ABSTRACT
When Jean-Paul Sartre’s three figures from No Exit arrive in hell, they encounter no torturers, flames, repulsive smells, or any of the traditional para-phernalia associated with the netherworld. Their eternal imprisonment will take place in a Second Empire drawing room outfitted with useless and unsightly objects, befitting the irresponsible and vulgar nature of their lives, and, as they soon discover, their immortality will be spent in the dual role of the tortured and torturer. The lights in their windowless room will forever remain on, their eyes will never blink, and they will never sleep: there will be no escape from the judgment, the “gaze,” of each upon the other. Condemned by their lifetime acts of inauthenticity or bad faith, they will perpetually repeat the evasions, lies, and cruelties that defined their lives. Their hell is one of their own making. Although when they first arrive, they offer rationalizations or deceptions about their pasts, including how they died, they eventually describe their lifetime activities of moral turpitude both in thoughts and deeds ranging from indifference to premeditated criminal acts; it soon becomes apparent that, directly or indirectly, each has caused the death of an avowed loved one. As they reluctantly enumerate these acts, they continue to deny responsibility for them, disclosing at the same time how their cunning deceptions permitted their crimes to go unpunished or even unobserved during their lifetimes. Finally, they reveal that one motivation alone prompted all of their actions, the most venal sin in the Sartrean universe: the compulsion to define themselves and seek validation through the eyes of Others. The play makes clear that within the Sartrean universe, one must engage in a life of action based on personal choice originating
in one’s distinct subjectivity. Subjectivity is thus both the starting and end point from which one’s life-one’s actions-takes on meaning.
