No Exit Play

A No Exit Play is an existentialist French play by Jean-Paul Sartre.

• Context:
  • It can explore Existential Themes and the nature of human existencee.
  • It can delve into the concepts of hell and eternal damnation.
  • It can illustrate the idea that "hell is other people."
  • It can have No Exit Play Quotes, such as:
    • "Hell is other people."
    • "You are your life, and nothing else."
    • "I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become."
    • "Always made me want to do just the opposite."
    • "As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist."
    • "Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough."
    • "Prove it. Prove it was no dream. It's what one does, and nothing else, that shows the stuff one's made of."
    • "I died too soon. I wasn't allowed time to - to do my deeds."
    • "One always dies too soon - or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up."
    • "Much more likely you'll hurt me. Still what does it matter?"
  • ...
• Example(s):
  • the first performance on ____.
  • ...
• Counter-Example(s):
  • The Flies (1943): A modern retelling of the myth of Orestes, about a man who returns to his homeland to avenge his father's murder.
  • Dirty Hands (1948): A political play about a communist revolutionary who is forced to make difficult choices in order to achieve his goals.
  • The Devil and the Good Lord (1951): A play about a revolution that is led by a man who is unsure whether he is being inspired by God or the Devil.
  • ...
• See: Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism.
• See: in Camera, Existentialism, We All Break, Afterlife.

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References

2023

• Web Chatbot
  • "No Exit" is a renowned existentialist French play, penned by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1944. The play unfolds in a cryptic room in the afterlife where three deceased individuals, Joseph Garcin, Inèz Serrano, and Estelle Rigault, who committed moral crimes during their life, are locked together indefinitely as a form of divine punishment. Throughout the play, the characters grapple with their guilt and reveal their true identities. The plot is characterized by a continuing tension between the characters, embodied in their futile attempts to escape and incessant bothering of each other. Sartre uses this setting to delve further into his existentialist theories about human liberty, the nature of human existence, and the torturous bonds of our interdependence with others. By portraying hell as a state shaped by human social interaction, rather than as a physical space, the play rebukes societal norms. It assesses the complexities of personal identity and human relationships. It culminates with the realization that they are each others' tormentors, reinforcing Sartre's idea that "hell is other people". Over time, "No Exit" has been praised for its thought-provoking themes and translated and adapted into diverse formats, including a chamber opera and a modern parody.

2023

• (Wikipedia, 2023) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Exit Retrieved:2023-11-1.
  • No Exit is a 1944 existentialist French play by Jean-Paul Sartre. The play was first performed at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in May 1944. The play begins with three characters who find themselves waiting in a mysterious room. It is a depiction of the afterlife in which three deceased characters are punished by being locked into a room together for eternity. It is the source of Sartre's especially famous phrase "L'enfer, c'est les autres" or "Hell is other people", a reference to Sartre's ideas about the look and the perpetual ontological struggle of being caused to see oneself as an object from the view of another consciousness.

    English translations have also been performed under the titles In Camera, No Way Out, Vicious Circle, Behind Closed Doors, and Dead End. The original title, Huis clos ("closed door"), is the French equivalent of the legal term in camera (Latin: "in a chamber"), referring to a private discussion behind closed doors.

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