No Exit by Jean Paul Sartre story review

This is a short story and a quick read with only 27 pages. The story tries to redefine what it means to be living in hell. It creates an alternate reality of the place called hell where souls go after death. Here souls are neither roasted for eternity in fire nor tormented by hard physical torture. They are subjected to a different kind of pain..
Three souls having commited sins of deception, lies, narcissism and murder etc  are forced to stay together in a room in hell after they are dead. Soon their flaws, sins and insecurities are exposed to each other. They are locked in a tug of pull and push with each other. They cant love the other due to an awareness of their true nature. They cant hate the other cause they are stuck with them for eternity in the same room. What happens to someone if they cant go mad or die (to escape repetition and boredom) because it is a soul.. 

The story is quite popular from the author and it is great thrill to read it. Sometimes short stories outdo bigger books in the suspense they can create and the intensity of their expression.. this book is one belonging to that category.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Story of Bhagiratha bringing Ganga to Earth

Image
             King of Himalayas Himavantha had two beautiful daughters Ganga and Uma with his wife Menu.  One day the gods of heaven approach Himavantha and his wife. They ask him to give  his daughter Ganga to them for the welfare and prosperity of the world. Himavantha happily accepts this request and sends Ganga away with the Gods. Ganga starts living among the other damsels and demigods in heaven.               King Bhagiratha is a ruler iof the Ikshvaku dynasty into which Lord Rama will be born later. Several of his ancestors try to bring Ganga to earth and die without succeeding. Bhagiratha is determined to bring Ganga down to earth so that her divine waters could liberate his ancestors. He leaves his kingdom to the management of his ministers and goes to perform severe penance and austerities in the forest. He spends hundreds of years in penance to impress God Brahma. Brahma becomes pleased with his dedication and appears in front of him along with other demi gods. Brahma ask
Read more

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood - book review

Rating: 4.5/5 Genre: Historical fiction, Drama, mental illness A mesmerizing tale! One of the very good books I have read in a while! A young girl named Grace Marks of sixteen along with a man James is accused of murdering her employer Mr.Kinnear and his mistress in cold blood. They run off to United States from Canada from getting caught. But police eventually get to them and James accuses Grace of instigating him with the murder. Grace tells different versions of her story during her arrest, trial and confession. She also suffers from lapses of memory as to what has happened and how she has ended up in company of James. James gets a death sentence and Grace gets life imprisonment on account of being a young girl who is quite susceptible. So she is locked away in a penitentiary in Canada. When they think she has wild dreams or is quite unsubdued, they commit her to a mental asylum where the conditions of living and treatment are not sanitary and quite harsh. Some respectable persons
Read more

Easy Journey to other planets - A.C.Bhaktivendata Prabhupada - book review

Image
Rating 4/5 Genre Religion,Spirituality, Evolution For starters, this is not a science book. It does not lay out a step by step plan for the construction of spacecrafts and satellites to help transmigrate masses of people between planetary systems. Why I am saying this is because the title can be misleading. Srila Prabhupada prescribes perfecting the art of meditation and bhakti yoga in order to develop an ability of moving to higher planets. He presents his case to the readers as to why they should opt the yoga method as opposed to scientific methods for traveling to other planets and calling them home. He calls the endeavours of scientists to reach other planets through spacecrafts a waste of time and whatever success they yearn for as meaningless. It is easy to see why this work of literature rubs a scientific minded person the wrong way. Those who are not acquainted with the teachings of iskcon or haven't read other works of Srila Prabhupada might call it a little extrem
Read more