314
PARTISAN REVIEW
moral justification he invents himself by the very ad of murder.
The myth of
The Flies
is the myth of exile. Orestes returns
to
Argos,
as a man yet undefined, a face without features, an exile, for he possesses
and is possessed by nothing. "You've left me free," he tells his tutor.
"You've left me free as the strands torn by the wind from spiders' webs
that one sees floating ten feet above the ground. I'm light as gossamer
and walk on air." Free, yet limited to two choices; to turn back, or to
liberate, by murder, the people of Argos. Orestes is the existentialist hero;
his aim is liberty in that he makes his choice as a man of "good faith,"
neither hiding behind the excuse of his passions, nor pretending that his
murder was predetermined by fate. He emerges, in anguish, but without
regrets. Electra, on the other hand, weakens when at last she sees that
"wisp of steam" rising from the "split bellies" of the king and queen,
and loses herself and her freedom in an agony of self-deceit. The existence
of Zeus suddenly becomes a truth for her (and who can blame her, when
there he is, on stage, beard, miracles and all) . For the free man,
Orestes, Zeus's presence is unimportant. His liberty, despite the gods,
is simply the presentation of the hypothesis: "Even if God existed it
would change nothing." (Whether he exists or not, everything is per–
mitted.) Zeus is an accessory illusion for men of "bad faith," and little
else.
The
No Exit
situation is a far more ingenious myth. Life is over
for the criminal trio in their drawing-room hell-the choices have been
made, the cards played.
No Exit
is a complete vision of life, while
The
Flies
is a continuum, life
"en sursis,"
in reprieve, with new choices to be
made, new values to be created, more anguish to be breathed.
No Exit
is ingenious, because Inez, Estelle, and Garcin can be regarded as both
dead and alive. Alive, they are thrust into a universe, a room without
egress, a "false situation," in which there are
others.
This is the primary
consideration; man only exists in relation to other men.
2
Garcin is
drenched in guilt, not because he knows he is a coward, but because
Inez and Estelle are looking at him, because they are his mirrors in a
mirrorless hell. Hell means the impossibility of indifference-Estelle,
Inez, and Garcin possess each other. "To forget about the others? How
utterly absurd," says Inez. "I feel you there, in every pore.... Why
you've even stolen my face; you know it and I don't."
No Exit
is also the tragedy of the dispossessed, that is, the dead.
The three are permitted to watch the living judge the value, the mean–
ing of their completed lives. A tormented Estelle sees the young man, who
once called her his "crystal girl," judge her crimes with a shrug. Garcin
listens to his old friends tag his life with the word "coward," then forget
2. "The other looks at me, and, as such, he holds the secret of my being, he
knows that I
am;
thus the profound meaning of my being is outside of myself,
imprisoned in an absence; the other has an advantage over me."
L'Etre tJt le
Neant,
p. 430.
