No Exit Compare And Contrast Essay

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In “No Exit” by Jean Paul Sartre and “Night Flight” by Antoine de Saint Exupery, love and duty can be found as a priority of each characters life. The difference between such characters is whether they choose love over duty or duty over love and revolve their actions around such choice. In each case you are able to see that the hard decision impacts each individuals life choices and ends in guilt and regret of not pursuing other aspects of life. In “No Exit” and “Night Flight” love is sought over duty by Inez and Madame Fabien while duty is sought over love by Cradeau, Estelle and Riviere. In both cases the actions deemed by each person’s choice shows that love and duty cannot function together and lead to regret and guilt.
In “No Exit”, Inez …show more content…

Estelle chose the duty of gaining high class by marrying “an old friend of my fathers who wanted to marry me and he had a good deal of money and was rather nice, so I accepted” (Sartre 14), instead of pursuing someone her own age. When Estelle had an imperfection in her life due to a child, a coverup was necessary where “there was a balcony out over the rocks. The hotel was on a cliff over the ocean. I brought in a huge stone. He was yelling “Estelle, please, please!” and crying.” (Sartre 33). In order to maintain her reputation she decided to commit infanticide and eventually her husband killed himself, “And it wasn’t necessary. My husband never suspected anything at all” (Sartre 33). Instead of caring about her lovers suicide, Estelle focused on her prestige in society and completed actions to maintain that prestige. After being in Hell, guilt sets in of realizing those she affected did not care about her at all. Regret of killing her child linked to her lovers death acts as a torture device because Estelle decided to choose duty of a high class woman over love and its actions, therefore showing love and duty cannot work as

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