The Wall (book)

"The Wall" by Jean-Paul Sartre, a collection of short stories containing the eponymous story "The Wall," is considered one of the author's greatest existentialist works of fiction. Sartre dedicated the book to his lifelong companion Olga Kosakiewicz, a former student of Simone de Beauvoir.

The Wall

The titular story coldly depicts a situation in which prisoners are condemned to death. Written in 1939, the story is set in the Spanish Civil War (in Spanish, the "Guerra Civil"), which began July 17, 1936, and ended March 28, 1939, when the Nationalists (known in Spanish as the "Nacionales", elsewhere usually referred to as Fascists), led by General Francisco Franco, overcame the forces of the Spanish Republic and entered Madrid.

The title refers to the wall used by firing squads to execute prisoners. As an image, it may represent the knowledge of one's impenetrable and impending death. The protagonist, Pablo Ibbieta, along with two others in his cell, is sentenced to death. He is offered a way out if he reveals the location of his comrade, Ramon Gris. Pablo refuses to cooperate until just before his scheduled execution, when, seeing no harm in it, he gives the authorities what he believes to be false information on Ramon Gris' whereabouts. Ironically, it turns out that Ramon Gris has moved from his previous hiding place to the very spot where Pablo tells the authorities he may be found. Thus Ramon Gris is shot and Pablo's life is, at least temporarily, spared.

The Room

A story of a woman who has married and her second husband has turned insane. Her whole surrounding urges her to let the man be transported into an asylum, yet she refuses. She cannot return to the normal world, even if she wants to.

Erostratus

A story about a misanthropic man who resolves to follow the path of Herostratos and make history by means of an evil deed -- in this case, by killing six random people (six, because his revolver holds just six bullets). The man is exhilarated by the sense of power he receives when carrying his revolver on the streets within his pocket. "But I no longer drew assurance from that [the revolver] , it was from myself: I was a being like a revolver, a torpedo or a bomb." Sartre gives the reader an insightful account about how a man's nature changes with the objects of his possession, but the object itself is unable to change the internal man, as seen in the conclusion.

Intimacy

This story tells of the mental anguish and nihilistic hole that a young married woman finds herself in. She decides to leave her husband and run off with her lover after the husband mistreats her brother. She goes through a wide range of emotions as she sees the futility in love and life and finally decides to remain with her husband, not out of love, but out of pity and a knowledge that the husband is nothing without her.

The Childhood of a Leader

A tale of the mental progress of a boy named Lucien Fleurier from around age 4 to his early adulthood.