Les Main's Sales Essay

‘Ce que le théâtre peut montrer de plus émouvant est un caractère en train de se faire, le moment du choix, de la libre décision qui engage une morale et toute une vie’ (Sartre). Discuss Sartre’s presentation of Hugo in the light of this statement.

The play Les Mains sales (1948), by Jean-Paul Sartre, explores the implication of the author’s existential philosophies on both the individual and society through the protagonist, Hugo, and the moments of choice that he faces. In the course of the following essay I shall discuss what Sartre means by ‘choice’, how the presentation of Hugo shows his reaction to the reality of having to choose, and how the theatre itself is involved in enabling this and choice itself. I will also try and demonstrate
Hugo feels the unconscious desire to be his own man; he says that he wants the feeling of ‘heaviness’, which we may identify as the weight of the responsibility for his own choices. Hugo believes that the seriousness of the act of killing will provide him with this: ‘Bon Dieu, quand on va tuer un homme, on devrait se sentir lourd comme une pierre.’6 Sartre identifies this need to feel responsible as ‘anguish’, the inescapable awareness of your own isolation, the accountability of your own freedom.7 Kirsner suggests that this ‘condemnation’ of freedom can be seen in the symbolism of Hoederer’s room. It represents imprisonment for Hugo, the obligation to make a choice as an
Bagot and M. Kail, Jean Paul Sartre: Les Mains Sales, Vendôme, Imprimerie des Presses Universitaires de France, 1985

Marc Buffat, Les Mains Sales de Jean Paul Sartre, Paris, Folio, 1991

Frederick Jameson, Sartre: Origins of a Style, New York, Columbia University Press, 1984

Richard Kamber, On Sartre, California, Wadsworth, 2000

Douglas Kirsner, Sartre and the Collective Neurosis of out Time, Yale French Studies, No. 68, Sartre after Sartre, Yale University Press, 1895, pp. 206-225

Paul Reed, Sartre: Les Mains Sales, Glasgow, University of Glasgow Press, 1988

Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Mains Sales, Paris, Folio-Gallimard, 1971

Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism, translated by Phillip Mairet, London, Methuen, 1973

Jean-Paul Sartre, Un théâtre de situations, Folio-Gallimard, Paris, 1973

Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, translated by Hazel E. Barnes, London, Routledge Classics, 2003

Michael Wreszin, Jean Paul Sartre: Philosopher as Dramatist, The Tutane Drama Review, Vol. 5 No. 3, March 1961, pp.