – wait! – absentees.”. Estelle being a young society women lived a very sheltered life after marrying a rich, but much older man to take care of her. Estelle’s first example of bad faith is her desire to hide from the consequences of her action’s where she can not admit she is dead. While Inez and Garcin and relatively quick to confess their sins, it takes Estelle over half the play to admit her crime and why she is in hell. Estelle courted a boy similar to her age and when they had an illegitimate child together, she drowned the baby while the father helplessly watched from a balcony. Later he ends up shooting himself in grief. Estelle knows of her crime and acknowledges hell and whom she thought to be her lover when she states, “I know what you're hid-ing with your hands. I know you've no face left” but instead it was Garcin hiding his face with his hands. She herself knows the horror of her crime and yet when asked why she was in hell she calls it a “ghastly mistake” and conjures a lie. She wants

Garcin who was a self proclaimed womanizer had a complex relationship with Estelle. For a vast majority of the play, Estelle initiated an advance for Garcin but was either shot down by Garcin or stopped by Inez. The advance with the most surprising reaction from all three characters was, “ESTELLE My darling! Please—GARCIN [thrusting her away]: No, let me be. She is between us. I cannot love you when she's watching. ESTELLE Right! In that case, I'll stop her watching. [She picks up the paper-knife from the table, rushes at INEZ and stabs her several times.]” Estelle desperately seeks the attention of her figure of a ‘man’ and even though she is not attracted to Garcin as a person, she craves his attention. This desperation to be recognized is what Estelle hides behind in order to not be seen as the girl who murdered her daughter and cheated on her husband, but instead someone who is worth loving and worth the attention of the people around her. Her obsession with her appearance to others is heightened to the point where she says, “When I talked to people I always made sure there was one near by in which I could see myself. I watched myself talking. And somehow it kept me alert, seeing myself as the others saw me”. Even for simple tasks such as conversations with other people, she made sure to be able to see herself and make sure she is presenting the correct image of