1.

You cannot write a play unless you are writing about something you are
passionate about.
NO EXIT Jean Paul Sartre

INTRODUCTION:
In the history of mankind, it can be seen that human beings always act according to
their passions and desires. In the history of art, one of the chief motives of artistic
creation is certainly the necessity to express our ontological thoughts and feelings,
and to leave a footprint of ourselves to the world. It is only through our own
consciousness that reality of the world is manifested; and is because of our
perception that we can disclose and apprehend life. It is because of this that Sartre
affirms that the man is the means by which things are manifested (REFERENCE).
This essay attempts to critically discuss the affirmation that one cannot write a play
unless is something that he is passionate about, focusing its investigation in the play
No Exit by writer and philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. The election of No Exit is based
upon the understanding that Sartre is unique among other philosophers because in
order to illustrate and transmit his theories about French existentialism he made use
of different literary forms such as novel, essays and plays. It will be argued here that
Since the beginning of times, humans have tried to find the means to express
their inner emotions and ideas, and in order to communicate and interact with others,
humans developed a sophisticated form of communication called language.
Subsequently, as a necessity to express but also to preserve his ideas, man
establish the written language and with it literature in its diverse manners: poetry,
prose, drama. To evaluate the truthfulness of this affirmation, this essay will now
pass to analyse a specific case of literature: Huis Clos. To begin with the
investigation, it is important to understand that the author of this play, Sartre, was
essentially a philosopher that belonged to a philosophical movement that emerged
after the World War II era denominated as French existentialism. Although Sartre
was mainly a thinker who wrote only a few dramatic texts, No Exit is a particular case
of study because it is one of philosophys most influential contributions to the theatre
and it display Sartres main philosophical ideas.
In order to understand Sartres motivations to write No Exit, we should firstly
understand the cultural and historical context that encouraged him to write his
philosophical theories. After the implications of France during the World War II,
Sartre attempt to imprint in paper his moral and metaphysical arguments and
existentialist theories in his most notable and acclaimed philosophy book Being and
Nothingness. No Exit was written one year after the publication of Being and
Nothingness; and as a result, many of the ideas and symbolisms in the play are
concerned to Sartres greatest philosophical theories. In his Being and Nothingness
Sartre said: Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is
responsible for everything he does (BN). In other words, by accepting the
responsibility for our actions, we become what we are, we become existential
individuals. Existentialism thus, is a branch of philosophy that claims that existence
precedes essence (BN), it refers to the individuals as free entities. Hence, it can be

seen that Sartres chief motivation to write was his fervour and necessity to manifest
his post-war views and ideologies.
As Sartre once said, the writer meets everywhere only his knowledge, his will,
his plans, in short, himself. He touches only his own subjectivity (WtW, 42). No Exit
is a clear example of this subjectivity because it is a play filled with symbolisms of
Sartres the most important ideas. To proceed with the analysis, this essay will
examine how Sartre made use of drama as a vehicle for his philosophical ideas. No
Exit is a one-act play for four actors and only one scene. The play is set in a
Sartrean vision of hell: a room with no windows, no mirrors, and only one door. After
the Valet leaves the three main characters Garcin, Ines and Estelle inside the
room, the door is closed and locked. All expect to be tortured, but the torturer never
arrives. However, as the play goes on, the characters take account of the first
Sartrean existentialist view: that l'enfer, c'est les autres (NE, p.), i.e., that they are
each others torturers.
To proceed with the analysis, this essay will analyse some of the main
symbolisms within Huis Clos that disclose Sartres most passionate views on
Existentialism. Firstly, the setting is described as an enclosed space, a drawingroom in Second Empire style with no windows, no mirrors, and only one door (NE,
p.181). The room is a very important symbolism of the play because it attempts to
represent Sartres view about the absurdity and meaningless of the universe unless
our consciousness give it a meaning and interpretation, i.e., that man is the means
by which things are manifested (WtW, p.). According to Sartre, it is ourselves who
set up a relationship between the one thing and another. It is our human essence
which invent history, which creates the criteria and measures by which we judge life
and people. This first symbolism show us that Sartres chief motivation to write No
Exit was his necessity to disseminate his doctrine about existence precedes
essence (BN, p.) in which he manifest his beliefs about freedom and selfresponsibility; and by doing so, it demonstrate that to write play, the author needs to
be passionate about the topic.
To continue with the analysis, another aspect of the play that support the
affirmation that the author needs to be passionate about what he writes is noticeable
in Sartres deliberated construction of the characters. Huis Clos is a play immersed
in symbolism, and it is observable that each of the characters represents a particular
Sartrean existentialist idea.The most notorious example of this is Garcin. Making use
of this character, Sartre exposes his theory of bad faith. The reader would question
why Garcin is punished if he chose not to go to the war, if he chose pacifism.
Nonetheless, further into the story we realize that the Garcins real motivation was
not peace but cowardice, that he tried to convince himself that he was a great man
(No Exit, p. 38-39).
Ines: Thats the question. Was that your real motive? No doubt you argued it out
with yourself, you weighed the pros and cons, and you found good reasons for what
you did. But fear and hatred and all the dirty little instincts one keeps dark- they re
motives too. So carry on, Mr. Garcin, and try to be honest with yourself- for once.

With Garcins example, Sartre is projecting one of his main ideas, he is showing us
how often people ignore their freedom and their responsibility by letting other people
make their choices for them, resulting in bad faith (Senejani, p.).
To finalise, even though Sartre is expressing his subjective thoughts when he
wrote Huis Clos because it was a topic that he was passionate about, this play
should be considered as a particular case of literature. This happens because,
although the ideal of writing is to talk about something that we are passionate about,
as it is the case of Sartre; in the real world it does not always happens like that. Even
more and more as the wave of capitalism grows, art seems to be losing its
fundamental essence. It seems as if most of the writers do not write to express their
feelings anymore, but they write to get published. It seems as if they do not write to
capture their ideas, but they write for recognition or fame or notoriety. As Sartre once
said one of the chief motives of artistic creation is certainly the need of feeling that
we are essential in relationship to the world (WWW Sartre). Finally, even though
writers does not always necessarily write about something that they are passionate
about, passion and the necessity to express our inner feelings should be the first and
main premise for anyone who wishes to write.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. Trans/ed. Schilpp, Paul

Arthur. Open Court
Publishing Company, Mar 1991.
Sarte, Jean-Paul. Search for a Method. Trans/ed. Barnes, Hazel E. Vintage Books
USA, Aug
1968.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Truth and Existence. Trans/ed. Van Den Hoven, Adrian and
Ronald Aronson.
University of Chicago Press, Apr 1995.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Literature & Existentialism(New York: Citadel Press, 1962)

https://www.arcjournals.org/pdfs/ijsell/v1-i3/v1-i3-ijsell_2.pdf

Sartre, literature:
http://www.english.ufl.edu/mrg/readings/Sartre,%20What%20Is%20Literature.PDF