in funding the production. The new producer had his own ideas of who
should play the roles. Beauvoir recalls that “at this point, Camus, feeling
that he was not qualified to direct professional actors or, indeed, to put
on a play in a Paris theater, wrote a charming little note to Sartre
releasing him from their prior agreement” (Prime 704 ). In other words,
he saw the handwriting on the wall.
The scene is Hell and the three condemned, a male and two females,
are in the same room, where each explains in bad faith why she or he
does not deserve to be there. In this remarkable psychological study,
Sartre manages to illustrate several of the cardinal principles ofBeing and
Nothingness. The first is the primacy of the “gaze” as the vehicle for
interpersonal relations. The condemned are incapable of sleeping or
even blinking to avoid the other’s objectifying look. No mirrors, no
darkness, each is inescapably being-for-others and their basic relation
is not Heideggerian “being with” but Sartrean conflict. When two
propose to make love, the third reminds them to remember that she is
watching, imposing the identity of the in-itself on them and robbing
them of their freedom to control the meaning of their acts. Next, at a
crucial moment in this conflictive triad, the male rushes toward the
presumably locked door and, to his astonishment, manages to open it.
A new dimension of freedom presents itself – which each of the “pris-
oners” refuses. The comfort of their bad faith is preferable to the
anguish of freedom. As a final example, the dramatist gifts them with
the ability to see and hear what their survivors are saying about them
while leaving them powerless to intervene. Sartre had reminded us that
“the dead are prey to the living” (BN 543 ); it’s up to us to determine the
meaning of the lives of those who’ve gone before us. At issue here is
whether their lives were inauthentic. Only Inez, the lesbian, seems
capable of an existence approaching authenticity in her refusal to look
to the judgment of others for her “identity.” Yet, even she is unwilling to
pass through the open doorway. The effect of this “situation” is that
there is no need for torturers and pitchforks: “Hell is other people”
(“L’enfer c’est les autres”). If one reads this famous phrase in light of the
Critique of Dialectical Reason, one will gather more appropriately that
“Hell is the objectifying Third.”
The FliesandNo Exit 229