On Summer Reading: Sartre

Since I am a bit behind in documenting my summer reading, I decided to do a two-for-one in this post and cover Jean Paul Sartre's No Exit and The Flies. I read these plays back to back anyway, they are both by the same author, and they were contained in the same volume, so I think it is allowed.

No Exit is a conception of hell. A man, Garcin, is led into a large room by a valet, leading one to believe the setting might be some kind of hotel. However, the two have a rather odd exchange before the bellhop leaves. A short while later a woman named Inez is led into the room, and later another young woman named Estelle. The three begin speaking and trying to sort out the situation into which they have been placed. Some natural relationships begin to form. The domineering Inez is attracted to Estelle, who is herself drawn to Garcin. However Garcin is so persistently caught up in his own thoughts that he is no answer to Estelle's desires. Throughout the dialogue, the three individuals begin revealing bits of their past and the circumstances of their deaths.

To make matters more interesting, these damned individuals can see glimpses of anyone who is talking or thinking about them. They still exist in part as long as someone remembers them. They find themselves somewhat surprised how quickly they are forgotten and are forced to face the circumstances in which they have been placed. They begin seeking an exit.

Contrary to the implications of the play's title, it seems that there may be a way out of this hell. The fellow captives serve in a way as either judge and redeemer for one another. However, each individual is so selfish that they cannot give up their own desires or fixations to allow the others their redemption. Nor do they have any mercy on one another. It is a horrible thing to have to witness, so that by the end of the play, you almost agree with Garcin's exclamation "Hell is other people."

It is an interesting idea. Especially when so much of the rhetoric regarding hell nowadays talks about separation and how hell is being alone. However, this is also an idea that cannot be entirely denied. People can be fantastically cruel to one another and can be far better torturers than perhaps a demon ever could. Nevertheless, I do not think it is necessarily true. I choose to agree more with Oscar Wilde when he writes in The Picture of Dorian Grey: "Each of us has heaven and hell in him." We all have a capacity for evil just as we have a capacity for good. And the play distinctly points out that these people could just as easily redeem as torture one another if only they gave up on choosing themselves. I think that this is an idea that goes along somewhat with C. S. Lewis's The Great Divorce which argues that people choose their fates all their lives, and they are not likely to change once they are dead. Interesting thoughts.

The other Sartre play that I read was The Flies. This was a retelling of the Greek myth in which Agamemnon has been killed by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her new lover, Aegisthus, who took his throne. The children of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra are Elektra and Orestes. Orestes has been gone in Athens leaving Elektra alone to suffer under her step-father, but Orestes returns after eight years and kills both Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, but because he has gone so far as to shed family blood, he is tormented and driven mad by the Furies.

The Flies focuses primarily on the path Orestes takes from being a meek, inexperienced traveller to his reckless abandon in defying gods, law, and family, and the beginning of his torment by the Furies. Interlaced in Sartre's telling is the power of fear to grip people, denoted by the presence of flies--the presence of Zeus who is portrayed as a deity feeding on fear for his power.

I am still not entirely sure how I feel about this play. I certainly find it intriguing, and I always love seeing what different people will do with a common myth. The ideas in it are just tough for me. There is a great deal in this play about choice and about choosing your own fate. This is a common theme of Greek tragedies (and it usually doesn't work out for the protagonist), and it is also the strongest link between this play and No Exit. However, in this story, Orestes' choices of defiance, and his ability to overcome fear put him on an equal footing with Zeus. The idea of man being on equal footing with God is absurd to me, and I chafe against it, but I have to remind myself that although Zeus is a god, he is not God. They have hardly any qualities in common, and also, Zeus is fictional. Perhaps it would be better for me to think of Zeus in this play representing the fear he feeds on, and then I would be more okay with Orestes defying and overcoming fear. Because defying and overcoming fear are things I am always a fan of.

On Transitions

Well, the GRE came and went, and I am relatively unscathed. And I am once again living on campus at Bethel for the first time in eight months. It is kind of surreal. I am trying not to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of people I don't know. It's not just the freshman either. I only got to know a handful of last year's freshman since I was gone for a whole semester. Not to mention all of the faces that aren't here. I still don't think I have gotten used to the fact that some people have graduated and are gone for good now.

And next year that will be me.

I feel time pulling me along, carrying me on to the next stage with little effort on my part. It is like riding a bike down hill. I don't have to pedal to keep going or to accelerate, I just need to hold on to the handlebars. It is like traveling with a travel agent. They do all the booking, and I just have to show up at the appointed time. It is like acting. The words are in the script and I just have to figure out how to say them.

I wonder where I will be a year from now. I feel like I am on a course for something, that my steps are pointed in a specific direction, but I can't tell what that direction is. I am trusting that God knows where I can best grow and serve him and that he has desires for my life, and I am trying to entrust myself to him, but it is hard sometimes.

On Studying

I suppose one positive result of not having a job is that it gives me plenty of time to study for the GRE. Nevertheless, as much time as I have, I still feel like I should have begun sooner. The verbal reasoning comes pretty naturally to me, but I have studied more math in the last couple weeks than I have in the last three years, and it's not that this math is particularly tough (in fact, part of me enjoys wrestling with numbers and sorting out equations), but that part of my brain is just a bit out of practice. It's like trying to run a 5k when you haven't even jogged around the block in months.

I'm sure this is all worth it. That's what I keep telling myself anyway. I guess I'll have a better idea a week from now.

On Summer Reading: In a Dark Dark House

A little while back, I gave my reflections on Neil LaBute's Mercy Seat. I respect the man's skills quite a bit, and shortly after reading that play, I read another of his works, In a Dark Dark House. This play, like all of LaBute's that I have read, gives as look at the darker side of human nature.

The play opens in the garden of an up-scale asylum. Terry has come to visit on his younger brother Drew's request. It turns out that Drew was committed for court recommended therapy following a nervous break-down which, through therapy, Drew has discovered to be the result of repressed trauma caused by a childhood encounter with a young drifter named Todd Astin who was familiar with their family and violated him. The doctors require Terry's testimony that this person did exist and that Drew is not merely attributing the deeds of a family member to a fiction of his own mind. The brother's do not get along well and argue a great deal, but Terry finally agrees to provide the testimony. Drew thanks him and exits, but Terry lingers for a moment and the scene closes with him hurling a vacant wheelchair offstage in an surprising show of rage.

The next scene opens with Terry playing miniature golf at a small spot off of the highway. He strikes up a conversation with a young girl who is working there, the owner's teenage daughter. They begin flirting and wind up kissing. They continue talking and eventually make a bet on a putt that the loser must do whatever the winner says. Terry wins and the two of them go off together. It can only be assumed that that Terry's prize was sexual.

The third and final scene takes place on the porch of Drew's house. Based on Terry's testimony, he has been released from the ward and the party is to celebrate the court's release. As they talk, still not getting along, Terry admits that he tracked down Todd Astin and saw him, but that the man did not recognize him. Terry also tells Drew that Todd owns a miniature golf course and that he now has a daughter as well and that he met her. He also says that he made things right, casting the second scene in a troubling new light. As the two men talk further about their past, especially regarding Todd, Terry admits that he was also molested by Todd, but that he liked it. He admits that he was jealous of the attention Drew eventually got and that this may be the root of the conflict between them. Once again, I can't give away the conclusion, but there is a turn that lets the accumulated emotions of the play vent.

All in all, the play is about things that lie beneath: what prompts our actions, what defines our relationships, what follows us. The play, for all of its tension and heavy material is surprisingly cathartic. I am continually impressed by LaBute's ability to capture humanness. He doesn't glorify anyone or portray everyone as corrupt and sinister; he shows us as we are: messed up beings trying to do what we think is best. In a Dark Dark House is not my favourite of his plays, but it is definitely one I will come back to.

On The Beginning

Why did you speak in the beginning when there was no one, nothing to hear you? Or did the very act of utterance manifest the something that could reply, even if that something was the substance of nothingness?

And why did you wrap creation in a word? A word is so transient and so mutable, meaning something new with every voice that pronounces it. Now your word is at the whim of a host of tiny minds who say it as they please, annunciating it wrongly or with disgust or with ridicule in their voices.

But I still think it a lovely word. It is music in my ears, and the very thought of it stirs my soul.

Beyond letter...

Beyond sound....

Beyond meaning....

Would you speak it again? Let me hear it ring with your voice. Teach my lips, my tongue, my teeth to move in the dance of the word of the universe, that I may understand the stars and fathom the void in which they hang.

That I may be a voice to answer when you speak.