No Exit
Jean-Paul Sartre
JEAN Paul Sartre’s No Exit was first performed at the Vieux-Colombier in May 1944, just before the liberation of Paris. Three characters, a man and two women, find themselves in hell, which for them is a living-room with Second Empire furniture. Each of the characters needs the other two in order to create some illusion about himself. Since existence, for Sartre, is the will to project oneself into the future-to create one’s future-the opposite of existence, where man has no power to create his future, his hell. This is the meaning of the Sartrean hell in the morality play No Exit. Garcin’s sin had been cowardice, and in hell he tries to use the two women, who are locked up forever with him in the same room, under the same strong light, as mirrors in which he will see a complacent and reassuring picture of himself.
This play, an example of expert craftmanship so organized that the audience learns very slowly the facts concerning the three characters, is Sartre’s indictment of the social comedy and the false role that each man plays in it. The most famous utterance in the play, made by Garcin, when he says that hell is other people, l’enfer, c’est les autres, is, in the briefest form possible, Sartre’s definition of man’s fundamental sin. When the picture a man has of himself is provided by those who see him, in the distorted image of himself that they give back to him, he has rejected what the philosopher has called reality. He has, moreover, rejected the possibility of projecting himself into his future and existing in the fullest sense. In social situations we play a part that is not ourself. If we passively become that part, we are thereby avoiding the important decisions and choices by which personality should be formed.
After confessing her sins to Garcin, Inès acknowledges her evil and concludes with a statement as significant as Garcin’s definition of hell. She needs the suffering of others in order to exist. (Moi, je suis méchante: ça veut dire que j’ai besoin de la souffrance des autres pour exister…) The game a man plays in society, in being such and such a character, is pernicious in that he becomes caught in it. L’homme s’englue is a favorite expression of Sartre. The viscosity (viscosité) of such a social character is the strong metaphor by which Sartre depicts this capital sin and which will end by making it impossible for man to choose himself, to invent himself freely. The drawing-room scene in hell, where there is no executioner because each character tortures the other two, has the eeriness of a Gothic tale, the frustration of sexuality, the pedagogy of existentialist morality. The least guilty of the three seems to be Garcin, and he suffers the most under the relentless intellectualizing and even philosophizing of Inès. At the end of the play, Garcin complains of dying too early. He did not have time to make his own acts. (Je suis mort trop tôt. On ne m’a pas laissé le temps de faire mes actes.) Inès counters this (she has an answer to everything, Garcin is going to say) with the full Sartrean proclamation: “You are nothing else but your life.” (Tu n’es rien d’autre que ta vie…)
No further argument seems possible after this sentence, and the play ends three pages later when the full knowledge of their fate enters the consciousness of the three characters and Garcin speaks the curtain line: Eh bien, continuous… (“Well, well, let’s get on with it…”). This ultimate line which, paradoxically, announces the continuation of the same play, was to be echoed ten years later in the concluding line of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The two plays bear many resemblances both structurally and philosophically.
Jean-Paul Sartre
No Exit
Although many nineteenth century philosophers developed the concepts of existentialism, it was the French writer Jean Paul Sartre who popularized it. His one act play, Huis Clos or No Exit, first produced in Paris in May, 1944, is the clearest example and metaphor for this philosophy. There are only four characters: the VALET, GARCIN, ESTELLE, and INEZ and the entire play takes place in a drawing room, Second Empire style, with a massive bronze ornament on the mantelpiece. However the piece contains essential germs of existentialist thought such as “Hell is other people.”
As you read the play, put yourself in that drawing room with two people you hate most in the world.
GARCIN (enters, accompanied by the VALET, and glances around him): So here we are?
VALET: Yes, Mr. Garcin.
GARCIN: And this is what it looks like?
VALET: Yes.
GARCIN: Second Empire furniture, I observe… Well, well, I dare say one gets used to it in time.
VALET: Some do, some don’t.
GARCIN: Are all the rooms like this one?
VALET: How could they be? We cater for all sorts: Chinamen and Indians, for instance. What use would they have for a Second Empire chair?
GARCIN: And what use do you suppose I have for one? Do you know who I was?…Oh, well, it’s no great matter. And, to tell the truth, I had quite a habit of living among furniture that I didn’t relish, and in false positions. I’d even come to like it. A false position in a Louis-Philippe dining room-you know the style?-well, that had its points, you know. Bogus in bogus, so to speak.
VALET: And you’ll find that living in a Second Empire drawing-room has its points.
GARCIN: Really?…Yes, yes, I dare say…Still I certainly didn’t expect-this! You know what they tell us down there?
VALET: What about?
GARCIN: About…this-er-residence.
VALET: Really, sir, how could you believe such cock-and-bull stories? Told by people who’d never set foot here. For, of course, if they had-GARCIN: Quite so. But I say, where are the instruments of torture?
VALET: The what?
GARCIN: The racks and red-hot pincers and all the other paraphernalia?
Think about the place you have chosen as your hell. Does it look ordinary and bourgeois, like Sartre’s drawing room, or is it equipped with literal instruments of torture like Dante’s Inferno? Can the mind be in hell in a beautiful place? Is there a way to find peace in a hellish physical environment? Enter Sartre’s space more fully and imagine how it would feel to live there endlessly, night and day:
VALET: Ah, you must have your little joke, sir.
GARCIN: My little joke? Oh, I see. No, I wasn’t joking. No mirrors, I notice. No windows. Only to be expected. And nothing breakable. But damn it all, they might have left me my toothbrush!
VALET: That’s good! So you haven’t yet got over your-what-do-you-call-it?-sense of human dignity? Excuse my smiling.
GARCIN: I’ll ask you to be more polite. I quite realize the position I’m in, but I won’t tolerate…
VALET: Sorry, sir. No offense meant. But all our guests aske me the same questions. Silly questions, if you’ll pardon my saying so. Where’s the torture-chamber? That’s the first thing they ask, all of them. They don’t bother their heads about the bathroom requisites, that I can assure you. But after a bit, when they’ve got their nerve back, they start in about their toothbrushes and what-not. Good heavens, Mr. Garcin, can’t you use your brains? What, I ask you, would be the point of brushing your teeth?
GARCIN: Yes, of course you’re right. And why shouild one want to see oneself in a looking-glass? But that bronze contraption on the mantelpiece, that’s another story. I suppose there will be times when I stare my eyes out at it. Stare my eyes out-see what I mean?…All right, let’s put our cards on the table. I assure you I’m quite conscious of my position. Shall I tell you what it feels like? A man’s drowning, choking, sinking by inches, till only his eyes are just above water. And what does he see? A bronze atrocity by-what’s the fellow’s name?-Barbedienne. A collector’s piece. As in a nightmare. That’s their idea, isn’t it?…No, I suppose you’re under orders not to answer questions; and I won’t insist. But don’t forget, my man, I’ve a good notion of what’s coming to me, so don’t you boast you’
ve caught me off my guard. I’m facing the situation, facing it. So that’s that; no toothbrush. And no bed, either. One never sleeps, I take it?
VALET: That’s so.
GARCIN: Just as I expected. WHY should one sleep? A sort of drowsiness steals on you, tickles you behind the ears, and you feel your eyes closing-but why sleep? You lie down on the sofa and-in a flash, sleep flies away. Miles and miles away. So you rub your eyes, get up, and it starts all over again.
VALET: Romantic, that’s what you are.
GARCIN: Will you keep quiet, please!…I won’t make a scene, I shan’t be sorry for myself, I’ll face the situation, as I said just now. Face it fairly and squarely. I won’t have it springing at me from behind, before I’ve time to size it up. And you call that being “romantic!” So it comes to this; one doesn’t need rest. Why bother about sleep if one isn’t sleepy? That stands to reason, doesn’t it? Wait a minute, there’s a snag somewhere; something disagreeable. Why, now, should it be disagreeable?…Ah, I see; it’s life without a break.
Could hell be described as too much of anything without a break? Are variety, moderation and balance instruments we use to keep us from boiling in any inferno of excess,’ whether it be cheesecake or ravenous sex?
VALET: What are you talking about?
GARCIN: Your eyelids. We move ours up and down. Blinking, we call it. It’s like a small black shutter that clicks down and makes a break. Everything goes black; one’s eyes are moistened. You can’t imagine how restful, refreshing, it is. Four thousand little rests per hour. Four thousand little respites-just think!…So that’s the idea. I’m to live without eyelids. Don’t act the fool, you know what I mean. No eyelids, no sleep; it follows, doesn’t it? I shall never sleep again. But then-how shall I endure my own company? Try to understand. You see, I’m fond of teasing, it’s a second nature with me-and I’m used to teasing myself. Plaguing myself, if you prefer; I don’t tease nicely. But I can’t go on doing that without a break. Down there I had my nights. I slept. I always had good nights. By way of compensation, I suppose. And happy little dreams. There was a green field. Just an ordinary field. I used to stroll in it…Is it daytime now?
VALET: Can’t you see? The lights are on.
GARCIN: Ah, yes, I’ve got it. It’s your daytime. And outside?
VALET: Outside?
GARCIN: Damn it, you know what I mean. Beyond that wall.
VALET: There’s a passage.
GARCIN: And at the end of the passage?
VALET: There’s more rooms, more passages, and stairs.
GARCIN: And what lies beyond them?
VALET: That’s all.
GARCIN: But surely you have a day off sometimes. Where do you go?
VALET: To my uncle’s place. He’s the head valet here. He has a room on the third floor.
GARCIN:I should have guessed as much. Where’s the light-switch?
VALET:There isn’t any.
GARCIN:What? Can’t one turn off the light?
VALET:Oh, the management can cut off the current if they want to. But I can’t remember their having done so on this floor. We have all the electricity we want.
GARCIN:So one has to live with one’s eyes open all the time?
VALET: To live, did you say?
GARCIN: Don’t let’s quibble over words. With one’s eyes open. Forever. Always broad daylight in my eyes-and in my head. And suppose I took that contraption on the mantelpiece and dropped it on the lamp-wouldn’t it go out?
VALET: You can’t move it. It’s too heavy.
GARCIN: You’re right. It’s too heavy.
VALET: Very well, sir, if you don’t need me any more, I’ll be off.
GARCIN: What? You’re going? Wait. That’s a bell, isn’t it? And if I ring, you’re bound to come?
VALET: Well, yes, that’s so-in a way. But you can never be sure about that bell. There’s something wrong with the wiring, and it doesn’t always work.
GARCIN: It’s working all right.
VALET: So it is. But I shouldn’t count on it too much if I were you. It’s-capricious. Well, I really must go now. Yes, sir?
GARCIN: No, never mind. What’s this?
VALET: Can’t you see? An ordinary paper-knife.
GARCIN: Are there books here?
VALET: No.
GARCIN: Then what’s the use of this? Very well. You can go.
(Garcin is by himself. He goes to the bronze ornament and strokes it reflectively. He sits down; then gets up, goes to the bell-push, and presses the button. The bell remains silent. He tries two or three times, without success. Then he tries to open the door, also without success. He calls the VALET several times, but gets no result. He beats the door with his fists, still calling. Suddenly he grows calm and sits down again. At the same moment the door opens and INEZ enters, followed by the VALET›)
How does Sartre create a sense of place through dialogue? Can you imagine what it feels like to stay awake all the time with the lights on with no hope of leaving a specific place? How does GARCIN react to this hell? How could you twist your daily activities around so that everyday habits become hell? Is there a pattern of circumstances that reinforces the experience of hell?
VALET:Did you call, sir?
GARCIN: (About to answer “yes”, but sees INEZ and says) No.
VALET: This is your room, madam. If there’s any information you require-? Most of our guests have quite a lot to ask me. But I won’t insist. Anyhow, as regards the toothbrush, and the electric bell, and that thing on the mantelshelf, this gentleman can tell you anything you want to know as well as I could. We’ve had a little chat, him and me. (Exits.)
INEZ: Where’s Florence? Didn’t you hear? I asked you about Florence. Where is she?
GARCIN: I haven’t an idea.
INEZ: Ah, that’s the way it works, is it? Torture by separation. Well, as far as I’m concerned, you won’t get anywhere. Florence was a tiresome little fool, and I shan’t miss her in the least.
GARCIN: I beg your pardon. Who do you suppose I am?
INEZ: You? Why, the torturer, of course.
GARCIN: Well, that’s a good one! Too comic for words. I the torturer! So you came in, had a look at me, and thought I was-er-one of the staff. Of course, it’s that silly fellow’s fault; he should have introduced us. A torturer indeed! I’m Joseph Garcin, journalist and man of letters by profession. And as we’re both in the same boat, so to speak, might I ask you, Mrs.-?
INEZ:Not “Mrs.” I’m unmarried.
GARCIN: Right. That’s a start, anyway. Well, now that we’ve broken the ice, do you really think I look like a torturer? And, by the way, how does one recognize torturers when one sees them? Evidently you’ve ideas on the subject.
INEZ: They look frightened.
GARCIN: Frightened? But how ridiculous! Of whom should they be frightened? Of their victims?
INEZ: Laugh away, but I know what I’m talking about. I’ve often watched my face in the glass.
GARCIN: In the glass? How beastly of them! They’ve removed everything in the least resembling a glass. Anyhow, I can assure you I’m not frightened. Not that I take my position lightly; I realize its gravity only too well. But I’m not afraid.
INEZ: That’s your affair. Must you be here all the time, or do you take a stroll outside, now and then?
GARCIN: The door’s locked.
Oh!… That’s too bad.
GARCIN: I can quite understand that it bores you having me here. And I too-well, quite frankly, I’d rather be alone. I want to think things out, you know; to set my life in order, and one does that better by oneself. But I’m sure we’ll manage to pull along together somehow. I’m no talker, I don’t move much; in fact I’m a peaceful sort of fellow. Only, if I may venture on a suggestion, we should make a point of being extremely courteous to each other. That will ease the situation for us both.
INEZ: I’m not polite.
GARCIN: Then I must be polite for two.
INEZ: Your mouth!
GARCIN: I beg your pardon.
INEZ: Can’t you keep your mouth still? You keep twisting it about all the time. It’s grotesque.
GARCIN: So sorry. I wasn’t aware of it.
INEZ: That’s just what I reproach you with. Ther you are! You talk about politeness, and you don’t even try to control your face. Remember you’re not alone; you’ve no right to inflict the sight of your fear on me.
GARCIN: How about you? Aren’t you afraid?
INEZ: What would be the use? There was some point in being afraid before, while one still had hope.
GARCIN: There’s no more hope-but it’s still “before.” We haven’t yet begun to suffer.
INEZ: That’s so. Well? What’s going to happen?
GARCIN: I don’t know. I’m waiting. (Enter ESTELLE with the VALET. She looks at GARCIN whose face is still hidden by his hands.)
ESTELLE: No. Don’t look up. I know what you’re hiding with your hands. I know you’ve no face left. What! But I don’t know you!
GARCIN: I’m not the torturer, madam.
ESTELLE: I never thought you were. I -I thought someone was trying to play a rather nasty trick on me. Is anyone else coming?
VALET: No, madam. No one else is coming.
ESTELLE: Oh! Then we’re to stay by ourselves, the three of us, this gentleman, this lady and myself. (laughs.)
GARCIN:There’s nothing to laugh about.
ESTELLE: It’s those sofas. They’re so hideous. ANd justlook how they’ve been arranged. It makes me think of New Year’s Day-when I used to visit that boring old aunt of mine, Aunt Mary. Her house is full of horror like that…I suppose each of us has a sofa of his own. Is that one mine? But you can’t expect me to sit on that one. It would be too horrible for words. I’m in pale blue and it’s vivid green.
INEZ: Would you prefer mine?
ESTELLE: That claret-colored one, you mean? That’s very sweet of you, but really-no, I don’t hink it’d be so much better. What’s the good of worrying, anyhow? We’ve got to take what comes to us, and I’ll stick to the green one. The only one which might do at a pinch, is that gentleman’s.
INEZ: Did you hear, Mr. Garcin?
GARCIN: Oh-the sofa, you mean. So sorry. Please take it, madam.
No Exit Page 1
