Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
 Professor of
philosophy at Le
Havre (1931)
 studied in Berlin
(1932)
 took part in the
Resistance
 Nobel prize in 1964
Some important works:
 Nausea (1938)
 The Wall and Other Stories (1939)
 Being and Nothingness (1943)
 The Flies (1943)
 Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946)
 No Exit (1947)
 What Is Literature? (1947)
The Wall (1939)
 “the best introduction to the heart of Sartre’s thought” (Kaufmann).
 contains central existentialist motif: confrontation with death
 solitary hero compelled to choose values that define what it means
to be a human being
 Sartre “felt the need to assert the individual´s freedom in the face of
an increasingly totalitarian world situation” (Pitts).
Other important themes:
 an absurd world
 man’s highest value:






integrity
all men are free
need to choose our own
values
creative freedom as law
unto itself
existence precedes and
governs essence
essence is a succession
of choices
other themes?
Some questions to discuss in
groups:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
What does Pablo’s intention to “die
decently”/cleanly mean?
What does it mean that Pablo thinks his life is
“only a sketch”?
Why are love, frienship, political cause all
emptied of meaning? What does it mean that
they are?
Why does he refuse to betray Ramón Gris?
How do you interpret the ending?
What does the wall symbolize?