Sartre's play No Exit explores existentialist themes of free will, responsibility, and human relationships. It tells the story of three deceased characters - Joseph Garcin, Inez Serrano, and Estelle Rigault - who find themselves trapped together in a room in Hell. They realize that their eternal punishment is being forced to interact with and depend on each other for companionship, with no way to exit the room. The characters represent different ways of living in "bad faith" by denying personal responsibility through excuses or living in denial.

1. NO EXIT
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

3. SARTRE’S WORKS
• Plays:
No Exit, Nausea, The Age of Reason, The Reprieve, Typhus (The Proud and the
Beautiful)
• Philosophical essays:
Existentialism is a Humanism, Being and Nothingness
• Autobiographic:
The Words, Sartre by Himself

4. WORLD WAR II
• Sartre joined the French army
• Captured and imprisoned
• Was allowed to go back to Paris under German reign
• He then joined the French resistance
• No Exit relation
• No Exit has been compared to living in Paris during the German
occupation
Sartre and

5. HUIS CLOS
• Literally means “in camera” or “in private”
• But it is a French idiom meaning “all doors closed”
• So no one can exit, and no one can get in

6. HEGEL
• Very influenced by Hegel’s philosophy
• Takes Hegel’s master/slave dialectic (and mostly, his
ideas of communication with others) and places it in a
different setting—Hell

7. WHERE DID
YOU SEE
HEGEL IN
NO EXIT ?

8. A PHILOSOPHICAL IDEA:
BAD FAITH
• Being-for-itself
ff
• Being-for-others

9. THE CHARACTERS
V a l e t
G a r c i n
I n e z
E s t e l l e

10. JOSEPH GARCIN
• Occupation: journalist
• Means of death: shot via firing squad for
deserting
• Dealing with damnation: leaving each other alone,
being with own thoughts
• “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 ” (80)
• Does not question his damnation
• Obsessed with courage and cowardice

11. HOW DOES
GARCIN
LIVE IN BAD
FAITH?

12. INEZ SERRANO
• Occupation: a postal worker
• Means of death: gas stove
• Avoids self-deception to an
extent
• Has some self-realization

13. HOW DOES
INEZ LIVE
IN BAD
FAITH?

14. ESTELLE RIGAULT
• Occupation: society woman
from Paris
• Means of death: pneumonia
• Lives in denial

15. HOW DOES
ESTELLE
LIVE IN BAD
FAITH?

16. LACK OF EYELIDS
“You can’t imagine how restful, refreshing, it
[blinking] is. Four thousand little rests per hour.
Four thousand little respites—just think... so that’s
the idea. I am to live without eyelids… no eyelids,
no sleep; it follows, doesn’t it? I shall never sleep
again. But then—how shall I endure my own
company?” (7)

17. MIRRORS
Inez: “Am I not nicer than your glass?”
Estelle: “Oh, I don’t know. You scare me
rather. My reflection in the glass never did
that; of course, I knew it so well. Like
something I had tamed…” (19)

18. DISCUSSION
QUESTIONS

19. WHY DON’T
THEY EXIT?

20. WHEN IS
HELL
OTHER
PEOPLE?