No Exit

The agreed-upon silence stretches on for a very long time. Inez breaks it by singing a song to herself about execution and beheadings. Estelle, who keeps herself occupied applying makeup, asks Garcin for a mirror. When he doesn’t respond, Inez steps in and offers to help Estelle apply her makeup by being her “mirror” (19). Estelle says she feels as if she stops existing when she can’t see her reflection; the self-image that exists solely in her mind is so vague and fuzzy that it makes her want to sleep.

Inez flirts with Estelle and insists Estelle ignore Garcin as if the two of them are alone. Inez takes over applying Estelle’s makeup and “improves” it by making her lipstick look “crueler” and “diabolical.” Estelle is distraught by her inability to see herself and judge her appearance to her own tastes; she cannot trust that Inez’s tastes are the same as hers. Inez begins to tease her by being a “lark-mirror” and lying to her that she has a pimple on her face. Estelle is afraid and fascinated by what she sees in Inez’s eyes. When the older woman admits she is attracted to Estelle, Estelle makes it clear she wants Garcin to notice her.

Inez is agitated by Garcin’s presence and drags him into conversation. Garcin makes it clear he has no interest in Estelle. He calls for complete silence again. After some point during the silence, Inez turns on Garcin and lambasts him. Inez asserts that being silent means nothing; they are all intimately connected in their shared living space. The presence of one another still weighs on each of them, even through the silence. Garcin had believed that it would be easy for the three of them to escape each other’s presence in silence. Inez says: “You can nail up your mouth, cut your tongue out—but you can’t prevent your being there” (23).

Inez finds Garcin’s presence just as agitating as him speaking; she prefers to drop the pretense of silence. Garcin makes advances on Estelle who turns him down. Garcin demands that they “be natural” with one another and be as “naked” as “new-born babes” (24). Garcin twists these words from their first implied sexual innuendo to mean that the three of them should come clean with one another about their pasts.

Garcin tells his story first. He was a monster to his wife. When he mentions her, he sees her receiving the coat he was executed in, riddled with twelve bullet holes. He watches her stroking the coat and wishes she would cry for him. He says she is a “martyr” and a “victim by vocation;” he hurt her because it was easy to do so (25). He claims to have saved her from poverty and that she admired him too much. He tells the other two that he frequently cheated on her openly and spent most nights drunk. He brought home women whom he slept with where his wife could hear.

Inez tells her story second. She declares herself a “damned bitch,” since people called her that in life. She seduced her unnamed cousin’s wife, Florence. She then convinced Florence to move across town with her and leave her husband. Inez “crept inside her skin” and made Florence “see the world through [her] eyes” (26). Inez’s cousin was killed by a tram, which was unrelated to Florence and Inez’s affair. Inez joked with Florence that the two of them had killed her ex-husband. Inez says that she burns people up like fuel, which is what she did to Florence. When there was nothing left to Florence, she took both of their lives by turning on the gas stove while they both slept.

At first, Estelle refuses to tell her story. She tries to flee the room and rings the bell for the Valet to no avail. When she can’t escape, she calls Inez and Garcin “hateful.” They prod her, dragging out her story. After marrying her much older husband to escape poverty, she met a poor man named Roger that she fell in love with. Roger wished to have a child, Estelle didn’t. She drowned the infant they ended up having. Distraught, Roger took his own life. Estelle successfully kept the entire secret from her husband.

Estelle tells Inez she hates her while Inez comforts her. Garcin, who has wanted to take his coat off for a very long time due to the uncomfortable heat, finally does so and Estelle allows him to.

Inez says they are finally “in the nude” and asks Garcin what he thinks, now that all their secrets are on the table (29). Before Garcin can respond, Inez has her final view of Earth: Her room has been rented out to a new couple, severing her connection to life on Earth.

Garcin explains that they need to help one another to defeat their tormentors’ “devilish tricks.” He believes they need to help one another with the “spark of human feeling” (30). Sympathy and understanding for one another are likely all that can save them from torturing one another, he says. Inez refuses the offer. She believes she is “a dead twig, ready for the burning” (30), no longer capable of human feeling. Inez would rather take her punishment on the chin than try to escape it.