No Exit

“Do you know who I was? … Oh, well, it’s no great matter. And, to tell the truth, I had quite a habit of living among furniture that I didn’t relish, and in false positions. I’d even come to like it. A false position in a Louis-Philippe dining-room—you know the style?—well, that had its points, you know. Bogus in bogus, so to speak.”

The Louis-Philippe style of furniture was a neoclassical style adopted by upper class French people to mimic royalty. Sartre disdained the bourgeois upper class. Garcin’s furniture and “false positions” imply that he did not live authentically and needed to impress others. This foreshadows his cowardice.

“I’m to live without eyelids.”

To live without eyelids means to always be looking and thinking. With two other companions trapped in the same room, it also means being looked at simultaneously. The characters are unable to rest away from the anxiety of being known by others, forming the basis for the room’s hellish tortures.

GARCIN: Frightened! But how ridiculous! Of whom should [torturers] be frightened? Of their victims?

INEZ: Laugh away, but I know what I’m talking about. I’ve often watched my face in the glass.

Garcin’s interaction with Inez foreshadows the dynamic of torturing one another that quickly develops between him, Estelle, and Inez. Inez establishes the importance of mirrors in turning the Look upon oneself.