No Exit

Three characters (Garcin, Estelle, Inez) find themselves in hell. A valet leads them into a small room, where they believe physical torture awaits. They gradually realise that the room itself is hell and the very presence of others is torture.

Each character has held significant control over other people when alive, yet are completely unable to influence the people they find themselves with in the afterlife. This brings each of them immense anguish and is ultimately the reason why they are destined to torture one another for eternity. Every character forever trying to gain recognition from another, and each in turn eternally unable to provide it (a “love triangle”, so to speak). In Sartre’s own words:

“It is a sort of living death to be surrounded by the ceaseless concern for judgments and action that one does not even desire to change. In fact, since we are alive, I wanted to demonstrate, through the absurd, the importance for us of liberty, i.e. the importance of changing our acts by other acts. Whatever the circle of hell in which we live, I think we are free to break out of it. And if people do not break out, they stay there of their own free will. In this way they choose to live in hell.”