Sartre's Style

Sartre's Style

Novels usually portrays specific style of writing that the author wants the reader to feel. Jean-Paul Sartre has an ambiguous tone in it. Sartre gives women in his play a very important part exploiting a weakness in the male characters through dialogue. Sartre is one of the only authors in his time and one of the most obvious ones today to give women this important role in novels.

Sartre style of writing disorients us in the beginning because of the ambiguous settings he gives us. An example in No Exit is , " A drawing room in Second Empire style. A massive bronze ornament stands on the mantelpiece"(pg 3). This gives us no idea where the characters are located. We are forced to ask questions about location and reasoning and not having a stated answer but what we inference by the story. This also ties in Sartre's philosophy of existentialism where these objects actually have no purpose making it nothing. The idea of having an immobile massive bronze ornament on the mantelpiece is useless. Sartre's use of the word ornament tells us it is for decorative purposes but from the clues in the book why would hell need an ornament. The Second Empire style furniture has no meaning, none of the characters like it and the reader doesn't know where they're at.

Sartre's ambiguous setting is similar to Dirty Hands as well as it was in No Exit. An example in Dirty Hands is, "The ground floor of a small cottage along the highway.....Tables, chairs.Oddly assorted pieces, all of cheap make....Cars can be heard from time to time going up in the road. Motor horns"( pg 127). Sartre again disorients us here leaving us confused and where the setting is actually taking place. This general information about the material things in the house what purpose does it have. Sartre to purposely include "oddly assorted pieces..of cheap make" is it to tell us they are poor or just to simple tell us it is not useful enough to explain. Questions like those rise up with the settings that Sartre creates.

Sartre use of making women a strong role in both his plays ; No exit and Dirty Hands to unnerve the male protagonist is very satirical. An example in No Exit is, "Inez: Estelle!: Estelle: Please Mr. Garcin!: Garcin: What is it?: Estelle: you're sitting on my sofa.....Estelle: you looked so so far away. Sorry I disturbed you." (pg 12).Right before this satirical interaction Garcin and Estelle were having