No Exit and Three Other Plays

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant.....click and buy this one NOW
Review: 'No Exit' was easily the best play I have ever read and it totally blew me away. It was engaging, thought-provoking and truthful. I am not much of a reader and am easily bored, but this play was nothing short of brilliant. The characters are so real, so human, and the messages expressed in this play will speak volumes to ANYONE who lives. Pick it up and read it, you won't regret it!

Rating:
Summary: Terribly written
Review: First of all, let me say that I do find Sartre as a philosopher and essayist interesting/stimulating. Secondly, I don't speak French so I fully acknowledge that everything I didn't like about NO EXIT could have been the translator's fault. I have a feeling this isn't so, but I can't say for sure.

Basically, the best thing I can say about NO EXIT is that it was clumsily written. Sartre, whether you agree with him or not, was a great thinker, but from what I've sampled, his fictional writing seems obviously borne of analytical thinking. It's like he's programmed robots to play out the action for us, to convince us of his beliefs. Droll and mechanical, NO EXIT makes its intellectual points, but fails to capture any sort of life or spirit. Simply terrible writing.

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Summary: Is there really no exit?
Review: For years friends have been telling me that I needed to read "No Exit," and finally I got around to it. As advertised, it is a brilliantly executed portrayal of an existentialist Hell. The dialogue is clever and often humorous, and the play accomplishes what it sets out to do. But I simply cannot subscribe to Sartre's apparent belief that "Hell is other people." I found myself bogged down by existentialism's glum outlook on human relationships. But for all its pessimism, the plays in this book come across as more real than the tidy endings found in much of the theater of Sartre's day. Read it and decide for yourself!

Rating:
Summary: Sartre You Genius. You knew we couldn't resist.
Review: Garcin couldn't resist, neither could Inez. None of the characters in the play could resist the temptation to annoy, struggle, and create their own hell in a tiny room. And readers will not be able to resist this read.

The dialogue is superb, the interaction and backgrounds of the characters will make you weep, laugh, and ponder humanity with a new perspective. This is not a play for the faint or those that do not believe humans have an evil side...

I just love this book. Interested, I have one up for sale on amazon. :)

Rating:
Summary: The best idea of hell!
Review: Great book, all though the french version is the best. " L'enfer c'est les autres!" (translation) " Hell is others!". The idea is treated with a over view to hell. After all, hell is just a symbol of suffer and pain; and we can find plenty on earth. Highly recommended for a new view of life and death.

Rating:
Summary: A Lighter Side of Sartre
Review: I didn't find NO EXIT to be quite as powerful as the rest of Sartre's fictional works i.e 'The Age of Reason'. I found myself laughing after reading NO EXIT. I was expecting something very powerful and thought-provoking but all I got was this *cough* *cough* 'absurd' quote--"Hell is Other People"--JP Sartre ;) The Respectful Prostitute was indeed a wonderful and relevent portrayal of racism in America.

Even if you don't agree with Sartre's philosophy his writings are always entertaining in some way or form. He never ceases to amaze me.

NO EXIT--a recommended read for a lighter side of Jean Paul Sartre.

~Leann~

Rating:
Summary: Respectful?
Review: I have just picked up Sartre's No Exit and Three Other Plays and already I am fascinated. I had heard that his play, "The Respectful Prostitute" was a strong criticism of American racism and wanted to check it out. Skipping to the very end of the book and reading this play first, I came away with feelings of anger, and praise. Anger because I am an African-American and was hurt by its realism, but I also praise the work for its scathing, although subtle and multi-layered (sophisticated) critique of American racism. Textually, the work was extremely easy to read. Embedded in this "easy" text however is some of the most thought provoking material ranging from classical notions solitude and isolation to gender issues that should keep the feminist talking for years to come. For me, the most interesting and thought provoking portion of the text deals with the homoeroticism (not to be confused with "homosexualism") that has always been the singular preoccupation in the white male mind with respect to the black male body. The dramatic utilization and subtle working of this topic would have made Freud proud, and Dr. Francis Welsing say, "I told you so!" A must read for anyone interested in portrayals of American racism in the French imagination or just excellent dramatic work.

Rating:
Summary: not bad, for existentialism
Review: I like existentialist writings, because they are almost always thought provoking, but I seldom agree w/ the thoughts or ideas presented. No Exit is of course the famous one. Since I know someone who considers being stuck in a room w/ me to be hell, I guess it is at least partially valid, though I personally would go crazy just as easily stuck in the room alone. I used The Flies for my Senior term paper in high school, comparing it to the classic Oedipus story [it was a contrast of style]. The Flies is Sartre's version of Mourning Becomes Electra. This play explores ideas of guilt, authority, and repentence. I think my favorite of the bunch was the Respectful Prostitute, because it brought to light contrasts between what we expect of people and who they actually are [the prostitute is more honest than the respectable people she finds her self around.] All the plays have the theme of a character trapped in a situation in which they must give in and compromise their beliefs/ standards, or suffer the consequences imposed by those in authority.The characters choices, and their reasons, are quite interesting. This summary merely touches on the ideas in the plays; you must read them to understand the thoughts and ideas of Sartre's philosophy.

Rating:
Summary: Three Other Plays and No Exit
Review: I like No Exit, but it's a pity that it takes top billing in this collection. It is not as enjoyable as The Flies, not as intellectually stimulating as Dirty Hands, and not as intense as The Respectful Prostitute.

It isn't surprising that this is the play most often associated with Sartre. The other three are definitely fixed in time and place, even though the themes are universal (is that how that cliché goes?) The existentialist tackles the afterlife, emasculates the popular conceptions of hell, creating the most difficult situation a Situationist could envision. The most quotable line (Hell is other people) is ill-conceived though, isn't it? If hell is other people, than life on earth is hell to an infinitely higher degree. Or is that the point? As for me, I can hardly feel sympathy for Garcin. I can imagine far worse hells than sharing a room with two ostensibly attractive women. And Sartre sends a mixed message. The three occupants slowly lose sight of the world of the living. This is isolation. But they will never lose sight of their roommates. This is companionship. Is he mocking the Holy Trinity, or the concept of a threesome? Funny how these Frenchmen are fixated on the ménage a trois, but I'll take Rene Girard's conceptions over Sartre's.

Individuals placed in difficult situations, and the reader can't help but wonder how he or she would fare in the character's place. You don't need to be an existentialist to craft such fiction, and I think it unfortunate that Sartre's plays are pigeon-holed as part of a philosophical movement. This is great literature, no more or less modern because of an -ism, and will remain great literature when the intellectual pendulum sways away from the stagnant leftist swamp in which it (the pendulum) is caught. So he tweaks the noses of conservative theologians. A shame if that's the only attraction of this collection.

A common thread in these four plays is modestly liberated sexuality. If only the libertine playwrights of today had the taste to follow suit. Yes Inez is a lesbian who hits on Estelle. It isn't a cutesy lollipop flirtation ala Mrs. Dalloway, but it is definitely concrete and vital to the plot of the play. And it only goes as far as it needs to and doesn't overwhelm the play. In Dirty Hands, Hugo's love for Hoederer can either be homoerotic or Platonic (there's a difference...right?) Take your pick, the play works just fine either way. I thought Orestes and Electra got a bit too close at times during The Flies, but this is Greek drama after all. And it was very refreshing to see a twist of the man as sexual beast theme in the Respectful Prostitute. The sexual animal is not the black male, but the white male; in fact the black male is portrayed as impotent. Or that's how I see it. The embrace between Lizzie and "the Negro" is out of Little Women.

I read the four plays consecutively, and expected a let down after No Exit (which I enjoyed, but didn't consider to be anywhere near brilliant). Boy was I wrong. The Flies is laugh-out-loud funny. Sartre rubs our noses in the over-the-top repentance. In fact everything about the play is over-the-top, from Zeus' pettiness to the Orestes' embracing of heroic suffering servitude. If No Exit is a kick in the shin of Christian theology, the Flies is a lead pipe to the kneecap of Greek mythology. Zeus' diatribe to Orestes in Act III is akin to the berating that Job receives in the book that bears his name. I would argue that a connection between Greek sackcloth and ashes repentance to Christian sackcloth and ashes is a tenuous one at best. Incarnate Zeus is light years away from Jesus.

Dirty Hands blew me away. You could call this a tragedy, except Hugo truly does "do" something at the end of the play, and what he does is real and meaningful and senseless all at the same time. Does he do it out of love for Hoederer, despair for himself, to prove a point to Olga? The situation, as Sartre presents it, is inevitable. If the alliance of parties was inevitable, than every other situation of the play was also inevitable. But it isn't the situations that make the play, but the characters. A truly situationist play, with the situation as the all-powerful force, would have nameless characters without dialogue going through motions and putting audiences to sleep. Characters don't just search for meaning, they ARE meaning. This should transfer into real life as well. I'm often amused when characters in plays talk about chance. The irony is that in a play, absolutely nothing is chance. Every situation is carefully thought out by the author, calculated for maximal dramatic effect, with all the tight blocking we've come to expect from masters of the form. Hugo's intellect credits his action to chance, yet just by thinking he is conquering chance because chance is thoughtless. And if thinking is pure chance than you might as well stop reading books and go back to your GameCube or GameBox or whatever the heck they are called.

The Respectful Prostitute is a great change of pace, short and brutally severe. It also proves that the French have always been morally superior to Americans. Viva la revolucion!

Rating:
Summary: What is forever like in HELL?
Review: I picked this book up and read it, on a whim, and suddenly realized that I was entranced and couldn't put it down! I was hypnotized by No Exit (Huis Clos), and was thrilled and jarred by it. After I finished it, it really affected me. It is an unforgettable play! Each of the characters were so complex, and so real. The structure was infinitely ingenious, and infused with a brilliance that only Sartre could give. Usually, I don't like existentialism, but this is one play that no one should pass up. After I read it, I have been talking about it to all of my friends, raving and ranting, because it insuperable good. A great read, if you want to be transported to another world.