Hell Is Other People

“By the mere appearance of the Other, I am put in the position of passing judgment on myself as on an object, for it is as an object that I appear to the Other."

-Jean Paul Sartre

Hell is other people.

No, this doesn’t mean other people are the worst and you should hide away forever like a gremlin and avoid them forever. Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit is a play, where three (horrible) people are stuck together in Hell; a single room with 3 colored couches (the horror); and ultimately confess their sins to one another and along the way, and up falling into a bizarre love triangle.

Fun for the entire family!

Sartre's famous quote, "Hell is other people," has often been quoted - but typically out of context. The quote refers to a human being's loss of subjectivity when seeking the approval of other people. Sartre's point was not to criticize other people but to point out the objectification and loss of freedom that comes along with needing the approval of others. Subjectivity is the core of Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist philosophy, which stressed the freedom of human beings to define themselves in a subjective world.

The confinement of the characters extends beyond the physical room they’re held in: they’re trapped by the judgments of their cellmates. That's why Garcin says, "Hell is other people" — because of how we are unable to escape the watchful gaze of everyone around us. 

Now I’m not going to go on and on about philosophical theories I don’t understand but pretend I do. It’d be an existential crime.

To me, from the quote I understand that hell is other people because you are, in some sense, forever trapped within them, within the image they have of you and subject to their apprehension of you. A thousand different versions of you exist in the memories of a thousand different people. The only image a stranger may have of you is that one time you cried over a fallen sandwich. Truly mortifying.

Sartre himself offered clarification about his much-misunderstood phrase:

"Hell is other people" has always been misunderstood. It has been thought that what I meant by that was that our relations with other people are always poisoned, that they are invariably hellish relations. But what I really mean is something totally different. I mean that if relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell. Why? Because … when we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves … we use the knowledge of us which other people already have. We judge ourselves with the means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves.

The inability to blink, to close one's eyes in sleep, and escape from reality, leads Garcin to utter the metaphorical remark, "So one has to live with one's eyes open all the time?"  Faced with an existence stripped of all delusion, the three characters must, at last, sort out their true self from the personas they’ve had and try to find their own existential uniqueness and define it as it will be for eternity.  They cannot escape from this existential task because there is, literally, "no exit." But, the only way they can face themselves is in the eyes of the other. Without glass or mirror. There is no way to exist as an individual. The open door has been an opportunity for them to escape, but are too weak to face the consequences of freedom. Garcin walks away from the open door of opportunity, just to prove to Inez that whatever she says, he is NOT a coward. He yearns for her approval, just like Inez yearns for Esther’s and Esther for Garcin. Now, they are confronted for eternity with each other.

This is why he concludes "hell is other people".

I think that the exploration of character motivation is one of the most distinctive features of the play.  Personal conflict is something brought out in the characters' interaction throughout the play.  We learn that the characters' appearance at the start of the play is nowhere near how we see them at the end of the play. Throughout the course of the play, the way we see them changes multiple times. This is brought out through dialogue and dramatic revelations of their true essence.  What we thought turns out to be not entirely accurate and their complexity is revealed through personal, interpersonal interaction.  Our assessment of them is brought out through dialogue and understanding, something that makes the play all the more fascinating and philosophically profound. I’m already twirling my mustache in glee.

The play relies heavily on symbols, imagery, and metaphor as well.  The concept that "hell is other people" is represented well by these characters.  Typically, we expect hell to be full of external demons and torture, but Sartre uses internal spite, fear, and anguish to carry out his subtle tortures. It’s mental warfare.  The main symbols of doors and mirrors exhibit bad faith, a false self-image projected by and through others.

When Sartre said “hell is other people” he noted that we cannot really know ourselves without taking into consideration how we are regarded by others. If we are judged by another, it becomes a part of our own opinion of ourselves. Others are so important to us, we cannot leave the maze of who we are without them.