During the German occupation of France in World War II, the Parisian theater-goers found solace and pride in witnessing the works of two outstanding French dramatists: Paul Claudel, whose remarkable drama Le soulier de satin was masterfully staged by Jean-Louis Barrault in 1943; and Jean-Paul Sartre, whose two plays Les mouches and Huis clos were presented, the first by Charles Dullin in 1943 and the second by Albert Camus in 1944. In both of Sartre's plays the French saw direct references to two of their contemporary preoccupations: the quest for liberty, and the problem of having to live in the stifling atmosphere of a Hell created by the Others.
The author was born in Paris on June 21, 1905, of a well-to-do middle class family. His father, a naval officer, having died in 1907, Jean-Paul was brought up in his grandfather's home until 1917, when his mother remarried. It seems probable that Jean-Paul was influenced by his grandfather, who adored him. He was a professor and a writer-Sartre also became a professor and a writer.
After having brilliantly pursued his studies first at the Lycee of La Rochelle and then at the famous Lycee Henry IV in Paris, in 1924 Sartre entered the Ecole Normale Superieure. There he specialized in philosophy, passed his licence (roughly equivalent to an M.A.) and was, in 1929, received first at the agregation de philosophie (a very difficult competitive examination administered by the government to recruit professors).
Sartre's teaching career began at Le Havre. From there he was sent to Laon and finally to Paris, at the Lycee Pasteur. When the World War broke out in 1939, he was mobilized in the Ambulance Corps, was taken prisoner by the Germans in June 1940, and spent ten months in captivity. Liberated in 1941, he took up his teaching again at the Lycee Pasteur.
Apart from La nausee, a novel published in 1938 (Le Havre, under the name of Bouville, is the setting for this work), Sartre had already written several philosophical works, articles of literary criticism, and a collection of short stories (Le mur, 1939). In 1943, he published a monumental work entitled L'Etre et le neant to explain his philosophy (influenced by the German thinkers Heidegger and Husserl) which he called a philosophy of existence, or existentialism.
In 1945, Sartre resigned as professor of philosophy in order to devote himself entirely to his writing. He founded a review: Les Temps Modernes; traveled extensively; and became through his novels (Les chemins de la liberte, three volumes of which have appeared since 1945-L'Age de raison, Le sursis, and La mort dans l'Ame), his plays (Morts sans sepulture, 1946; La putain respectueuse, 1946; Les mains sales, 1948; Le diable et le bon Dieu, 1951; Kean, 1954; Nekrassov, 1955; and Les sequestres d'Altona, 1960), as well as through his numerous philosophical and literary essays, the leader of a new philosophical generation. After the Liberation of France, Sartre was undeniably the most famous French writer and since then has become an international figure. As a witness of that phase of European thinking which prevailed after the War, characterized by an uncompromising sincerity, a lack of complacency, and a total rejection of hypocritical postures and false values, Jean-Paul Sartre is today without a peer.
Sartrian existentialism is an atheistic philosophy which postulates that in man existence precedes essence. There is no universal essence of man, which an individual must strive to attain and conform to. On the contrary, man is a free being who creates his own essence as he lives and who, since he is free, is capable of choosing for himself just what kind of man he wants to become. Since he is a free agent (he is, in fact, condemned to be free, says Sartre), from his birth to his death, it cannot be said that man is anything until he has ceased becoming, i.e. when he is dead. At that time, but not until then, he will be a Hero, a Coward, a Saint, or a Rascal, according to how the Others see him. For it is only through the eyes of the Others that Man can see his image; and what the Others see of him is only his acts. Man's acts are therefore of prime importance. Through them he engages himself in the world about him; this engagement, in turn, creates his essence and, at the same time, creates his image in the eyes of the Others.
This explains why existentialism speaks so often of man's anguish. He knows that his acts are all-important, that they depend upon the choices that he makes, that he cannot give excuses for his choices and is therefore responsible for them. His anguish arises from the knowledge that Death may cut him short before he has realized what he feels to be his true essence. He may have had the intention of becoming a hero all his life but, confronted, as is one of the characters in Huis clos, with death by a firing squad, he may be overcome by physical weakness and die as a coward. The Others will know of him only that he died afraid, and not that he had the intention of dying bravely. As long as the Others will think of him, he will thus be a Coward.
When Sartre speaks of the self, he distinguishes the etre-en-soi, the in-itself, from the etre-pour-soi, the for-itself. The latter he characterizes as fluid, free, always in flight toward the future. This is our conscious, living self which is always in a state of becoming and therefore never at rest. The etre-en-soi, on the other hand, is the static, solid, non-conscious self. For example, our past life is an en-soi, since it is what it is and can never be changed. In like manner, all objects are en-soi: a table is a table, a chair is a chair, a rose is a rose, etc.
According to Sartre, most individuals would like nothing better than to avoid having to make choices and, thus, to abandon their liberty, to be at rest, or, in other words, to be objects. However, since they are alive and conscious, they must keep on being pour-soi. What they are striving for, in fact, is to be an en-soi-pour-soi, a self which would at the same time be free and fixed, fluid and static, conscious and non-conscious, object and subject. This, says Sartre, is manifestly impossible. (This is what he refers to as man's useless passion to become God). What happens frequently, however, is that an individual who denies his liberty and yearns to be an en-soi lives in a middle state between fluidity and solidity, a state described in Sartrian literature as viscous, dough-like, marshy, etc. The person who lives in such a state takes on its physical characteristics, for example Estelle in Huis clos.
This yearning to escape one's liberty and responsibility is termed bad faith by Sartre. He who turns to Authority (whether represented by the Church, the Family, the State or Society) rather than to his own self for guidance, when confronted by a choice, is abdicating his liberty, therefore his authenticity, and at the same time passing on to the Others the responsibility for his acts. Such a person is forever finding excuses for the essence that he is in the process of creating, and ascribing the responsibility for it to everyone but himself. In reality, he and he alone is responsible; for even when he is choosing to let the others choose for him, the choice is still his.
Man is, therefore, a free and responsible being who must, in a Godless world, create his values for himself. Sartre rejects the Christian doctrine of creation, redemption and salvation and, of course, eternal damnation. The traditional image of Hell, as a place where the damned go to suffer torture for their sins, is in Sartre's opinion a false image, a myth. The only punishment there is, is that meted out to the individual here on earth by the Others. They see him not as a free self but as a static one, an object. They label him as being this or that, thus denying him his liberty of becoming something else. Since an individual needs the Others in order to know what his image is, he is at all times suffering the torments of the damned. He can, at times, escape momentarily these torments by shutting his eyes, by sleeping, or through love. He can also, by looking at himself in a mirror, try to see himself as the Others see him and thus escape for a while the necessity of the Others.
Suppose that it were impossible for the individual to use a mirror, or to seek refuge in sleep, or love. He would then be in an absolute Hell. This is precisely what happens in Huis clos.
Sartre has written that the ideal play should be a brief one, centered around a single event; it should deal with only a few people and take place within a short span of time; it should use only one set, and on that set the characters should be engaged in intense argument. This ideal, closely akin to the classical concept of the theater, has been realized in Huis clos. We have here one long act, separated into live scenes of varying lengths, which lasts approximately one hour and a half. There are only four characters, one of whom plays a minor role. The three main protagonists are Garcin, a pacifist who wanted to be brave but died as a coward and who is responsible for his wife's death; Estelle, a nymphomaniac who killed her own child and caused the death of her lover; Ines, a lesbian (perhaps the most authentic character in the Sartrian theater since she assumes full responsibility for her acts) who drove her friend to suicide and murder. They are not nice people-but nice people do not go to Hell!
Sartre places them together, for eternity, in a hot, ugly room where there are no mirrors, no useful objects to distract their attention, no means of escaping from each other's glance. Sleep is impossible, not only because the light burns incessantly but also because their eyelids will gradually become atrophied. Love is out of the question: the only possible combination, Estelle - Garcin, will be foiled by Ines' presence. Thus there is no chance of the three co-operating to change their Hell into a Paradise. Though they try, at first (with the exception of Ines) to lie to one another, as they lied to themselves while on earth, they soon realize that now they have lost their freedom. They are the image that the Others have fashioned and they are powerless to change that image, for their acts can no longer be changed. All they can do is ... continue, as Garcin says at the end of the play, continue the absurd and infernal existence of being simultaneously torturer and tortured.
Let us remember that, for Sartre, the traditional Hell does not exist. What he is describing in Huis clos is, in reality, the torment of those beings who, on earth, live in self-deception (Garcin and Estelle) or who have chosen to lead a life contrary to the general welfare (Ines). Their punishment is not in the hereafter but in the here and now.