Critical Essay | Critical Essay by John K. Simon

Critical Essay by John K. Simon

SOURCE: "Madness in Sartre: Sequestration and the Room," in Yale French Studies, Vol. 30, 1963, pp. 63-7.

In the essay below, Simon compares Sartre's "The Room " with Frantz von Gerlach's Les Séquestrés d'Altona, both of which feature protagonists who sequester themselves from the world with physical and mental walls. Simon asserts that "Sartre's emphasis is upon lucid despair and the mockery of false, self-delusive solutions. "

A Nazi torturer is the intellectual hero of Les Séquestrés d'Altona. Frantz von Gerlach is an existentialist Luther beside his unscrupulous industrialist father, a sensitive prodigal to his weak-kneed conformist brother, a pitiful victim for his incestuous sister. We are positively oriented toward the madness that has caused Frantz to sequester himself during the thirteen years since the close of the war. While Germany and the world have continued on into a meaningless prosperity devoid of guilt and of the quest for innocence,...
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