No Exit
Fantasy / Characters: 2 male, 2 femaleScenery: InteriorNo Exit was first presented in New York at the Biltmore Theatre with Claude Dauphin, Annabella, and Ruth Ford. Two women and one man are locked up together for eternity in one hideous room in hell. The windows are bricked up; there are no...
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Fantasy / Characters: 2 male, 2 femaleScenery: InteriorNo Exit was first presented in New York at the Biltmore Theatre with Claude Dauphin, Annabella, and Ruth Ford. Two women and one man are locked up together for eternity in one hideous room in hell. The windows are bricked up; there are no mirrors; the electric lights can never be turned off; and there is no exit. The irony of this hell is that its torture is not of the rack and fire, but of the burning humiliation of each soul as it is stripped of its pretenses by the cruel curiosity of the damned. Here the soul is shorn of secrecy, and even the blackest deeds are mercilessly exposed to the fierce light of hell. It is an eternal torment.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780573613050 (0573613052)
Publish date: December 1st 2010
Publisher: Samuel French
Pages no: 60
Edition language: English
Category:
Classics,
Academic,
School,
Literature,
European Literature,
Cultural,
Plays,
Drama,
Theatre,
Philosophy,
France,
French Literature
As a function of pure entertainment, Sartre's No Exit is brilliant. Ironically, Sartre uses almost-pure dialogue to "show not tell" the dilemma faced by Garcin, Inez, and Estelle, three "absentees" (a euphemism for "the dead") locked into a room, condemned to be together for eternity. Each has arriv...
Brilliant! The hell as we have probably never imagined it. Perhaps the first piece of existentialist writing that didn't literally give me a headache. Really, something to get back to every now and then.
I think all teens should go through a existentialist stage. Who doesn't think "hell is other people" sometimes? Now that I'm older, I realize the importance of modifying "other" with "some". Sartre, for example, strikes me as a difficult person to live with.
Hell is other people. It's a terrific piece of theatre. Though every time I read this play - I have unfortunately never seen it performed - it occurs to me that, logically, heaven should be other people too, and that Sartre is perhaps taking an unjustifiably gloomy view. There is an incident in Huis...
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