あや

In his play No Exit, French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre depicts a psychological hell, leading to his famous declaration, “Hell is other people.” Rather than being misanthropic, it is a psychological exploration of his idea of the Look. Sartre depicts two women and a man locked in a mysterious room. They are unable to escape the “devouring” gaze of one another. One of the women accuses the man of stealing her face, because she feels automatically judged by his stare. The Look deprives the characters of their individuality, freedom, and responsibility, and locks them into a particular kind of being, as an object in the other people’s views. The experience of always being under the eyes of others causing them to lose their selves and become a collection of mirrors, reflecting what everyone else expects of them. At the end, the man finally realises what hell is.

“Myth and utopia: the origins have belonged, the future will belong to the subjects in whom there is something feminine.”

“Life everywhere is life, life is in ourselves and not in the external. There will be people near me, and to be a human being among human beings, and remain one forever, no matter what misfortunes befall, not to become depressed, and not to falter – this is what life is, herein lies its task.”