Paste your text in here..The author of ‘The Wall’, Jean-Paul Sartre, a French philosopher, playwright, and political activist, played a key role in the philosophy of existentialism. ‘The Wall’ provides an example of existentialist writing. A philosophical approach, called existentialism, emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will. Sartre illustrated the confinement and unsure attitude of the main character, Pablo, through the use of existentialism and symbolism, such as the symbol of the wall.
First, most pieces of existentialist literature feature a first-person perspective. ‘The Wall’ features this existentialist characteristic. The story is told from the perspective of a narrator, Pablo, speaking directly about himself. Pablo obtains awareness of his experiences, but he cannot get inside anyone else’s mind. He does not make any remarks that look back on the present from the future.
Pablo, along with two other men, share a cell-like hospital room throughout the long night preceding their planned execution at sunrise. They all respond to this situation in diverse manors by their own choice, which provides an example of existentialism. At the beginning of the night, to combat the frigid temperature and to distract himself, Tom exercised. Juan, the youngest of Pablo’s cellmates, appeared to bear intensified emotions. Pablo said, ‘Let him alone, you can see he’s going to blubber’ (Sartre 208). Pablo’s heightened perception of the actions of those around him distracted him from focusing on his own thoughts and actions. He analyzed the actions of his cellmates, the guards, the doctor, and the officers. Pablo also noticed details of their surroundings, from a rat running out from under his feet, to the number of air holes in and a round opening in the ceiling. Pablo became overly aware of his senses. He said, ‘There was a strange smell about Tom. It seemed to me I was more sensitive than usual to odors’ (Sartre 207).
Sartre used the title ‘The Wall’ as an allusion to a physical wall as well as a symbolic barrier throughout the story. Obviously, they would be shot against the wall. The walls of the building separate the prisoners from life and death. The walls of the prisoner’s cells separate the living from the condemned, and separate individuals from one another. The cell walls that confine Pablo, Tom, and Juan represent more than just physical containment. It symbolizes their detachment from life once they learned that they were going to be executed. A cell makes it impossible to escape from somewhere, trying to understand death puts one’s mind in a cell it cannot escape.
Sartre uses figurative language to depict the wall in a symbolic manor. The wall represents brute matter, which contrasts with consciousness, and to which the men will be reduced when shot. Also, the wall symbolizes safety. While explaining his idea of how their execution would take place, Tom says:
I’ll see eight rifles looking at me. I’ll think how I’d like to get inside the wall, I’ll push against it with my back’ with every ounce of strength I have, but the wall will stay, like in a nightmare. I can imagine all that. If only you knew how well I can imagine it (Sartre 211).
Next, the officers give Pablo ample opportunities to reveal the whereabouts of Ramon Gris and in return, they would release him and grant him life. An officer said, ‘it’s his life against yours. You can have yours if you tell us where he is’ (Sartre 218). Pablo’s own
choice would determine his fate. He held the free will to act in order to save his own life. Pablo ponders why he sacrifices his life for Gris. He debates informing the officers, but decides that if he were to live, that his life would remain worthless. He made his own decision to deny knowing the man’s whereabouts. This decision-making process provides another characteristic of existentialism.
The element of irony presents itself throughout ‘The Wall’. For example, Pablo wanted to keep Ramon Gris’s location a secret and was even willing to risk his own life. Pablo said, ‘I would rather die than give up Gris’ (Sartre 218). Ironically, Pablo’s attempt to deter the soldiers ended up having the opposite effect. The location of the graveyard where the soldiers found Gris holds irony as well. Gris tries to escape his death by fleeing to a place that associates with death. His exposure would lead to death. Pablo thought to himself, ‘They were going to slap a man against a wall and shoot at him until he died, whether it was I or Gris’ (Sartre). Once Pablo discovered the ironic situation of him accidently giving away Gris’s location, Pablo said, ‘I laughed so hard I cried’ (Sartre 220).
In conclusion, ‘The Wall’ provides an example of existentialist writing. Throughout ‘The Wall’, Sartre emphasized the free will that Pablo held in order to make a life-or-death decision. The story also held an ironic element that added to the plot. Sartre used the wall to symbolize the barrier between life and death, as well as an item of safety. He illustrated the confinement and unsure attitude of the main character, Pablo, through the use of existentialism and symbolism.