Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit

This study will analyze the character of Garcin in Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit. The play takes place in hell and features Garcin and two women. Garcin is known to us by what he says about himself, what the other two characters---both women---say about and to him, what he says to them, and by his responses to them. We find through these means that Garcin was a coward in life and is now tormented by his cowardice in death and in hell. He cannot change the fact of his cowardice, but he can at least try to convince the two women that he was not a coward, that even though he behaved cowardly, he was a good and courageous man at heart.

Garcin is easily able to get Estelle to agree with this rationalization, but her view is meaningless to him because she is frivolous, if not stupid: "You've a twisted mind, that's your trouble," she tells Garcin. "Plaguing yourself over such trifles!" (37). Garcin knows that Estelle's opinion is worth nothing precisely because she does not understand his situation (or her own) and because she is so easily persuaded to see things the way he wants her to see them. He knows his cowardice is a serious sin against the authentic life, and that only a person who resists such convincement has an opinion worth changing. Estelle does not qualify, wanting only to say what pleases and absolves Garcin: "You acted quite rightly, as you didn't want to fight. But, darling, how on earth can I guess what you want me to answer" (37).

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. Estelle and Inez share in this group torture and self-torture. Just as Estelle and Garcin torture each other by simply being in each other's presence and desiring each other without the possibility of fulfilling that desire, so is Inez, a lesbian, tortured by Estelle's beauty for the same reason. Inez recognizes this fact. When the question of who will torture who arises again, Inez says, "More likely you'll hurt me. Still, what does it matter? If I've got to suffer, it may as well be at your hands, your pretty hands. Sit down, Come closer. Closer" (20). Inez is also tortured by Estelle because of the desire that Estelle has for Garcin instead of for her. When Estelle expresses to Inez her longing for Garcin, Inez explodes, "Of course! Because he's a Man!" And in the same passage, because she knows Garcin and Estelle share a sexual attraction which leaves her out, Inez says to Garcin: "You've won" (21). Garcin later recognizes the same fact, saying to Inez: "Do you realize that this young woman's fated to be your torturer?" (30) Inez is able to accept her sins in a way which Estelle and Garcin will never be able to accept theirs, but she is nevertheless tortured with unfulfilled desire for Estelle and with jealousy of Garcin fo

Category: Literature - J