"The Wall"

Paper Summary:

Jean-Paul Sartre's "The Wall" reflects his existentialist philosophy and personal experiences. Satre worked for the French resistance and was imprisoned by the Germans during WWII. The paper shows how "The Wall" takes place during the Spanish Civil War in an old hospital being used by the Spanish fascist to house prisoners. The paper shows how the story is told from a first person, stream of consciousness point-of-view, and uses existentialist philosophy to illuminate the follies of totalitarian governments like fascism and Nazism.

From the Paper:

"Tom claims he sees his corpse, and what bothers him is he sees it with "his own eyes" (21). He tries to prepare himself for death, for non-existence, but nothing helps. He tells Pablo, "we weren't meant to think that." He has analyzed the situation from every point of view, but still does not have a clear picture of what it is like to not exist anymore, what is next. "I've stayed up the whole night waiting for something" (21). He wants to feel something, some kind of an answer to the age-old question, why does man exist, and does he exist. An answer beyond the un-doubtable statement of Renee Descartes, "I think therefore I exist." He comes to the conclusion, he will learn the question at the moment of his death, and that it can not be answered until that moment."

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