Thinking Outside of the Box

Plato uses a cave to symbolize the limitation to knowledge and the prisoners being chained and forced to look at the cave wall. On the other hand, Sartre used an empty room, placing three people in Hell. Both short stories are putting people in to a test. Plato tests the ignorance in prisoners and Sartre tests the Inez, Garcin, and Estelle in an empty room together.

The irony in “No Exit” is shown through the characters’ conversation. In the beginning, Estelle, Inez, and Garcin questioned each other who the “torturer” was. As the story develops, the audience reveals the three character’s weaknesses. Garcin is tortured by Estelle because he is called a coward. Estelle is tortured by Garcin because she wants his love, but he doesn’t give it to her. Finally, Inez tries to seduce Estelle by asking her to be her mirror, yet Estelle rejects Inez. The irony in the allegory is the cave  itself, the cave is supposed to teach the prisoners about knowledge yet they are shackled and forced to face the wall of the cave. In the “Allegory of the Cave,” it seems like they are in Hell at first, but they have a good life afterwards. In “No Exit,” it’s the opposite, Estelle, Inez, and Garcin all had good lives before, but end up all in Hell.

The characters are all flawed in both stories, in the “Allegory of the Cave,” the prisoners are ignorant and believe that there is no life outside the cave. Their knowledge is very limited which is a flaw, because their lives have revolved around the organisms that pass through the cave. In “No Exit,” Garcin ran away from the country and mistreated his wife by sleeping with other women. Estelle cheated on her husband then drowned her baby, which lead up to her husband killing himself. Inez seduced a man’s wife and kills the husband of her lover. The characters in “No Exit” are flawed because they all ran away from their problems, but running away from their problems led them to eternal Hell.

The “Allegory of the Cave,” the moral of the cave is for the prisoners to have enlightenment with knowledge when they leave the cave. The prisoners come to a realization when they are released in outside of the cave. Their knowledge becomes beyond the limitation. The allegory in “No Exit” is that the setting of the place may not be Hell, but the people around you can make it Hell.