Jean Paul Sartre's "No Exit" ("Hois Clos")

Paper Summary:

This paper relates that the existentialist plays of Sartre and his contemporary, Albert Camus, had a big impact on European and American theater as vehicles for the presentation and expression of existential ideas and beliefs. The author points out that Sartre's "No Exit", as existentialist theater, was a new perspective for audiences because, previously, theater had grown out of a surrealist tradition, led by writers like Jean Cocteau. The paper relates that there are many adaptations of "No Exit", but they all use Sartre's attitudes in their presentation of the play's relationships, language, indifference, desire, sadism, masochism, love, and hate.

From the Paper:

"The host of sufferings that evolved from World War II also led to the formation of a new ideology that affected the theater of entertainment at that time (Lein). A growing dissatisfaction over superficial entertainment could not be denied or stifled any more, along with the increasing rejection of the criteria of pure art in any field of the time. It was simply that the shattering effects of war bore on French complacency, hence a change of popular taste into or preference for serious entertainment, which satisfied audiences as artistic, useful and meaningful (Lein). Sarter's and Camus' existentialist theater was that literary theater that was grounded both on ideology and philosophy and, at the same time, responsive to the honest yearnings of a new public."

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