No Exit
Jean-Paul Sartre (1944)
“Three damned souls locked in a drawing room discover that hell needs no torture chambers -- only other people.”
Character Analysis
A Brazilian journalist and self-proclaimed pacifist who deserted during wartime. Garcin's defining trait is his need to be seen as courageous -- by himself, by others, by anyone who will listen. He treated his wife with calculated cruelty and fled when tested. In hell, he cannot stop pleading his case because he cannot stop needing external validation. He is Sartre's portrait of bad faith: a man who knows the existentialist doctrine of self-definition through action but cannot live it.
Educated, formal, slightly professorial. Tends toward abstract formulations ('a man is what he wills himself to be'). Uses rhetorical questions to control conversations. Avoids vulgarity.