The Meaning Of Death In Whitaker's No Exit

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and as all three then collapse on their sofas in hysterical recognition, they seem extreme images of the triumph of the other that Sartre had declared to be the meaning of death” (Whitaker 169). Whitaker explains to the readers of his book and No Exit, “But we must nevertheless admit that precisely when Garcin says, ‘well, well, let’s get on with it’, the curtains must close upon this hell” (Whitaker 177). In this quote, He is stating that Garcin is finally ready to accept complete death and no longer live in hell.
Sartre uses MAN vs. SELF in many ways to put mainly Garcin in hell, but he also uses that on Estelle and Inez as well. In this quote by Guicharnaud, “Garcin’s hopeless tragedy lies in the fact that he is unable to determine …show more content…

What the previous statement means, is that a reader can take that quote two different ways. One is that since each character needs one another,it would be MAN vs. MAN, but in reality a person does not need one other person making it all in their heads giving the reader the MAN vs SELF. In the play, Inez realizes what is happening when she says “Ah, that’s the way it works, is it? Torture by separation” (Sartre 8). Inez in that quote is realizing that she is not in literal hell but she is in a variation of hell and the “torturing” that happens from the “devil”. When someone thinks in their head that they need another person that can put them in hell, as stated here by Méra, “Which means that if my relations are bad, I am situating myself in a total dependence on someone else. And then I am indeed in hell” (Méra 14). Whitaker expresses in this quote, “Estelle, a narcissist who complaining that she has no sense of existing unless provided with some visible self-reflection, depends on the mirroring gaze of others to make her seem a valued object”, that in her mind she needs to see herself to believe that she has a sense of existing (Whitaker 170). Why does a person need to see him/herself to believe that s/he has a sense of existing in life? Sartre makes the three characters live their life in hell with what happened in their past as said in this quote by Barnes, “What I am is what I have done at …show more content…

The third version/style of hell that the characters are being put in is MAN vs OTHER MANS THOUGHTS, which is basically letting other people think about how a person run their life. In this quote by Méra, ”They are ‘naked as new-born babies’ and must suffer to be seen by the others as they really are” , She is saying that a person has to show others who they truly are and cannot put on ‘make-up’ and show them what they want to see (Méra 15). For example, if a person is a murderer, they will have to show people that they are a murderer and cannot hide that with ‘make-up’ and show them that they are some innocent person just because they do not want to deal with the consequences. In this quote by Guicharnaud, ”The acts are in the past and the characters try to evaluate them, emphasis is not put on discovering why, through what determinism of the world and men, the characters happened to commit their crimes”, Guicharnaud is explaining that the characters have to live with their choices and deal with the consequences of their choices just like the last quote from Méra (Guicharnaud 63). Garcin, Estelle, and Inez all

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