A Review of Jean Paul Sartre's No Exit
Both the audience and critics of Jean Paul Sartre's contemporary masterpiece, No Exit (Hois Clos), were disturbed by its insensitive characters when it was first produced on stage in 1944. The underlying message, spoken by the only male character, Garcin, was the unsettling factor - that hell is other people - in being condemned to live forever in confinement with two hated females and in endless contemplation of his cowardice and the women's flawed characters (Levin 2000). It was a monster of a message, artistically presented on stage.
What was more disquieting than the message was Sartre's conflict with his director. When he presented his work to Claude Foussant, the ...
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bear the injury stoically. The agony caused by this compromise remained with him throughout life, and close to his death, he delivered the untrimmed original to his long-time friend and famous French director, Charles Dullin for his use at pleasure. On the first page of that deleted Act II was the inscription, "to truly understand a genius, one must know his other half."
Sartre's existentialist plays had impact on big audiences in Europe and America in those years in many different ways. What drew these audiences and drama critics were its simple plot, the effectiveness of dialogues, the dramatic effects, the extreme situations, dilemmas and the painful choices each character had to confront and make (New Kengsinton). The devastations, afflictions and sense of helplessness experienced by the people after World War II and the enduring memory of Auschwitz and Hiroshima overturned and overtook confidence and optimism, progress and moral certainty of earlier times. In the search for ...
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paved the way for innovative and then-emerging theater of the absurd (New Kensington). Existentialists, foremost among whom was Sartre, were said to have, in turn, influenced outstanding American dramatists of the time, such as Arthur Miller, specifically on the subject of making moral choices in extreme situations.
This theater of the absurd, which flourished later, would not have been possible without the positions or stated beliefs of Sartre and Camus in the form of tragic themes set against 20th-century situations, such as the tragedy after World War II and sterility and absurdity of life.
Since "No Exit" was Sartre's most successful play and Sartre, a major existentialist in ...
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"A Review of Jean Paul Sartre's No Exit." Essayworld.com. July 2, 2016. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Review-Jean-Paul-Sartres-No-Exit/105736.
"A Review of Jean Paul Sartre's No Exit." Essayworld.com. July 2, 2016. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Review-Jean-Paul-Sartres-No-Exit/105736.
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