LAQ: No Exit

No Exit by John Paul Sartre

GENERAL:

1. "No Exit" is a book where three people (two women and one male) are placed in a room in hell. They half expect it to be torture chambers and moats it it ends up being a well decorated room with sofas. There is even bright lights. Obviously this is something you don't expect so they relax and converse with each other. Inez, one of the woman, bluntly asks what did everyone do to die. Estelle acts the innocent one and so does Garcin as they deny ever doing anything wrong. They continue to converse and converse and finally they realize what hell really is. Hell is the people you are stuck with, not the place itself. Garcin tries to escape by opening the door but there is a physical

barrier that won't ket him leave the room. They are forced to spend an eternity together.
2. I think the theme of this play is that you get what is coming to you. People who commit bad things will always get their come-uppance, "We're in hell, my pets; they never make mistakes, and people aren't damned for nothing. " Not just that but also the fact that people desire company and someone to talk to. If three people that have distinctly different personalities with horrible lives' are placed in the same room they will no coexist "I mean that each of us will act as torturer of the two others." People are essentially each other's hell.

3. The tone is definitely melancholy and hate. Melancholy because the three people are in hell and they obviously rather be with loved ones that with strangers "Ah, I see; it's life without a break." Hatred because the strangers get to know each and bonds of disgust build. They learn why each other are in hell and that disgusts each other. Estelle killed her baby because she didn't want one but her husband did. Garcin beats his wife and is a cheater. And Inez seduced and slept with a married woman. Inez tries to seduce Estelle but fails. Estelle tries to seduce Garcin but fails but then Garcin says yes. Inez is disgusted because if Garcin and Estelle make love, she would have to watch since there is only one room. She shouts at them and tries to stop their sex scene, "That's right, fawn on him, like the silly bitch you are. Grovel and cringe!"

4. --Rhetorical question: "And what use do you suppose I have for one? Do you know who I was?"

--Anaphora: "No, I wasn't joking. No mirrors, I notice. No windows. "

--Imagery: "A man's drowning, choking, sinking by inches, till only his eyes are just above water."

--Garcin is definitely an anti-hero because he does not have the attributes deemed noble in his society. He is a man who loves and craves sex.

--Situational irony: "VALET: Did you call, sir? GARCIN: (About to answer "yes", but sees INEZ and says) No." The audience believes Garcin has changed his mind but he finally decides to stay because he saw who he was going to sleep with.--Ambiguity: "I'm-- quite recent. Yesterday. As a matter of fact, the ceremony's not quite over. The wind's blowing my sister's veil all over the place. She's trying her best to cry."

--Verbal irony: "That's just it. I haven't a notion, not the foggiest. In fact, I'm wondering if there hasn't been some ghastly mistake." They are in hell for a reason so obviously Estelle is lying when she says this quote.

---Repition: "That's just it. I haven't a notion, not the foggiest. In fact, I'm wondering if there hasn't been some ghastly mistake. Don't smile. Just think of the number of people who-who become absentees every day. There must be thousands and thousands, and probably they're sorted out by-- by understrappers, you know what I mean. Stupid employees who don't know their job. So they're bound to make mistakes sometimes... Do stop smiling. Why don't you speak? If they made a mistake in my case, they may have done the same about you. And you, too. Anyhow, isn't it better to think we've got here by mistake?"

--Metaphor: "And presently we shall be naked as -- as newborn babes."

--Simile: ".Oh, just look at her face, all scarlet, like a tomato."

--Hyperbole: "All right, dance away, dance away. Garcin, I wish you could see her, you'd die of laughing."

--Juxtaposition: "You shall be whatever you like: a glancing stream, a muddy stream."

--Onomatopoeia: "I'm not a young nincompoop and I don't dance the tango."

--Aphorism: "It's what one does, and nothing else, that shows the stuff one's made of."

CHARACTERIZATION: 

1. Direct:

-- "You see, I'm fond of teasing, it's a second nature with me-- and I'm used to teasing myself. Plaguing myself, if you prefer; I don't tease nicely." Garcin tells the audience directly what kind of man he is.

--Another direct characterization is when Garcin tells us exactly the kind of person he is, he is a wife beater "I'm here because I treated my wife abominably." Inez doesn't hold back either and calls herself “a damned bitch."

Indirect:

--"I had quite a habit of living among furniture that I didn't relish, and in false positions" Garcin is willing to live in a life where he is unhappy with his current situation and in an environment undesirable. He doesn't much care the lifestyle he lives in as long as its somewhat luxurious.

--"Right! In that case, I'll stop her watching. (She picks up the PAPER knife and stabs Inez several times.)" Estelle is obviously an idiot if she thinks a paper knife will kill someone that is already dead.
2. -You can tell this play was written in a different time because no one speaks like this "What’s the point of play-acting, trying to throw dust in each other's eyes? We're all tarred with the same brush." People will just telling you "Stop bull$hittng me and tell me why you are really here in hell?" As far as the syntax, this is a play and the entire play consists of non-stop dialogue. Syntax does not change as you change from character to character but diction obviously changes because people have different things to say. Inez will bluntly tell it as she sees it. When she was describing herself to the others, she called herself a bitch. She saw through everyone's b.s. that they had committed crimes and weren't here by accident.
3. Truth be told, there is no real protagonist. All three characters in this one act are equally as prominent in the play. I think they are static characters because they don't really change by the end of the story. The whole purpose of being placed in that room is not to learn a lesson but to suffer from one's mistakes. Not one of the three characters repented or regretted what they had done. They merely talked about committing the crime and even then it was like pulling teeth trying to get Estelle to admit to what she had done. They don't change, they merely wish they had been placed with other people.
4. I did come away feeling like those three people could be real, because I understand where these characters are coming from and why they did what they did. Obviously you don't want people to think bad of you so Estelle and Garcin chose to be disingenuous as to why they were in hell. Inez doesn't really care about people's perceptions, hence the fact that she is 1) a lesbian,  2) she gets involved with a married person (home wrecker!!), and 3) it is her cousin's wife that she beds. WOW what a home wrecker, so she obviously doesn't care about what people think. Garcin beats his wife and cheats on her and Estelle kills her own baby and doesn't even tell her husband that she had one. These people are real a$$holes but they have an eternity to wallow in their own self-hatred.