Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre was an existentialist philosopher. The questions of his philosophy

often come out in his readings. Existentialism questions why we exist.

Existentialists deny the existence of God. Existentialist writers such as Kafka and

Sartre often use prisons and solitary confinement to tell their stories. Often, neither

the reader nor the protagonist is aware of what crime has been committed.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s “The Wall” reflects his philosophy and personal experiences.

He worked for the French resistance and was imprisoned by the Germans during

WWII. The story takes place during the Spanish Civil War in an old hospital being

used by the Spanish Fascist’s to house prisoners. “The Wall” is told from a first

person, stream of consciousness point-of-view, and uses existentialist philosophy,

to illuminate the follies of totalitarian governments like Fascism, and Nazism.

Like most existentialist writers, Sartre chooses to tell the story of “The Wall” form

the first person stream-of-consciousness point-of-view. We get dialogue from other

characters, but the dialogue is filtered through the mind and thoughts of Pablo. The

terror in the story slowly unfolds from Pablo’s mind. In the beginning, Sartre only

gives us a hint of terror. The reality of the situation has not yet set into Pablo’s

mind:

They pushed us into a big white room and I began to blink because the light hurt

my eyes. Then I saw a table and four men behind the table, civilians, looking over

the papers. They had bunched another group of prisoners in the back and we had

to cross the whole room to join them. There were several I knew and some others

who must have been foreigners. The two in front of me were blond with round

skulls; they looked alike. I supposed they were French. The smaller one kept

hitching up his pants; nerves. (7)

The emphasis on the “round skull” foreshadows a scene that later brings terror into

greater effect. Tom tells Pablo while they are waiting to be executed, that they aim

for the eyes and head to disfigure your face. The emphasis on the perfect round

skulls in the first paragraph draws attention to faces and heads. “The smaller one

hitching up his nerves,” tell us from the beginning that Pablo should be nervous

himself. Pablo knows he is in trouble at the beginning. He just does not realize the

amount yet.

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...out truth or a person’s innocence. Juan is

guilty of know crime and is put to death. Garcia who Pablo meets in the courtyard

after he gives his false testimony, “had nothing to do with politics” (36). When

asked why he was arrested, Garica responds “They arrest everybody who doesn’t

think the way they do”(36).

The Nazi’s and the Fascist’s used mental torture and the threat of terror to get

people to question their own existence, their own sanity. They do not think, they

just take orders and obey. Therefore, it is perfectly ironic that Pablo sends them to

a place devoid of reason or thought. The further irony is that Gris is hiding in the

graveyard in the gravediggers’ shack and is killed in a gunfight.

Pablo says after learning of Gris’s death, “everything began to spin and I found

myself siting on the ground: I laughed so hard I cried” (37). Pablo laughs until he

cries because he realizes he never will understand why one man dies and another

lives. In spite of all his thinking and mental anguish over the question, every

answer he discovers leads back to Descartes; the only part of his existence he can

not question is the one truth, “I think, therefore I am."