ifpoetshadmerch 's review for:

No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre

3.0

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Conceptually, great. I think it's a very interesting decision to depict Hell as a Second Empire style drawing room occupied by only three people. Despite death, the characters continue to muse about their existence, without any effect. The only people they have to convince of their identity is each other, and (I believe) they realize that their identity is not something that is constructed by themselves, but by those around them. Overall, I wasn't super impressed with the play. I felt that the characters, especially the two females were not particularly distinct, and I wasn't sure their motives were that clear. Were they trying to escape Hell? To figure out if there was a higher purpose for the three of them to be grouped together? To convince each other of their sense of being? I would have liked Hell to have played a bigger role in the play, as it just seemed like a way to bring about conversations of existence rather than to figure in any prominent sort of way. In general, after reading, I felt that I was either missing some larger message, or that the message was perhaps not anything I found to be particularly insightful.