Critical Centary of a Passage from Sartre's Huis Clos - Coursework Example

Huis Clos Sartre’s Huis Clos is a stark portrayal of the human condition when stripped to minimalist surroundings. Through the play Sartre explores themes of personal agency and identity by exploring the interactions of three participants within a modernist conception of hell. This essay examines a passage from Huis Clos for its contextual significance, and applies an in-depth critical analysis in the plays existential philosophy to gain a greater understanding of Sartre’s exemplary work of philosophical literature. The passage that has been identified in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos occurs towards the end of the one act play. It features the play’s central characters – Ines, Estelle, and Garcin – as they equally confront and deny the humanistic elements that underline their existence. The context of the passage interrupts the flow of the story, jumping into the middle of a confrontation between Ines and Garcin. The passage begins with Ines criticizing Garcin by calling him a coward; she bates him on by saying, “Ne perds pas courage. Il doit t’être facile de me persuader. Cherche des arguments” and then “Tu es un lâche, Garcin, un lâche parce que je le veux.” This occurrence is significant as it represents a climatic confrontation between Ines and Garcin that had developed from the moment she entered the chamber and encountered him. Estelle urges Garcin to avenge himself against Ines vitriolic barbs, by kissing Estelle. Estelle realizes this will torture Ines, because throughout the play Ines demonstrated her attractiveness for Estelle, at one point even offering to subsume her identity to her and become her mirror. After Garcin’s confrontation with Ines he laments about his situation. It’s clear that Garcin is the most honest about the situation, as the other characters debated the reason they were placed together and surmised it was a random occurrence; Garcin understood it to indicate the hell that occurs through human interaction. While this will be addressed more thoroughly, it essentially means that the true torture of the characters’ situations isn’t torture or other stereotypical constructions of hell, but that hell is to be found through the characters interactions with each other. Garcin famously states, “l’enfer, c’est les Autres.” The formal style of the passage remains similar to the rest of the one act. Although the passage climactically represents the realization of the tension between the characters, the way Sartre’s captures it is completely in-line with the previous part of the story. Although the play embodies omniscient and experimental narrative techniques, as it allows the characters to look down upon earth, even allow Ines to comment that nobody was crying at her funeral, the passage in question follows a completely linear and uncharacteristic format. The play’s narrative force is through the eyes of the three main characters. For the most part the narrative remains objective, with the individual characters advancing the story through their interactions and personal revelations. One of the chief mechanisms of narrative advancement occurs through the characters’ revelations of what ultimately caused them to go to hell. While they all offer simple characterizations at the beginning, towards the end of the play, they admit to deeper transgressions. One of these transgressions includes Garcin’s desertion of the army. While he originally claims he was in hell for being a pacifist, his eventually admission of being a coward is addressed by Ines in the passage. Earlier in the play Garcin had gone to Estelle and asked her to tell him that he wasn’t a coward for his actions, and Ines pointed out that Estelle is only agreeing with Garcin because she wants the affection of a man, not because she is truly exonerating him. In the passage, Ines then turns this characterization onto Garcin by insinuating that he truly is a coward. Earlier Garcin had also been granted the opportunity to leave, but refused in an attempt to demonstrate his bravery. It seems that the play’s narrative style is highly realistic in its philosophical investigation of the character’s humanistic identity concerns, but fantastical in its hyperbolic setting. Semantically, the play draws on themes of existentialism and humanism to develop its predominant tropes. Therefore to fully understand the play and the characters motivations, it’s necessary to understand its historical context and the philosophical reasons that motivated Sartre in its construction. Indeed, critics have noted that Huis Clos was perhaps the fictional most indicative of his existentialist philosophy (Fahnestock 7). The play itself was written in the 1940s when France remained under German occupation. It’s been noted that this historical context informed many of the themes throughout the work, particularly its emphasis on daily life as hell, through comparison of the Valet without eyelids to the all-consuming watch of the Nazi guards (Banach 43). In order to understand the philosophical ramifications of the play, one must consider elements of Sartre’s existentialism. Sartre distinguished between three predominant modes of conscious or unconscious existence: Letre-en-soi (Being-in-itself), Letre pour-soi (Being-for-itself), Letre-pour-autrui (Being-for-others) (Sartre 2004). Being-in-itself was characterized by Sartre’s as the true form of existence in which the individual determined their identity through personal responsibility and individuality. Being-in-Itself and the stark humanism it entails are hard for human beings to comprehend, so that must retreat from this existence and call on others to help determine their identity and decisions. A good example of this occurs when Garcin is given the opportunity to leave the room and refuses. An existential interpretation of this occurrence contends that in that instant the reality of Being-In-Itself was too much for Garcin to comprehend and he was not able to leave the room because he didn’t have proper encouragement from the other occupants. These existential themes are spread throughout the play and it’s what underlines the passage in question. Ines references to Garcin as a coward show and his tense interests in her comments are a result of his overwhelming need to establish his personal identity through the acceptance of others. This is also seen in Ines as she is heavily angered when Estelle and Garcin become more intimate. Ines needs the approval of Estelle as a reflection of her own self-worth. It’s notable that earlier in the play Ines offered to be Estelle’s mirror, and also shows sexual attachment to her. This seems to be Sartre’s way of commenting on the nature of reality and identity, and complicating the play beyond clichéd formulations that posit two women in competition for a man. As the characters engage in inner conflicts they demonstrates Sartre’s concept of bad faith. That is, his understanding of the nature of personal identity to be characterized by good faith and bad faith. Bad faith is the denial of personal responsibility and the overt reliance on others for in identity establishment. Sartre believes this is the wrong mode of existence as it denies the essential truths of existence. It seems that the frequent reference to mirrors is used as a thematic trope for such bad faith identity. As there are no mirrors the characters are constantly searching for them. Lost in the hell of unstructured existence, they must reach out to each other for acceptance and personal acknowledgement. It’s used to humorous effect, as one of the characters even makes reference to a pimple on another in an effort to torture them. It’s in such a regard that overarching theme of the play that hell is the contingency of our personal identity on social forces is advanced. In conclusion, Huis Clos functions to explore the human construction of identity by stripping social existence to a bare objectivity. It implements existential themes as an underlining philosophy. This thematic trope is climatically reached in passage under analysis as Garcin utters the emblematic words of 20th century existentialism, “l’enfer, c’est les Autres.” References Banach, David. The Ethics of Absolute Freedom. Nd. Saint Anselm College.21 March 2005 Fahnestock, Lee and MacAfee, Norman. Witness to My Life. New York: Macmillian Publishing Company. 1992 Sartre, Jean Paul. No Exit and Three Other Plays. New York: Vintage International, 1989. Sartre Summary. Nd. 1 April 2005 Sartre, Jean Paul (1905-1980): Existentialism. 2004. University College London. Read More