Quotation
Last reviewed:
“Hell is other people.”
Jean-Paul Sartre · Existentialism · Modern · 1944
What does it mean?
Hell is other people. Garcin says it at the end of No Exit, in a room where three people torture one another by being perpetual witnesses. The hell is being stuck as the object you are in someone else's look. A rival reading takes the line as misanthropy: other people are the problem, so avoid them. Sartre later said he did not mean that. He also wrote about solidarity. A character's last line is not the author's ethics. Both the play and the politics belong in the picture. The French is L'enfer, c'est les autres.
Did Jean-Paul Sartre really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. The line is L'enfer, c'est les autres, spoken by the character Garcin. Sartre later explained that he did not mean other people are hellish in general. He meant that we become stuck in the picture someone else has of us. Quote it as a line from a play.
Where it comes from
No Exit (Huis Clos), Garcin, final scene
Approximate date: 1944.
How to use it
Notice a self-image you cannot put down on a bus in London because of who is watching, a manager, an ex, a parent in your head. That freeze is what the line is about. It is not advice to avoid people, and it is not a finding that company is always a punishment.
A mindset reading
The look, in his philosophy, reveals me to myself and alienates me at once. The play makes that short enough to travel. The travelling is why people now use it to end an argument about a difficult colleague. The play does not end that argument.
Understand the philosophy
No Exit dramatises a theme from Being and Nothingness. Stuart Gilbert's English of the play is the familiar line. The line went into the language because it is short. The shortness is not a theory of other minds.
- society
- self
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
Hell is other people. Garcin says it at the end of No Exit, in a room where three people torture one another by being perpetual witnesses. The hell is being stuck as the object you are in someone else's look. A rival reading takes the line as misanthropy: other people are the problem, so avoid them. Sartre later said he did not mean that. He also wrote about solidarity. A character's last line is not the author's ethics. Both the play and the politics belong in the picture. The French is L'enfer, c'est les autres.
Did Jean-Paul Sartre really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. The line is L'enfer, c'est les autres, spoken by the character Garcin. Sartre later explained that he did not mean other people are hellish in general. He meant that we become stuck in the picture someone else has of us. Quote it as a line from a play.
Which work is it in?
No Exit (Huis Clos), Garcin, final scene Approximate date: 1944.