Jean-Paul Sartre is the most name-recognized philosopher of the 20th century. “His indefatigable pursuit of 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 earned critical acclaim that far exceeds that of other contemporary philosophers. Thus, it is that “He is commonly considered the father of Existentialist philosophy, whose writings set the tone for intellectual life in the decade immediately following the Second World War” (Flynn 1). One of his finest short stories, The Wall, involves three men who spend a night contemplating their fate the next morning after being sentenced to death by firing squad. Throughout this story, Sartre reveals the effects of his radical existential thoughts revolving around the subjects of freedom and what it is to be human.
In the opening scene of The Wall the narrator, Pablo Ibbieta, is found to be a member of the International Brigade of foreigners fighting in the Spanish Civil War against the Franco fascists. Having been captured along with two others, Tom an insurgent fighter and Juan, an innocent bystander whose brother happens to be an anarchist, Pablo, and the two others are sentenced to death after a brief interview with their captors. During the night in a cold cell, the three experience different sensations witnessed by both the narrator and by an officious Belgian doctor.
It is during the night that their humanity and their freedom come to various conclusions that show Sartre’s views upon the nature of humanity and the source of freedom. “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 witness the difference between men and their reactions to their pending doom.
As is the case with most existential fiction, The Wall is written in the first person allowing the reader to become Pablo, to experience the numbing cold and to feel the impact of the death sentence, a cold of another sort. Pablo reflects on the terrible physical condition that had overcome the youngster 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), bringing the reader to wonder what “fear” Pablo is feeling. Could it be the “fear” of nothingness?
Juan’s repeated questions about the effect of being shot brought on new thoughts for both Pablo and Tom. Tom admits, “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 is reflecting on the nothingness of being nothing. He will become like the wall that he will be stood against and shot. Tom will be a something with nothing within unlike the others that will go on. He will, once again, become like the earth from which he sprang. All freedoms, all his human senses will disappear just like he will 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 had no excuses for his life. He had lived it; now he resigned himself to its ending. He no longer has any concern for his previous experiences. “Only consciousness, not things, has the property of ‘secreting nothingness,’ of imagining alternatives, of denying a situation” (Soloman 204).
As Pablo sees it, “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). It is this sense of “being eternal” that Sartre believes steps in the way of a person accepting 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 responsibility that limits freedom. And as such, it is the feeling of responsibility that restricts the perception of life and the implementation of those perceptions as well as any inclination of freedom. One becomes encumbered with responsibilities and has 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). It is the state of Pablo that he has come to recognize his mortality and, therefore, senses 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 nonconscious and consciousness respectively” (Flynn 27). It is the property of being human that allows us to be complete when we combine both the nonconsciousness with the consciousness. It is when we allow the one to dominate the other that we become less than what we are. Most of our lives we deny the combining of the nonconsciousness with the consciousness. It is when we are absolved of responsibility to one another that we become free. At that point, it does not matter the consequences.
In The Wall this becomes evident when Pablo is spared death with Tom and Juan and again interrogated by the authorities.
“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 concept that these Fascists have any control over him. His release from responsibility has negated their authority. Their oppression, and the tools that come with it seems a silly thing and certainly not something to fear. Pablo, as shown through Sartre, has come to realize 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 interrogators down a path of his choosing, sending them on a chase with no completion. Symbolically, he takes control of the “other” through deception only to discover that that deception was no deception at all, he only succeeded in deceiving himself.
Much of what Sartre points out in The Wall, smacks of truth and worthy consideration. His belief that responsibility hinders freedom, however, demands a second consideration. Questions remain about the value of life, the value of binding oneself to another or to a host of others. There are concerns of family and community and fraternity that Sartre cannot answer. In the end, his contention that saddling oneself down with responsibilities hampers the experience of life cannot hold. It is through the interaction with others that the human experience takes hold and establishes deep roots. To coldly place those responsibilities aside for the “self” limits the experience of life and, therefore, must be regarded as a statement that misses the mark.
Works Cited
Flynn, Thomas. "Jean-Paul Sartre." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, 5 Dec. 2011. Web. 19 Mar. 2016.
Sartre, Jean-Paul, and Lloyd Alexander. The Wall, and Other Stories. New York: New Directions, 1948. Print.
Spade, Paul Vincent. "Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness." Class Lecture Notes (Fall 1995): 1996. Web. 19 Mar. 2016.
Soloman, Robert C. Existentialism. Second ed. New York: Oxford, 2005. Print.
