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No Exit (Kev)
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This study will analyze the character of Garcin in Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit. The play takes place in hell and features Garcin and two women. Garcin is known to us by what he says about himself, what the other two characters---both women---say about and to him, what he says to them, and by his responses to them. We find through these means that Garcin was a coward in life and is now tormented by his cowardice in death and in hell. He cannot change the fact of his cowardice, but he can at least try to convince the two women that he was not a coward, that even though he behaved cowardly, he was a good and courageous man at heart.
Garcin is easily able to get Estelle to agree with this rationalization, but her view is meaningless to him because she is frivolous, if not stupid: "You've a twisted mind, that's your trouble," she tells Garcin. "Plaguing yourself over such trifles!" (37). Garcin knows that Estelle's opinion is worth nothing precisely because she does not understand his situation (or her own) and because she is so easily persuaded to see things the way he wants her to see them. He knows his cowardice is a serious sin against the authentic life, and that only a person who resists such convincement has an opinion worth changing. Estelle does not qualify, wanting only to say what pleases and absolves Garcin: "You acted quite rightly, as you didn't want to fight. But, darling, how on earth can I guess what you want me to answer" (37). . . . . Estelle and Inez ...
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