No Exit and Three Other Plays Reviews

• Hell Is What We Make It

  
  By on 2000-07-05
  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 seems to leave unanswered is whether the misery we cause one another is meant to be or if it is simply chance and the decisions we make that cause that misery. Furthermore, is there anything we can do about it, or is our nature so constructed so that we have no choice in the matter?

  The character of Inez realizes the only positive message in the play when she says, "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. You are--your life, and nothing else." Inez realizes that we have, in each moment, everything we need to be happy, yet we insist on searching for the things that make us miserable.

  With the production of No Exit, Sartre made his paradoxical existentialist philosophy accessible to a much larger audience. More than a "thesis" play, No Exit is both engaging and valuable as a piece of dramatic literature in its own right.

  As testament to its lasting message is the fact that it is still produced internationally today. No Exit is an extraordinary play, filled with complexities and philosophical premises that are as relevant today as they were when Sartre first illuminated them.
  
  

• This Lack of Exit is in the Eyes of the Beholder

  
  By AL6JIT43D8D4Z on 2001-09-19
  Judging on literary merits alone, these plays are outstanding. The translation is wonderful. I cannot imagine anyone disliking the read. I am not surprised that Sartre was offered the Noble Prize for Literature (which he declined). His plays are more fun to read than his nonfiction. Sartre introduces and manipulates difficult and important ideas with remarkable facility and poignancy. The substance of the plays is more controversial.
  Sartre's characters are inhuman. Some of them are cruel to the point of sadism. It is through them--through his characters' words and actions--that he dismisses human friendship and the need for companionship as a private Hell ("No Exit"); through them he indicts human guilt and social order ("The Flies"); through them he slams his intellectual anger against the troublesome reality that politics is about power and compromise, rather than pure ideas and motives ("Dirty Hands"); and finally, it is through his characters that Sartre flings his indignation at the American South of the early twentieth century, its white people, and its communal atmosphere.

  The plays are a product of Europe of the 1940s, and more specifically, of the German-occupied France of World War II. They were written either during, or very soon after, the German occupation. Sartre's attitude is pessimistic. The flavor of the catastrophic defeat and collaboration still clings to the plays. But one cannot get by just upon such pessimism. When Sartre's dark existentialsim, such as we find in these plays, was no longer psychologically satisfying, when the hurt, anger, and frustration subsided--Sartre turned to Marxism, which is a much more optimistic world view. Unlike the existenitailism of these four plays, it offers hope, it gives promises, it instills a sense of community, it does not allow to give up on other human beings. And in Sartre's own ideological shift, one can read a certain psychological and practical inadequacy of the attitude that breathes through the pages of these plays. For in them, Sartre passes the dysfunctional and the cruel for the normal. He offers no alternative except to "become free," to will freedom through one's own actions. What does this mean in practice? I don't know.

  If Sartre means that to become free is to become like Orestes who denies guilt and moral obligations, I do not want this kind of freedom. Besides, I think that a society of Oresteses would degenarate into a rule of thugs with big sticks. And this is what Orestes is, in my opinion--a teenage thug with a sword. To think that many young people are trying to go to college for years, work hard and try to improve themselves, suffer setbacks and frustration, when all they have to do is to become Orestes ans say, like he did: "I am doomed to have no other law but mine. For I... am a man, and every man must find out his own way." Very grand indeed! And just as hollow.

  I do not think that Hell is other people and, as Sartre undoubtedly wanted to make it commutative, that other people are Hell. Sartre finds the dark and the scandalous in the human condition, imbues his characters with it, forces them on his delicate sensibilities--and then feels he is in Hell. Very exquisite. "Dirty Hands" is also an excellent play that no reviewer here has specifically addressed. It has good insights into the nature of politics and the character of politicians. I just think that Hugo did the wrong thing, when he completed his assignment for the party, and a truly hideous, stupid thing was the one that he did at the very end. Ay, was Sartre trying to hurt himself again through his hero? "The Respectful Prostitute" is a powerful play. But remember that it is much easier to condemn and preach than to address real policy issues. Oh, sure, depict racism in all its brutality from a comfortable university in Paris, drag "Uncle Sam" and American politicians into it, while Americans are dying to liberate your country from the Germans; and, while you are at it, portray white Southerners as underhanded, street-smart brutes, whose purposes in life are limited to sex and grusome killings of black people.

  The author of these plays portrays the world and its people from a point of view of a broken and defeated man who once believed in what was good about them--and who still intellectually comprehends that good, if only as symbols and gestures, if not realities--but a bitter man nevertheless, a man who holds something against people, a man who knows resentment. For all their clumsy, stupid, brutal (and, alas, inevitable) ways have violated and scarred his sensitive nature.
  
  

• not bad, for existentialism

  
  By on 1999-03-11
  I like existentialist writings, because they are almost always thought provoking, but I seldom agree w/ the thoughts or ideas presented. No Exit is of course the famous one. Since I know someone who considers being stuck in a room w/ me to be hell, I guess it is at least partially valid, though I personally would go crazy just as easily stuck in the room alone. I used The Flies for my Senior term paper in high school, comparing it to the classic Oedipus story [it was a contrast of style]. The Flies is Sartre's version of Mourning Becomes Electra. This play explores ideas of guilt, authority, and repentence. I think my favorite of the bunch was the Respectful Prostitute, because it brought to light contrasts between what we expect of people and who they actually are [the prostitute is more honest than the respectable people she finds her self around.] All the plays have the theme of a character trapped in a situation in which they must give in and compromise their beliefs/ standards, or suffer the consequences imposed by those in authority.The characters choices, and their reasons, are quite interesting. This summary merely touches on the ideas in the plays; you must read them to understand the thoughts and ideas of Sartre's philosophy.
  
  

• A MASTERPIECE SHOULD BE SEEN & EXPERIENCED BY ALL -GENIUS

  
  By A3TCSHIHD74FJG on 1999-12-04
  It is apt that the title of the book does not include the names of the other three plays, because 'No Exit' alone is a feast. As such I am embarking on an exciting journey to stage this play in London. I am an actor, and I performed this play whilst studying drama at University with 2 American students, way back in 1982. It is a play about life. For me the overriding message is that he wants to shock his audience out of their complacency. We don't have to perpetuate hell here on earth we can control our own destiny and make a difference. As a result we should learn to love the characters by the end of the play, because they are us. The play is a black comedy/thriller. It's simply stunning. Read It!
  
  

• Respectful?

  
  By ACULB13UIRUGX on 2000-09-21
  I have just picked up Sartre's No Exit and Three Other Plays and already I am fascinated. I had heard that his play, "The Respectful Prostitute" was a strong criticism of American racism and wanted to check it out. Skipping to the very end of the book and reading this play first, I came away with feelings of anger, and praise. Anger because I am an African-American and was hurt by its realism, but I also praise the work for its scathing, although subtle and multi-layered (sophisticated) critique of American racism. Textually, the work was extremely easy to read. Embedded in this "easy" text however is some of the most thought provoking material ranging from classical notions solitude and isolation to gender issues that should keep the feminist talking for years to come. For me, the most interesting and thought provoking portion of the text deals with the homoeroticism (not to be confused with "homosexualism") that has always been the singular preoccupation in the white male mind with respect to the black male body. The dramatic utilization and subtle working of this topic would have made Freud proud, and Dr. Francis Welsing say, "I told you so!" A must read for anyone interested in portrayals of American racism in the French imagination or just excellent dramatic work.
  
  
• Much Impressed
  By A18UG6GJ7ZRJLK on 2004-05-03
  I was a bit skeptical going into this one. The premise of the book is fairly simple: three strangers are locked into a single room with minimal furniture and expected to stay there with one another for all eternity. That's it. No violent overthrow of government, no breaking into an elaborate computer mainframe. So why bother reading? C'mon Sartre, show us some plot.
  The amazing thing was, I completely enjoyed this play. I gave it a chance and read it through and was not at all disappointed. Think of it: three strangers walk into a room containing three couches, a mantle, an odd mantle decoration, and a door that won't open, and try to make sense of the whole setup.
  The female/male ratio is 2 to 1, leaving Garcin to hold his own against Inez, a trouble-making bisexual, and Estelle, a woman who doesn't believe she can function without the support of a man. They realize that the room is their torture chamber, of sorts, in a long corridor of Hell, and their punishment is to be carried out through--are you ready?--annoying one another.
  For fear of giving away the plot, or lack thereof, I'll leave you with this: the book is a must-read, if only to discover for yourself the awesome ability of human beings to torture one another using only their personalities. :o)
  
  
• Sartre implicates us all...
  By AF2GYWXP7GK9 on 1999-05-11
  These four plays by Sartre are all very different in style if not tone, but they all cut to the bone of meaning in delivering their sobering messages. The best play is also the most famous, No Exit, filled with brilliant language and dramatic fire. The situations and questions posed within aspeak directly to our age. Next, The Respectful Prostitute, which shows how funny existentialists can be, and how gut-wrenching comedy can be both funny and chilling. The Flies is a wonderfully inventive play that one can picture just by reading, with its harsh words, though in the guise of classical language, never missing a stab at the characters--or the audience. The weakest play, Dirty Hands, is still a compelling but rather cliched drama which is a little too ponderous for theatre, but dead on with its analysis of the human condition. Overall, a very worthwhile collection and a great introduction to Sartre, and existentialism.
  
  
• Three Other Plays and No Exit
  By on 2003-04-21
  I like No Exit, but it's a pity that it takes top billing in this collection. It is not as enjoyable as The Flies, not as intellectually stimulating as Dirty Hands, and not as intense as The Respectful Prostitute.

  It isn't surprising that this is the play most often associated with Sartre. The other three are definitely fixed in time and place, even though the themes are universal (is that how that cliché goes?) The existentialist tackles the afterlife, emasculates the popular conceptions of hell, creating the most difficult situation a Situationist could envision. The most quotable line (Hell is other people) is ill-conceived though, isn't it? If hell is other people, than life on earth is hell to an infinitely higher degree. Or is that the point? As for me, I can hardly feel sympathy for Garcin. I can imagine far worse hells than sharing a room with two ostensibly attractive women. And Sartre sends a mixed message. The three occupants slowly lose sight of the world of the living. This is isolation. But they will never lose sight of their roommates. This is companionship. Is he mocking the Holy Trinity, or the concept of a threesome? Funny how these Frenchmen are fixated on the ménage a trois, but I'll take Rene Girard's conceptions over Sartre's.

  Individuals placed in difficult situations, and the reader can't help but wonder how he or she would fare in the character's place. You don't need to be an existentialist to craft such fiction, and I think it unfortunate that Sartre's plays are pigeon-holed as part of a philosophical movement. This is great literature, no more or less modern because of an -ism, and will remain great literature when the intellectual pendulum sways away from the stagnant leftist swamp in which it (the pendulum) is caught. So he tweaks the noses of conservative theologians. A shame if that's the only attraction of this collection.

  A common thread in these four plays is modestly liberated sexuality. If only the libertine playwrights of today had the taste to follow suit. Yes Inez is a lesbian who hits on Estelle. It isn't a cutesy lollipop flirtation ala Mrs. Dalloway, but it is definitely concrete and vital to the plot of the play. And it only goes as far as it needs to and doesn't overwhelm the play. In Dirty Hands, Hugo's love for Hoederer can either be homoerotic or Platonic (there's a difference...right?) Take your pick, the play works just fine either way. I thought Orestes and Electra got a bit too close at times during The Flies, but this is Greek drama after all. And it was very refreshing to see a twist of the man as sexual beast theme in the Respectful Prostitute. The sexual animal is not the black male, but the white male; in fact the black male is portrayed as impotent. Or that's how I see it. The embrace between Lizzie and "the Negro" is out of Little Women.

  I read the four plays consecutively, and expected a let down after No Exit (which I enjoyed, but didn't consider to be anywhere near brilliant). Boy was I wrong. The Flies is laugh-out-loud funny. Sartre rubs our noses in the over-the-top repentance. In fact everything about the play is over-the-top, from Zeus' pettiness to the Orestes' embracing of heroic suffering servitude. If No Exit is a kick in the shin of Christian theology, the Flies is a lead pipe to the kneecap of Greek mythology. Zeus' diatribe to Orestes in Act III is akin to the berating that Job receives in the book that bears his name. I would argue that a connection between Greek sackcloth and ashes repentance to Christian sackcloth and ashes is a tenuous one at best. Incarnate Zeus is light years away from Jesus.

  Dirty Hands blew me away. You could call this a tragedy, except Hugo truly does "do" something at the end of the play, and what he does is real and meaningful and senseless all at the same time. Does he do it out of love for Hoederer, despair for himself, to prove a point to Olga? The situation, as Sartre presents it, is inevitable. If the alliance of parties was inevitable, than every other situation of the play was also inevitable. But it isn't the situations that make the play, but the characters. A truly situationist play, with the situation as the all-powerful force, would have nameless characters without dialogue going through motions and putting audiences to sleep. Characters don't just search for meaning, they ARE meaning. This should transfer into real life as well. I'm often amused when characters in plays talk about chance. The irony is that in a play, absolutely nothing is chance. Every situation is carefully thought out by the author, calculated for maximal dramatic effect, with all the tight blocking we've come to expect from masters of the form. Hugo's intellect credits his action to chance, yet just by thinking he is conquering chance because chance is thoughtless. And if thinking is pure chance than you might as well stop reading books and go back to your GameCube or GameBox or whatever the heck they are called.

  The Respectful Prostitute is a great change of pace, short and brutally severe. It also proves that the French have always been morally superior to Americans. Viva la revolucion!
  
  

• Great drama, great philosophy
  By AK0K3UWJHGRVO on 2004-06-17
  No Exit is a tautly written that works on both the dramatic and philosophical levels. With only one act, four characters, and no set other than a sofa and chairs, this play takes minimalism to its extreme. The tension is palpable throughout. Sartre creates a perfectly unworkable triangle of personalities in Garcin, Inez, and Estelle, and within this triangle the dramatic tension steadily builds.

  The real beauty of this play is that its message can be interpreted in many different ways. It's not entirely clear what Sartre is trying to say about human nature here. I've heard some people argue that the main point is that the company of other people can be a form of hell. I think this is way to simplistic. If anything, Sartre might be trying to say that hell is a self-fulfilling prophecy - that these people, realizing that they were in hell, created among themselves a set of circumstances that was hellish. The logical converse of that idea would therefore be that by exercising their free will, they could have chosen otherwise. Then there is also the interesting question of why these people are in hell in the first place. Here Sartre makes a strong argument that people have a moral responsibility to act in the best interest of humanity as a whole - something that none of these characters can claim to have done.

  While existentialism as a movement has long since been abandoned by most philosophers, this play has lived on, and rightly so. It's well worth the hour that it takes to read it.
  
  

• Orestes Please
  By A2YNIRQA2JJTKQ on 2004-08-11
  I think everyone who has read this collection for the most part agrees that No Exit is one of the greatest plays written. What seems to receive little attention in the reviews on Amazon is the play the Flies. Sartre's reworking of the greek tragedy lives up to the original. I would suggest to future readers that they read the Orestia et al. and then approach the reworking. Sartre adds to one of the oldest story in the western cannon, and that addition is valuable.
  
  
• Sartre You Genius. You knew we couldn't resist.
  By A2HXLEZ0HGBLNR on 2004-09-03
  Garcin couldn't resist, neither could Inez. None of the characters in the play could resist the temptation to annoy, struggle, and create their own hell in a tiny room. And readers will not be able to resist this read.
  
  The dialogue is superb, the interaction and backgrounds of the characters will make you weep, laugh, and ponder humanity with a new perspective. This is not a play for the faint or those that do not believe humans have an evil side...
  
  I just love this book. Interested, I have one up for sale on amazon. :)
  
  
• Classic
  By A5XYF0Z3UH4HB on 2000-05-29
  No Exit is the play where Sartre portrays his version of hell. From my perspective, his vision is significantly more acute than Dante's. It is tightly written. Fast moving. Eye opening. When I was reading the play, I frequently had to put the book down and think for a while about what I had just read. I had never read anything quite like it. This book deserves a wide audience. It is more fun than you might think. Even if, like me, you aren't into reading books like being and nothingness, you might like this. This book is wild.
  
  
• .
  By on 1999-11-16
  In reponse to a review below -- I have an IQ of about 130, andI think No Exit s**ks. I should also add that I like Jean-Paul Sartrequite a bit. Nausea was rewarding and The Age of Reason was incredible. But No Exit is a painfully overrated, silly little play. I found it interesting simply because it was by Sartre. But the interesting premise aside, No Exit is just simply not very profound, and generally poorly done. Seeing it performed might increase my appreciation somewhat, but then again, it might not. The whole play is based around a single philosophical idea -- "Other people are hell" (or create hell for the individual.) It is a flimsy and not particularly interesting idea, which is poorly expounded on in the play itself. I gained almost nothing at all from reading No Exit. The Flies was better, but far from great. I haven't read the other two.
  
  
• "L'enfer, c'est les autres"
  By on 1999-10-18
  No Exit is an amazing play, and I recommend it to anyone with an IQ over 3. (Jars of mayonnaise need not apply, in other words.) I always wondered why the play was called "No Exit" in English, when its French title, "Huis-Clos", means "closed door"... hmm. Just, forget I ever said that, and go read this play? Please?
  
  
• What is forever like in HELL?
  By on 1998-04-08
  I picked this book up and read it, on a whim, and suddenly realized that I was entranced and couldn't put it down! I was hypnotized by No Exit (Huis Clos), and was thrilled and jarred by it. After I finished it, it really affected me. It is an unforgettable play! Each of the characters were so complex, and so real. The structure was infinitely ingenious, and infused with a brilliance that only Sartre could give. Usually, I don't like existentialism, but this is one play that no one should pass up. After I read it, I have been talking about it to all of my friends, raving and ranting, because it insuperable good. A great read, if you want to be transported to another world.
  
  
• Hell is other people, and they exist to torture you.
  By AOC3TDYO3KSS on 2005-10-13
  This book is an answer to a question many people have been avoiding all their lives. And when you finally develop the ability to ask it to yourself, Sartre provides his suggested answer for you, though it may not be the answer you wanted.
  
  The premise of the main play, "No Exit", is that many people have chosen to exist in misery, even when the exit to that misery presents itself clearly. For these people, there is "no exit". Their existance is defined by their misery. If they make the concious decision to exit, then they have nothing to live for.
  
  All four plays are written in non-pretentious and easy to understand styles, unlike many philisophical writings. They don't require a great deal of effort to read or understand. In fact, they are quite enjoyable and I found myself reading each play many times before moving on to the next one.
  
  Don't expect to feel uplifted about the state of humanity while reading these plays, however. Sartre's message about human existance can be a dismal one. It is quite helpful, though, to come to terms with the fact that many of our fellow humans are just puzzled about their lives, and sharing a social existance with these people can be precarious to your own search for meaning.
  
  
• Is there really no exit?
  By on 2000-06-07
  For years friends have been telling me that I needed to read "No Exit," and finally I got around to it. As advertised, it is a brilliantly executed portrayal of an existentialist Hell. The dialogue is clever and often humorous, and the play accomplishes what it sets out to do. But I simply cannot subscribe to Sartre's apparent belief that "Hell is other people." I found myself bogged down by existentialism's glum outlook on human relationships. But for all its pessimism, the plays in this book come across as more real than the tidy endings found in much of the theater of Sartre's day. Read it and decide for yourself!
  
  
• Great reading...
  By A375QRG43POEW6 on 2001-05-10
  I think reading is a very personal experience and it is hard to predict what each individual might get out of any book, if anything. I think out of this play (No Exit) we all can get something. The symbolisms of Hell and the expectations of what shall happen and the way we all sometimes try to avoid reality and take responsibility for our own mistakes by justifications is very well depicted in this play. Entrapment... I do not want to say more about the play, because I could never do justice to Sartre, but I recommend this to all who like reading for example Kafka.
  
  
• Hell Is Not "Other" People - It's Us, People!
  By A9Y2LVSYP7OQI on 2000-05-04
  I think most people miss the point of No Exit. It's not that it would be unpleasant to be stuck in a room with a couple of obnoxious people, it's that we make our own hell by seeing other people only in terms of our own desires.

  But my favorite is The Flies, a hilarious sendup of Oedipus at Colonus filtered through Nietzsche. This play is more relevant than ever, now that so many are parading their miseries on television. Only now, rather than reveling in guilt, they find the meaning of their lives in how greatly they were wronged.
  
  

• A Lighter Side of Sartre
  By A1UE3IZDCWUDRD on 2000-10-27
  I didn't find NO EXIT to be quite as powerful as the rest of Sartre's fictional works i.e 'The Age of Reason'. I found myself laughing after reading NO EXIT. I was expecting something very powerful and thought-provoking but all I got was this *cough* *cough* 'absurd' quote--"Hell is Other People"--JP Sartre ;) The Respectful Prostitute was indeed a wonderful and relevent portrayal of racism in America.

  Even if you don't agree with Sartre's philosophy his writings are always entertaining in some way or form. He never ceases to amaze me.

  NO EXIT--a recommended read for a lighter side of Jean Paul Sartre.

  ~Leann~
  
  

• "Hell is other people."
  By AHXAPVSHPJ6OJ on 2001-12-04
  In these four plays, Sartre translates some of his ideas into drama, documenting man's reaction to religious or political authority, his struggle to change the status quo, and the absurdity of the self-imposed differences in our social strata.

  In "No Exit," Sartre envisions hell not as a fiery, desolate abyss, but as a comfortably furnished hotel room in which three people with clashing personalities must live together for eternity, each one alternately being worked over by the other two.

  In "The Flies," Sartre employs Greek mythology in a remonstrance of religious supplication. After years living in exile, Orestes returns to his hometown of Argos to avenge the murder of his father Agamemnon, the former king; in doing so and standing up to Zeus, he frees the townspeople from the enslavement of remorse, which is the tool of the gods.

  In the almost noir-ish "Dirty Hands," a young man named Hugo, a sheltered and pampered intellectual, joins a socialist radical political faction with the idea of helping his fellow man. Unwilling to compromise his personal idealism, he finds that his comrades are willing to compromise it for him to serve the party's agenda.

  And in "The Respectful Prostitute," the title character is pressured to bear false witness in a criminal trial so that a racist murderer can escape justice.

  The plays are expressionistic and maybe a little too obvious in making their points, but they are plotted and structured well and feature some very vividly drawn characters. I'm not yet familiar with Sartre's work, but I felt this book was a good introduction.
  
  

• Not a mirror of most people
  By A3EQQP0LD4Z375 on 2003-08-15
  To hold to a view of hell as being in a room without mirrors forever can be characterized as an excess of narcissm. The characters in this play are all cursed with this (rare) affliction, born as it is from total lack of self-confidence. When one of them, Estelle, cannot see herself, she doubts her existence. This (characteristically European) existential insecurity is remedied in the short term by patting herself, but a mirror is ultimately what is needed to set her mind at ease. But these optical guarantees of existence are nowhere to be found. Self-reflection will thus have to take place in consciousness only: definitely the severest punishment of all for Garcin, Estelle, and Inez. Their anxiety, their punishment for wrongdoing, their hell, consists of having to depend on others for the interpretation of their appearance, of having to rely upon the taste of others.

  Hell of course is in the eye of the beholder, and others might think that being locked in a room with two women forever might actually be more like heaven. The key idea in all visions of hell though is that it lasts eternally, just like heaven. But eternal life in bliss is just as bad, perhaps more so, than eternal life in hell. After all, in heaven one can put off goals for as long as one wants. Time constraints become meaningless. All one need do is to perhaps think about what one can do, and of course, the goals will always be successful (one cannot be frustrated in heaven).

  To find hell in other people, as Garcin did, might make his sojourn with Inez and Estelle much more palatable. After all, he has an infinite amount of time to adjust. His narcissm might have a short decay time compared to infinity. Estelle might get creative and invent a mirror: unending time permits much innovation, regardless of its boredom. Inez might eventually be successful in her advances towards Estelle: Inez has plenty of time for seduction.

  It might be very difficult to be optimistic facing the prospect of eternal life as these characters do in the play. The certainty of existence is painful: to be happy one needs uncertainty, or rather, the possibility of failure. But of course one could find a way to embrace this prospect of eternal life. Imagination and creativity would find the answers. An optimistic individual, i.e. an individual not engaging in a self-reflecting narcisstic excess of introspection would, paraphrasing Garcin's last line in the play, get on with it.
  
  

• Beautiful melancholy
  By AFQEYN6LDSAU3 on 2006-11-26
  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.
  
  
• I loved it-- especially the way he made Hell out to be.
  By on 1999-09-18
  Sartre used such an ingeneous way to present Hell to John Q. Public. The way he made Hell to be other people instead of the traditional torture chamber was amazing. I can't praise it enough!
  
  
• Hell is other people
  By on 1998-10-14
  No Exit is a great play. The people are not incredibly evil or anything, they are just like us, with the same hopes and desires. They also make the same mistakes. One does wonder that if hell is other people, what is heaven?
  
  
• Nothingness
  By AMK72GR6S6ANJ on 2003-10-25
  Okay, let me start off by mentioning that this book is worth of a few hours of yours. Turn off your TV/laptop/what have you and read it.
  Sartre's existentialism is best expressed in his fictions including this one in my opinion.
  His persuation to nothingness is not quite expressible without phenomenological settings. And here they are.
  I'm having hard time to interest myself by reading Being and Nothingness, but this book is fun to read and easier to capture what he means to get at, although i still don't know what's his existentialism is all about (i, too, can quote his famous sayings, and that's besides the point).
  For those of whom not interested in Philosophy, this book still is worth reading. It's a well written book which isn't spoiled by the translation. If it doesn't bring us Sarte's original intention, the translator was as brilliant as the author. So read it.
  
  
• No exit and the whole it has
  By on 2000-07-05
  Reading this book for a school summer reading list is like putting a gun to my head, or so i thought. I really enjoyed this play because of the diolgue between characters and the witty behavior that Sarte used. however i found parts of it so bloody boring that i could help but fall asleep. I did most of it very enjoyable and i hope that you will tring reading it as well.
  
  
• Brilliant.....click and buy this one NOW
  By on 1998-08-05
  'No Exit' was easily the best play I have ever read and it totally blew me away. It was engaging, thought-provoking and truthful. I am not much of a reader and am easily bored, but this play was nothing short of brilliant. The characters are so real, so human, and the messages expressed in this play will speak volumes to ANYONE who lives. Pick it up and read it, you won't regret it!
  
  
• Terribly written
  By on 2000-10-11
  First of all, let me say that I do find Sartre as a philosopher and essayist interesting/stimulating. Secondly, I don't speak French so I fully acknowledge that everything I didn't like about NO EXIT could have been the translator's fault. I have a feeling this isn't so, but I can't say for sure.

  Basically, the best thing I can say about NO EXIT is that it was clumsily written. Sartre, whether you agree with him or not, was a great thinker, but from what I've sampled, his fictional writing seems obviously borne of analytical thinking. It's like he's programmed robots to play out the action for us, to convince us of his beliefs. Droll and mechanical, NO EXIT makes its intellectual points, but fails to capture any sort of life or spirit. Simply terrible writing.
  
  

• Sartre Couldn't See the Forrest for the Trees
  By on 2002-06-13
  Jean Paul Sartre's concept of hell as expressed in "No Exit" is, simply put, other people. My own concept of Hell is the state of alienation that people find themselves in as a result of the "inauthentic" institutions that artificially define what is "male" and what is "female" in order to reinforce division of labor, inequality, and various forms of human exploitation. The institutions that reinforce such behavior are the religious institutions.

  Life itself is hell, but moreso for,in my opinion, those with the least amount of political power or wealth. Sartre's philosophy has been criticized because some, including myself, feel he could not see the forest for the trees.

  It is, in my opinion, only when we view and treat one another as equals that we become human, but society's institutions are basically authoritarian and do not YET permit that. Authoritarianism stems from and is reinforced by the law of Moses as articulated in the Torah or the Old Testament of the Jewish-Christian Bible. It is also reinforced by Islam, as well as by Hinduism.

  Sartre laid down some excellent ideas that others, including myself, have "remodeled."
  
  

• The Stranger
• Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts
• Nausea
• The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays
• The Plague