Thinking Outside the Box

Notes:

-It says put yourself in a room with the two people you hate the most in the world… I can’t think of two.

- Hell, nothing really works no matter what, or else they’ll find excuses not to touch it

-Garcon meets Inez, and Inez comes off as a rude ish kinda person, the opposite of garcon who was mistaken as the torturer.

- Garcon and Inez have now met Estelle. Who also mistakes Garcon as someone who would play a trick on her.

-They’re now talking about Estelle’s death and how you can see her sister crying at the ceremony. It was pneumonia.

-Garcon died by twelve bullets, his wife doesn’t suspect his death but then does, he’s also from rio. Inez dies by a gas stove.

-“ ESTELLE: I never could bear the idea of anyone's expecting something from me. It

always made me want to do just the opposite. “ that’s an interesting thing to say.

- More to Estelle’s life, she was orphaned and poor so she married young to a man old enough to be her father. She then later met a man who she was fated in love but she refused to elope and died of pneumonia.

- Garcon ran a pacifist newspaper, and was shot for standing up for his morals.

-Estelle struggles with the fact of being real, like her indicator for being real are mirrors.

-Estelle gets mad at Garcin for not letting her be licentious and then Garcin tries to be licentious but it doesn’t work out.

-Inez was into some weird stuff, and made someone her pet and liked hurting people…kinda like highschoolers today

- At first these people seemed too good to be in this hell but now that they’ve exposed the truth to why they are there, it seems as if it suits them. And their torturers are their realities in their heads.

-Garcin and Estelle almost get sexual, and Inez is mad about that and I feel like their misdoings have led them to be desperate.

-ending is quite a shocker ish not really. This whole story kind of reminds me of waiting for godot. Garcon captures that hell is other people which holds so much truth to it. He also has the final saying with “lets go on with it” after they’ve been trying to survive hell. Or trying to survive each other.

Questions:

Think about the place you have chosen as your hell. Does it look ordinary and bourgeois, 

like Sartre's drawing room, or is it equipped with literal instruments of torture like 

Dante's Inferno? Can the mind be in hell in a beautiful place? Is there a way to find peace 

in a hellish physical environment? Enter Sartre's space more fully and imagine how it 

would feel to live there endlessly, night and day:

1. My hell does look more ordinary and bourgeois because it captures a world where everything went wrong and the bad choices you’ve made have come back to haunt you, kind of like karma. Yes I do believe the mind can be in hell in a beautiful place because look at the world in general. It’s a beautiful place that provides to all our needs yet you have schizophrenic people and maniacs running around in the world acting the farthest thing from sane. You can find peace though if you train your mind to. Living in this hell would be hell cast upon me cause the environment would not change is not subject to change anytime soon.

Could hell be described as too much of anything without a break? Are variety, 

moderation and balance instruments we use to keep us from boiling in any inferno of 

excess,' whether it be cheesecake or ravenous sex? 

2.I mean I GUESS you could say too much sex or too much cheesecake without break is hell but then again I think it really depends on the person. For example a food lover may not believe in anything such as too much cheesecake and therefore may think that they can eat an unlimited amount. Hell is too much of something without a break to a person who has no particular interests towards the subject.

How does Sartre create a sense of place through dialogue? Can you imagine what it feels 

like to stay awake all the time with the lights on with no hope of leaving a specific place? 

How does GARCIN react to this hell? How could you twist your daily activities around 

so that everyday habits become hell? Is there a pattern of circumstances that reinforces 

the experience of hell? 

3.He creates a sense of place by adding things in like a bell that doesn’t work, books that aren’t really there, a bronze vase, walls that have no windows, and details such as that to create the type of place they’re in. Yes it could kinda be hell but I can relate cause I almost always stay awake… Oh my habits are kind of hellish, I do the same thing every time I go home, and its bad, I go on the computer tell myself 30 minutes max to do whatever I want… but then it turns to hours and I procrastinate. Yes there is a pattern, like people who hoard live in their own hell and the stuff they get is a personal reminder.

Comparison:

Compare how Plato and Sartre describe the limitations of our thinking and imply solutions to the problem.  Be sure to analyze their literary techniques, especially their use of allegory and extended metaphor

Plato and Sartre have a unique way in explaining in their own terms, how to break the mind’s chains of restrained learning. Both writers use extended metaphors/ allegories to get their points across. For example, Plato uses the cave as an extended metaphor/ allegory to show that humans are kept in this type of place and can only hear and see what the outside world is really like without experiencing the true value of what life is. These prisoners are restrained by chains, which are metaphors to our mind shackles as why we don’t go to explore what’s beyond our daily routine. Then you have Sartre who uses hell as peoples mind restrictors. The funny thing is that hell is usually denoted as a place of fiery, devilish, flames and such when really in Sartre’s point of view, hell is a place with people you don’t necessarily like. Both places can be easily escaped from, but the prisoners and characters in hell choose not to take that opportunity and would rather wilt in what they have.