Hell is other people.
Jean-Paul Sartre No Exit, closing scene (1944)
Source checked by an editor
When and why it was written
- When
- First performed in occupied Paris in May 1944.
- Why
- Three characters are locked in a room and discover there is no torturer coming.
What it means
The line is a discovery inside the play, not a complaint about company. There are no instruments of torture because none are needed.
Sartre's point is about the gaze. Each character is fixed by how the other two see them and cannot revise it. Hell is being permanently interpreted.
Our reading of the passage cited above, not a quotation from a commentary.
Read the source
No Exit, 1944
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