Inez’s Manifestation Of Self-Deception

The essay on Self-Deception and his play “No Exit” show Jean-Paul Sartre as a great thinker and an able writer. His essay outlines his thesis on self-deception while his play brings it to life. The character Inez is the pivotal character in the play. Her actions can be directly correlated with Sartre’s texts. As we will see, Inez’s behavior stems from her cynicism towards others as well as her loss of identity and her conscious drive towards suffering. Sartre strikingly points out that companionship is both a blessing and a curse.

Sartre defines consciousness as “a being, the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being”(K 299) . This implies that our nature is to realize that our consciousness is nothing, that we are nothing. This is not to say that everything is nothing. On the contrary, the very idea of humans having a consciousness leads one to believe that consciousness is the very thing that saves us from damnation, that a higher being would not endow the human race with consciousness if it were not ultimately destined to transcend its own nature and fully employ all the realms of his own consciousness outside of the human body. I interpret

Sincerity produces an interesting notion in relation to self-deception. “To be sincere,” Sartre says, “is to be what one is. That supposes that I am not originally what I am” (K 318). “Shall I uncover in myself ‘drives’ even though it be to affirm them in shame?…shall I pass judgment on my character, on my nature? Is it not to veil from myself at that moment what I know only too well, that I thus judge a past to which by definition my present is not the subject? The proof of this is that the same man who in sincerity posits that he is what in actuality he was, is indignant against the reproach of another and tries to disarm it by asserting that he can no longer be what he was. We are readily astonished and upset when the penalties of the court affect a man who in his new freedom is no longer the guilty person he was. But at the same time we require of this man that he recognize himself as being this guilty one. What then is sincerity except precisely a phenomenon of self-deception?” (K 319). To picture this, Sartre gives the example of the self-deceiving homosexual. The homosexual denies that he is a “pederast”. He feels that his actions do not warrant his classification. He is born again and his future is not limited to that of a pederast. Sartre states since “human reality can not be finally defined by patterns of conduct, I am not” any one identity (K 320). If the homosexual affirms that he is a homosexual, he is no longer the person he was when he made the statement, therefore self-deceiving himself. On the other hand, the homosexual’s critic, the champion of sincerity, pushes him to be sincere. In so doing, he himself becomes self-deceived: “The champion of sincerity is self-deceived to the degree that in order to reassure himself, he pretends to judge, to the extent that he demands that freedom as freedom constitute itself as a thing” (K 321). He is denying his own self by taking on the illusion of being sincere.

The last aspect we must look at is faith of self-deception. One must look at faith or belief behind the action which is self-deceiving: “For me to have represented (self-deception) to myself as self-deception would have been cynicism; to believe it sincerely innocent would have been in good faith. The decision to be in self-deception does not dare to speak its name; it believes itself and does not believe itself in self-deception; it believes itself and does not believe itself in good faith” (K 325). The motive of Inez is, in my opinion, much more cynical than in good faith. Throughout the play her cynicism is evident in the manner in which she addresses Garcin and Estelle. Her tone when she laughs about the idea that a mistake was made is full of cynicism.

Inez’s nature has been shown to be self-deceiving, insincere, as well as self-serving. Because of her cynicism, her choices are not

Some topics in this essay:
Exit” Inez, Jean-Paul Sartre, Id Ego, Garcin Estelle, Manifestation Self-Deception, champion sincerity, id ego, “no exit”, play “no exit”, self-deception hiding, faith self-deception, playing game, coming closer, believes believe, inez playing, suffering sartre,