No Exit and Three Other Plays

by Jean-Paul Sartre

Book Overview

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER - Four seminal plays by one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century.

An existential portrayal of Hell in Sartre's best-known play, as well as three other brilliant, thought-provoking works: the reworking of the Electra-Orestes story, the conflict of a young intellectual torn between theory and conflict, and an arresting attack on American racism.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679725164
• ISBN13: 9780679725169
• Release Date: October 1989
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

A Truly Indescribable Experience.

In this small collection of Sartre's most well-loved plays, he touches on topics from personal hell, to ethics, to racism, to misogyny, et cetera. It may not feel so blatant, but his stories and scenarios capture the realism that should be felt while reading, and by the end, you'll feel not only feel like a part of the story, but apart of the conflict, seeking a resolution. When it comes to philosophy, there is a lot to learn and so much to read. With this short collection, you'll expose yourself to a plethora of issues and a point of view from each, helping you yourself begin to think about your own positions on such issues. These issues, I've learned, prove to be some of the greatest challenges to understand and apply to my daily life. Don't cheat yourself out of not only a great book, but a fantastic life lesson. Sartre's writing and ideas are nothing short of fascinating. Whether or not you agree, there is always room to enjoy his art.

Beautiful melancholy

Sartre is sometimes given a reputation that far precedes him, as with many Nobel recipients. These plays are a testament against the skeptic's mindset. "No Exit" is a modern-day interpretation of the antiquated "fire and brimstone" hell we are so accustomed to hearing about. Sartre adroitly picks up on the small idiosyncracies of human behavior and capitalizes on them with his version of hell. Three incompatible personalities are locked in a hot, stuffy hotel room for eternity, unable to get along with one another or reconcile their personal differences. The lights are always a bit too bright, the furniture a bit too stiff, and the wonder at "what lies down the hall" eats at the occupants for eternity. This is a far cry from biblical interpretations of hell, where an individual can mentally will themselves against pain. Instead, Sartre focuses on the interpersonal nature of unhappiness, and gives his spirits "one of those days" for eternity. "Dirty Hands" is perhaps my favorite piece of literature. It plants its focus on a young intellectual revolutionary intent on assassinating a corrupt party leader. As he grows closer to Hoederer, the man he is sent to kill, he comes to realize that pure intellectual theories will always become muddied in the waters of reality. "The Respectful Prostitute" depicts a young woman, a prostitute, who spends the night with a man who turns out to be a politician. The man completes his sordid mission, but the next morning scorns the woman. An lesson in objectivity and the two-faced nature of those who tend to preach loudly. "The Flies" is set in Ancient Greece, but possesses Sartre's aptitude for human behavior. Just as good as all the others, though not as indicative of how humans behave. These are all plays, making them quite easy to read. The characters are not hard to keep straight. The ease of reading doesn't detract from their literary quality. These four plays are elegant simplicity at its finest.

Hell Is What We Make It

No Exit (Huis Clos), is a one-act, four-character play written by Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher, writer, literary critic, social and political activist and leader (with Albert Camus) of the existential movement based in Paris.No Exit, first produced one month before D-Day in 1944, was the second of Sartre's many plays. Translated literally, Huis Clos, means "closed doors."This play represents a tight conflict of characters who need one another and, at the same time, desperately want to get away from one another, yet cannot leave. There is no other modern play that offers such a profound metaphor for the human condition. One would have to go back to Doctor Faustus or The Bacchae to encounter such a metaphor, and in the present day, only Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest can rival No Exit in its existential metaphor of the human condition.In No Exit, three characters are doomed to spend eternity together in a Second Empire drawing room; Sartre's metaphorical hell. This room is devoid of mirrors, windows and books. There is no means of extinguishing the lights and the characters have even lost their eyelids. They have nothing left but one another and the hell (or heaven) they choose to create.The three characters who come to inhabit the room are Joseph Garcin, a war defector and wife abuser; Inez Serrano, a working-class Spanish woman, who is slowly revealed to be a lesbian; and Estelle Rigault, a member of the French upper class. Sartre brilliantly gives the characters dual reasons for their eternal damnation: first, each committed abominable acts while alive, and second, and perhaps more importantly, each failed to live his or her life in an authentic manner.As each character is brought into the room by the valet, each begins to develop an entangled, triangular relationship with the other two. All three slowly come to the realization that each is the others' eternal torturer. Each character wants something from another that the other cannot, or will not, surrender. Thus, all three are doomed to a perpetual stalemate of torture.Sartre's philosophical tenets in Being and Nothingness (L'Etre et le Néant), are beautifully interwoven into the fabric of No Exit. Through dialogue and action, Sartre transforms his philosophical assertions into dialectic form, pitting Inez against both Garcin and Estelle in an eternal battle of ideologies. The characters come to embody Sartre's tenets, and as they interact, the author's ideas come to life. The tenuous balance the characters face between needing the others to define themselves, and the desire to preserve their own freedom is developed throughout the play, but is never resolved.No Exit would have been far less meaningful, metaphorically, if the one locked door had not swung open at the end of the play, showing us that the continuation of any state of existence is as much a matter of choice as it is anything else.The biggest question No Exit se

Human-behaviour

In Huit-Clos, Jean-Paul Sartre makes an analysis of human-behaviour. The scene takes place in a cell where three people are faced with each other. The reader is immediatly impregnated of different personalities and understands the fears of each one to stay eternaly together because, like Jean-Paul Sartre concludes: "The hell is others."

huis-clos

le huis clos c' est un tres bon livre et vous conseille vivement a le lire.L 'auter traite des sujets tres interessants comme la faute de sincerite des gens quand ils n'ont pas beaucoup de pression sur eux.L'existentialisme est aussi present, mais je prefere de ne rien dire de plus et que vouz lisiez le livre.

Huis Clos - Others are hell

Jean-Paul Sartre is an existentialist first, then an author. So his books are just the transposition of his philosophy on paper. In Huis Clos, Jean-Paul Sartre explores the human behavior throughout the cowardness of each man and woman that we are. Instead of facing our true reality, we are facing three people who have died and who are encaptured in a grey-looking cell, without windows, without life. Now, for the first time, they have to face each other and then they have to close their eyes to seek the conscience within them. It is very hard to dislike this book, because it is a humanist work, a book that show us the true existence of man on Earth. And I shall add that such a book with such a subject deserves at least 9 out of ten. Pascal Tremblay