Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit

570 Words3 Pages
One cannot truly be living unless they have found their purpose, and are actively embodying this purpose in their everyday decisions. Being given a body does not mean one has an identity, and both Garcin and Estelle, two doomed characters of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit,” do not understand this. Garcin and Estelle, unlike their counterpart, Inez, can only find their meaning through others. While it is a fact that these two were “alive,” their eventual placement as each others torturers in an inescapable hell is reflexive of their inability to mold a meaning for themselves. In the flesh, both Garcin and Estelle are present during their respective times on Earth. However, the actions of the two confirms that the universe has only given them