Thinking outside the box/Text Questions

Interesting concept of people being our Hell.

Questions:

Think about the place you have chosen as your hell. Does it look ordinary and bourgeois, like Sartre's drawing room, or is it equipped with literal instruments of torture like Dante's Inferno? Can the mind be in hell in a beautiful place? Is there a way to find peace in a hellish physical environment? Enter Sartre's space more fully and imagine how it would feel to live there endlessly, night and day:

1. Hell is a very serious topic  for me and the simple answer is no, you can't find peace. I'm a Christian so I know God has more than the right to provide judgment over me and I hope I can one day look Jesus in the eye and he'll look back at me then to God and say "yeah, I know Justin, he was a good and faithful servant". Then there's the part that scares me. The pool of never ending fire and the people inside. It's an awful thought but that's what's in the Bible, so that's what I imagine when I think of Hell.
I don't think there's many forms of Hell that are peaceful and happy and Sartre's is no different. The idea of never being able to sleep or even blink is a very uncomfortable thought and I being around people that are their to torture you (not physically necessarily) is not a good thought.

2.  Could hell be described as too much of anything without a break? Are variety, moderation and balance instruments we use to keep us from boiling in any inferno of excess,' whether it be cheesecake or ravenous sex?

I'm not sure if I would call it Hell but I suppose anything for eternity that's not peace would be Hell. Just the idea of living forever is Hell.

3. How does Sartre create a sense of place through dialogue? Can you imagine what it feels like to stay awake all the time with the lights on with no hope of leaving a specific place? How does GARCIN react to this hell? How could you twist your daily activities around so that everyday habits become hell? Is there a pattern of circumstances that reinforces the experience of hell?

He describes a box with infinite light and no wear to go. The door is closed and there's no point in leaving anyways. Everything's the same. I can't imagine. He is scared, frustrated, confused, and naive almost. Well waking up to the same room, floor, bed and faces I suppose could be the Hell we're talking about. I don't think there's much that reinforces what Hell is like, true Hell. 

Thinking outside the box

The only limitation to our thinking is our own mind. Both Plato and Sartre share this theme. In the Plato's cave the shackles may bind the prisoners down but the reason they stay down is because they have not taken the courage's (and painful) action of moving their heads and leaving the cave. They can leave when ever they want but their beliefs and comfort hold them back. Sartre's three main characters do not suffer any physical torture and their room is not some kind of jail cell but it their ideas towards one another that causes them to suffer. They can only think about how the other two people in the room think about them. They could leave the room whenever they want (the Valet said their were more passages) but they cant leave the room because their mind's tell them not too. They need each others approval to feel like something more than what their lives have been (on earth). Just like the freed prisoner in the cave Inez seems to be the closest to accepting who she is, what she's done, and is the closest to getting rid of her mind's previous limitations. Our mind's can either bind us down or free us.