No Exit and Three Other Plays
by Jean-Paul Sartre (1947)
2022 reads, book 1/20:
This book contains four plays of Jean-Paul Sartre, published between 1943 – 1947. I was most excited to read No Exit, but upon receiving this collection, I’ve read and compiled thoughts for all four plays in this edition below. I would rate the whole collection about 4 stars, but read on for the individual scores below.
No Exit (Huis Clos): A simple premise: three people, who didn’t know one another on Earth, arrive in hell. We, as the audience, simply watch (or read) the dialogue that ensues between them. What starts off a bit slow quickly ramps up to accusations being thrown, secrets being revealed, and true natures coming out at full force. I think it’s a great play, because not only is it a fun read at the surface level, but you can dig deeper into the meanings that Sartre hoped to communicate in this play, regarding freedom, acceptance from others and self-worth. 5/5 stars!
The Flies (Les Mouches): A retelling of the Greek tragedy Electra, which I was unfamiliar with before reading this. The main character Orestes returns to his home city, where he was kidnapped/rescued from as a child, as his father, the king, was murdered by his mother’s lover years earlier. He comes back and meets up with Electra, his sister who still lives there, to enact revenge. While the plot itself didn’t do much for me, the themes and motifs on religion, freedom, and guilt were interesting to dig into as I was reading. As a side note, the context in which Sartre wrote this was fascinating; it is said that he wrote this play to mirror the state of the German occupation of France, but in order to get it past Nazi censors, he disguised the plot into a Greek myth. Overall, 3/5 stars.
Dirty Hands (Les Mains sales): This one was a pretty fun read. It starts off in the future, where we learn that the main character Hugo just finished jail time for assassination of a political figure, and spend the rest of the play revisiting the events that led up to the assassination, to learn why he did it. The dialogue between the characters was witty, expertly written, and never felt dry. Not only was there substance, but the whole play even read like a comedy at times. 4/5 stars overall.
The Respectful Prostitute (La Putain respectueuse): Although it was short, this one was a rough. Set in the American south in the 1940s, this play explored not just racism, but power of the different political figures of that time. It was rough to read because of the vulgarity of the language, and the way that most, if not all, the characters acted throughout. Not only that, but the ending unfortunately was a bit unsatisfactory, so this gets 3/5 stars.