Philosophy
Jean-Paul Sartre is the most recognized name of a philosopher of the 20th century. “His diligent striving towards the philosophical reflection, literary creativity and, in the second half of his life, active political commitment gained him worldwide renown, if not admiration” (Flynn 1). Many of his stories and plays have deserved critical praise that exceeds that of other contemporary philosophers. It is mostly because “he is commonly considered to be the father of the leading philosophy of Existentialism, and whose writings set the tone for intellectual life in the decade immediately after the Second World War” (Flynn 1). In one of his finest short stories, The Wall, he presents three men who spend a night examining their destiny the next morning after being sentenced to death by firing squad. Sartre tries to reveal the effects of his radical existential thoughts circulating around the subjects of freedom throughout the story and shows how it is to be human.
In the opening scene of The Wall the narrator Pablo Ibbieta appears. Being the member of the International Brigade of foreigners who fought in the Spanish Civil War against the Franco fascists he has been captured together with two others. Tom is a mutinous fighter and Juan, an innocent spectator whose brother happens to be an anarchist. Pablo, as well as the two others, is sentenced to death after being interviewed by the captors. Having spent the night in a cold cell, the three men experienced different feelings witnessed by both the narrator and a Belgian doctor.
It happens during the night when their humaneness and freedom come to different conclusions which help to show Sartre’s opinion upon the spirit of humanity and the basis of liberty and will. “This is what Sartre brings out so strongly in his essay “Existentialism Is A Humanism” in the phrases ‘Existence precedes essence’ and ‘Man makes himself” (Spade 65). Pablo and the doctor evidence a great variance between men and their reactions towards their inevitable death.
Written in the first person and in the spirit of existential fiction, The Wall allows the reader to transmute into Pablo in order to live through the numbing cold, to feel the shock caused with the death sentence, and other sorts of feelings. Pablo thinks about the terrible physical condition that conquered the stripling Juan. “He had a terrible fear of suffering, it was all he thought about; it was his age. I never thought much about it and it wasn’t fear of suffering that made me sweat” (Sartre 7). This makes the readers wonder what “fear” Pablo has and feels. Could it be the “fear” of absence of life or existence?
Juan pronounces several questions about the effect of being shot, and as the result they create new thoughts in minds of both Pablo and Tom. Tom accepts everything saying “I tell myself there will be nothing afterwards . . . I don’t understand what it means . . . I won’t see anything anymore and the world will go on for the others” (Sartre 8). Tom considers upon the nothingness, and how it is to be nothing in the world. He sees himself as if the wall which he is standing against and is going to be shot. Tom will become like the earth from which he sprang before. All his freedom, his human perception and feelings will disappear just like he is going to disappear, bringing to mind Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. “The theme of that work is individual freedom, and its central intention is to characterize human existence in such a way that it is ‘without excuse” (Soloman 204).
“How madly I ran after happiness, after women, after libertyI took everything as seriously as if I were immortal. At that moment I felt that I had my whole life in front of me and I thought, ‘It’s a damned lie.’ It was worth nothing because it was finished death had disenchanted everything” (Sartre 11).
Pablo has no excuses for his life. He lived it and now it comes to its ending. He has no concern for his previous experiences any more. “Only consciousness, not things, has the property of ‘secreting nothingness,’ of imagining alternatives, of denying a situation” (Soloman 204).
Pablo sees it this way “In the state I was in, if someone had come and told me I could go home quietly, that they would leave me my life whole, it would have left me cold: several hours or several years of waiting is all the same when you have lost the illusion of your being eternal” (Sartre 12). The sense of “being eternal” Sartre sees in the steps which are presented in the ways a person accepts responsibility. “When a man commits himself to anything, fully realizing that he is not only choosing what he will be, but is thereby at the same time the legislator deciding for the whole of mankind—in such a moment cannot escape from the sense of complete and profound responsibility” (Soloman 209). It is that kind of responsibility that limits the feeling of freedom, which in its turn restricts the perception of life and the implementation of those perceptions as well as any deviation from freedom. People become overwhelmed with responsibilities and have no real freedom.
“I wanted to scream and tear out my hair. But I gritted my teeth and pushed my hands in my pockets because I wanted to stay clean’ (Sartre 14). This is the condition under which Pablo has come to recognize his mortality and at the same time feels that he must “stay clean,” not for any physical purpose, but for the purpose of his humanity. It is a cleanliness born from being separate, from being released from responsibilities. For Sartre, there are “two distinct and irreducible categories or kinds of being: the in-itself (en-soi) and the for-itself (pour-soi), roughly the unconsciousness and consciousness respectively” (Flynn 27). It is the property of being human that allows us to be complete when we combine both the unconsciousness with the consciousness. And when we allow the one dominate over the other we become less than we are. Most of our lives we deny the combining of the unconsciousness with the consciousness. It is when we are released from our responsibilities and finally become free. At that point, the consequences do not matter at all.
It becomes evident in The Wall when Pablo is sentenced to death together with Tom and Juan, and later interrogated by the authorities again. “These men dolled up with their riding crops and boots were still going to die. A little later than I, but not too muchTheir little activities seemed shocking and burlesqued to me; I couldn’t put myself in their place, I thought they were insaneAll his gestures were calculated to give him the look of a live and ferocious beast” (Sartre 15).
Pablo has released the idea that these Fascists have no control over him. His discharge from responsibility has neutralized their authority and power. Their oppression and the tools that come up with it seem to be a silly thing, and certainly not something to fear about. Sartre shows Pablo realizing that “Even love, as well as sadism and hate, is a manifestation of conflict, of the attempt of each person to win his or her freedom from the other” (Soloman 205).
Pablo leads his investigators through the path he has chosen, sending them on a chase with no implementation. It is symbolically that he takes control of the “other” through deception only in order to discover that there was no deception at all, he only succeeded in deceiving himself.
Much of what is pointed out by Sartre in The Wall has a flavor of truth and is worth deep consideration. However, his belief that responsibilities interfere freedom demands a second consideration. Questions about the value of life, the value of binding oneself to another are still remained. There are concerns and worries about the family and community that Sartre cannot answer. In the end, in his point of view saddling oneself down with responsibilities hampers the experience of life. Only through the interaction with others the human experience takes hold and establishes deep roots. The experience of life must be regarded as a statement that misses the mark.
