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No Exit

“Hell Is Other People”:
Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit (1944) and Tolerance
By Ezgi Yamener, Mete Doğu Kenar, Onat Deniz Savuran and Mert Akyol

This is a phograph which is taken in 1998 at Stadttheater Gießen Theatre.

No Exit, Sartre’s existentialist play, is very much concerned about enabling tolerance in society. While the lack of tolerance is a dividing force, it also limits one’s freedom in many ways. The play forces its reader to question the relationships they have with others in society. In the play, we see three people locked up in a room for eternal torment after death. Remarkably, however, there is no physical torture in this make-shift hell because the worst punishment is other people’s presence in the room. Characters cannot stop judging each other. The only reason for their relentless judgmentalism is that they try to cover their deficiencies by using each other’s weaknesses. Garcin is in a huge dilemma: he desires nothing more than leaving the room but when he is granted the opportunity to leave, he simply closes the door and chooses to stay in. His action presents a fundamental conflict every human has within. Even though people cannot stand others, they are also in need of each other insofar as society has prompted us to constantly seek approval from others. This paradox creates the problem of intolerance. Being rejected by society because of one’s actions leads them to take out their hatred out on somebody else. Constant judgement and alienation make people more intolerant of others. Yet, it is clear that we cannot humiliate, insult, or banish someone simply because they are different than us. Every human is created differently and equally, and every human has equal rights. We must learn to accept each other as we are by putting aside our differences and stop living according to other people’s ideas. The characters, however, keep caring too much about what people say about them on earth. The more they learn about the judgements concerning them, the more they become frustrated because they know that these judgements do reflect their true nature. Their spiteful self-denial makes them intolerant of others. We are reminded by the play that we cannot banish someone because they live their lives differently than us or their worldviews do not fit ours; we are just not better than others. Everyone is valuable and should not suffer unfair judgement or segregation. We are further reminded that intolerance is not only imposed on us through society but also through individual jealousy. Characters indeed desire each other’s love, forming a love triangle of sorts, but when their desires are not met by their desired object, they take it out on each other because they simply cannot tolerate rejection. Consequently, No Exit makes the reader understand that the real torment one deals with is the constant judgment of others towards us and the torture we inflict on others on a daily basis. It also makes us realize that we should be able to tolerate others even when they show no tolerance towards us. Intolerance creates hatred and discrimination, depriving us of the most important thing in life: the love we need and constitute us as humans.

This is a photograph which is taken by T. Charles Erickson in 2006 at Zero Arrow Theatre