Without the study of Sartre earlier in the semester I doubt I would have gained as much insight into this play as I might of, the words of my essay exam still swirling in memory, it was not hard for one to draw distinct parallels from that of his philosophy within the dramatic performance. It’s a one act play involving three dead people, two women and one man, coming to terms with their deceased lives and the poor behavior with ensured their arrival at what they suppose to be ‘hell’. Each demonstrates a level of existential angst: Inez the younger female is vain and privileged, her position of ‘bad faith’ is portrayed through her obsession with personal appearance reflected in her desperate attempts to use the other characters eyes as a mirror; Estelle who we assume is both a lesbian, feminist and for those reasons an outwardly spoken critic of men, battles between transcendence and immense as she endeavors to prove herself equal to man, yet equally fails by setting up and relying on the confining distinction of ‘not-male’; Garcin is the ultimate existential subject who denies all responsibility to the world of the living and embraces the freedom of newly inhabited situation of death. As clever and insightful as this play is Sartre falls into the trap of privileging the subject/object distinction which results in a reading of woman as inessential object as a opposed to the rational and aloof male subject.
“To forget about the others? How utterly absurd! I feel you there, in every pore. Your silence clamors in my ears. You can nail up your mouth, cut your tongue out—but you can’t prevent your being there."
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