Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 7 No.

3, October 1976

f cDlSCUSSIOIt
Y

SARTRE'S PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE MASK

C. R. BUKALA, S.J.
The men and women of Jean-Paul Sartre's writings
are all actors who appear on a stage of evolving lifesituations experienced, created, or anticipated by Sartre
himself.
Forced as a child to live with his maternal grandparents after the death of his father, Sartre describes in
his autobiography how he was literally pushed into the
role of an actor even in the ordinary situations of his
daily life; for his grandparents and mother had "only
one mandate; to please, everything for show"./ "I invent.
I have the lordly freedom of the actor who holds his
audience spellbound and keeps refining [and perhaps
redefining] his role/'i He describes the unreality of the
situation:
I was a fake child . . . I could feel my acts changing
into gestures. Play-acting robbed me of the world
and of human beings. I saw only roles and props.
. . . A stranger to the needs, hopes, and pleasures
of the species, I squandered myself coldly in order
to charm it. I was my audience; I was separated
from it by footlights that forced me into a proud
exile which quickly turned into anguish. . . . Worst
of all, I suspected the adults of faking.-?
This childhood experience explains his preoccupation
later on in life with such concepts as absolute freedom,
the imagination, the magic of the emotions, and the
existential reality of self-creativity. "If Words can be
taken at face value." writes Joseph P. Fell, "Sartre's
childhood experience had much to do with the cast of
his philosophy."^
It has been said that within the world of Sartre's
plays and novels there is always at least one character
who bears more than a coincidental resemblance to his
creator. Sartre is Orestes, Garcin, Goetz, Hoederer,
Mathieu, Roquentin. Kean, and many others. As an
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

198

existentialist, Sartre philosophizes in his early writings

not only with the intellect of these characters, but with.
their whole person, including their personal and peculiar
desires, will, emotions, imagination,. and conflicts in
relating to others. The men and women of Sartre's world
wear various masks. His phenomenology of the mask has
as its point of departure the dialectic of the conflict
among these characters. We shall consider the basic
ingredients of his brand of existentialism, the primary
objective of his theatre, and introduce a consideration
of his philosophy of the mask by way of three of his
plays.
The Sartrean man masquerades as a creator who is
himself in need of creation. He appears in the world
faceless, without a definition; he is a nothingness. "Freedom in its foundation," says Sartre, "coincides with the
nothingness which is at the heart of man. Human reality
is free because it is not enough. It is free because it is
perpetually wrenched away from itself and because it
has been separated by a nothingness from what it is and
from what it will be."5
A man's life is meant to comprise specific moments
of creative acts which ultimately constitute his essence.
"Existence precedes essence," according to Sartre. Man
first appears on the scene and only later defines himself
through his own activity:
Only afterwards will he [man] be something, and he
himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there
is no human nature, since there is no God to
conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives
himself to be but he is only what he wills himself
to be after this thrust toward existence.^
Man's destiny, therefore, is within his own hands. And
his "only hope is in his acting and that action is the

Jean-Paul Sartre. The Word, trans. B. Frechtman (New York: George Braziller, Inc. 1964), p.. 32.
Ibid., p. 28.
Ibid., pp. 84-85.
Joseph P. Fell, "Sartre's Words: An Existential Self-Analysis," Psychoanalytic Review, XLV (1968), p. 429.
Jean-Paul Sartre. Being and Nothingness. An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes
(New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), p. 440.
Jean-Paul Sartre. Existentialism, trans. B. Frechtman (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947), p. 18.

only thing which enables a man to live"." Anxiety is

born of the fact that his existence will demand constant
choices. Thus, the existentialist imperative is for man to
become conscious of himself as conscious of his freedom
through a specific activity. Speaking of the transcendental character of consciousness, Sartre says:
It determines its existence at each instance, without
our being able to conceive anything before it. Thus
each instant of our conscious life reveals to us a
creation ex nihilo. Not a new arrangement, but a
new existence . . . At this level man has the impression of ceaselessly escaping from himself, of overflowing himself, of being surprised by riches which
are always unexpected.?
The possibility of a synthesis between the terms of
Sartre's phenomenological ontology, namely, the "beingfor-itself * and the "being-in-itself \ is dismissed precisely
because the being born of this synthesis would be the
ens causa sut, God himself.^ But one becomes man,
according to Sartre, only by escaping from the reality
of God. For if God exists, man is nothing by comparison to him. "Thus the passion of man is the reverse of
that of Christ, for man loses himself as man in order
that God may be born. But the idea of God is contradictory and we lose ourselves in vain. Man is a useless
passion."^

can not be anything (in the sense that we say that

someone is witty or nasty or jealous) unless others
recognize it as such. In order to get any truth about
myself, I must have contact with another person.
The other is indispensable to my own existence, as
well as to my knowledge of myself. This being so,
in discovering my inner being I discover the other
person at the same time, like a freedom placed in
front of me which thinks and wills only for or
against me. Hence, let us at once announce the
discovery of a world which we shall call intersubjectivity; this is the world in which man decides
what he is and what others are./2
The dialectic of freedom and self-creativity, however,
becomes a continual struggle between individuals who
desire to assert their own validity. Man either accepts
his condemnation to be free and the necessary implications of this condemnation, or he lies to himself that he
is not free after all and thus lives in "bad faith".

One of the basic difficulties to an individual's realization of freedom consists in the conflicts which Sartre
says constitute the essence of intersubjectivity. "My
original fall," says "Sartre, "is the existence of the
Other."// The Sartrean man always runs the risk of being
objectified by "the look" of an Other, whether this be
another human being or an object. The look of an
Other can transform him into an object and deprive him,
consequently, of his subjectivity and transcendence.
Nevertheless, Sartre does affirm the value of intersubjectivity. Contrary to the philosophies of Descartes
and Kant, he says:

Every man, in so far as he freely determines his

activity, is an actor. He changes roles and assumes
various masks in the drama of the human condition.
Sartre's theatre considers the human condition its
primary concern. The play becomes a religious rite for
Sartre and speaks to the audience of their common
concerns, while maintaining a certain reserve of manner,
which instead of increasing familiarity, rather creates a
distance that is needed between the play and the audience. The aim of Sartre's theatre is simply stated: To
examine and understand the state of man in its entirety
and then present a portrait of modern man to himself. /*
To present an adequate although necessarily always
incomplete, picture of modern man to himself demands
a consideration of his problems, his hopes, his fears, his
struggles, and his conflicts. "As a successor to the theatre
of characters," Sartre writes, "we want a theatre of
situations."/^ Thus, Sartre's theatre involves the audience
in situations which ultimately enables it to understand
itself. It is actually the human drama of the audience
that is enacted on the stage.

. . . through the / think we reach our own self in

the presence of others, and the others are just as
real to us as our own self. Thus, the man who
becomes aware of himself through the cogito also
perceives all others, and he perceives them as the
condition of his own existence. He realizes that he

Robert Champigny suggests that character is not

something which gradually unfolds in the course of a
drama, but is interpreted as that which a particular
individual "is" from what others tell him he is./;* In
other words, his being is continually in question; he

7. Ibid., p. 42.
8. Jean-Paul Sartre. The Transcendence of the Ego. An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness, trans. Forrest
Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick (New York: Noonday Press, 1965), pp. 98-99.
9. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 615.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., p. 263.
12. Sartre. Existentialism, pp. 44-45.
13. Jean-Paul Sartre, "Forgers of Myths. The Young Playwrights of France," Theatre Arts, XXX (1946), p. 329.
14. Ibid., p. 326.
15. Robert Champigny, Stages on Sartre's Way, 1938-1952 (Bloomiogton, Indiana: Indiana University Pres
1959), p. 129.
199

has to decide what he will be according to the desires

of others, and what his own reaction will produce in
the course of this dialectic of encounter. "A caractre is
a role; thus it does not appear as fundamental but rather
as a certain enterprise of freedom, a certain way to give
meaning to life, to try to realize the desire to be. Ambition, love, pride are not irreducible. They mask and imply
a choice. The character may change roles, he may change
his caractres and yet continue to pursue blindly the
realization of the desire to be."W Character, therefore,
is not a static quality, but rather a distinguishing trait
always moving from the individual and contrasting him
with his activity.

phenomenology of the mask. In The Flies Sartre i<

primarily interested in presenting his philosophy of
freedom in Orestes as the existentialist hero; in No Exit
he is concerned with the conflicts which develop in inter
subjectivity; and in Kean Sartre is interested in exploring the situation of conflicts in which an actor of the
stage finds himself in his life off stage.
In The Fliese Orestes returns to his native land from
which he had been taken as a boy. He appears faceless
as far as role-playing in any meaningful life situation is
concerned. There is nothing significant from his past that
can define him as a person. It is only through his act
of revenge, the double murder of his mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegistheus, that Orestes can be
singled out and defined.

Sartre's phenomenology of the mask helps us to

understand the make-up of all of the characters of his
creation, and helps us to understand Sartre as well. "A
Orestes can be defined by different terms, depending
man without a mask," says R. D. Laing, "is indeed very
on
the way he presents himself to others and the way
rare. One even doubts the possibility of such a man.
Everyone in some measure wears a mask, and there * they view him. He can be defined as a "murderer" by
are many things we do not put ourselves into fully. In Zeus, Electre, and the Argives. He can be defined as an
'ordinary' life it seems hardly possible for it to be other- "intruder" by Zeus who wishes Orestes to return to his
wise."^ The wearing of a mask can either suggest the "saner self". He can be defined as a "saviour,'' but a
specific role which an individual will act out in life, or rejected saviour, for no one will acknowledge his
it will suggest an individual's concern, and perhaps need, redeeming act. Orestes wears many masks, and no one
to hide something from an Other. However, the individ- seems to be able to see behind them. He appeared first
ual personality which is revealed in a specific instance as a stranger to Electre, and then as a brother who will
is still but a small portion of the total personality and commit the act of revenge for the murder of their father
inner self. The mask may in fact provide no more than Agamemnon. Thus, he hoped to save himself, his sister.
a fleeting glimpse of the personal experience which and the Argives from the domination of their god anil
constitutes the ever evolving self. Moreover, the masks their ruler. He was unable to share his new fountl
assumed in various roles create a distance between the freedom with anyone. He saved himself and no one else.
actor and his activity which can never be bridged. ConElectre seems to be play-acting most of the time. She
sequently, what is known is the activity and not the
is a great actress just like her mother Clytemnestra. She
source of the activity. A knowledge of the actor as actor
had hoped for someone to revenge the death of her
always escapes us. For the actor of a play or life situafather, but then regrets this "indiscretion" after her
tion is basically, according to Sartre, a consciousness ever
desired revenge becomes an established fact. Her
involved in creating itself through role-playing in various
confusion in determining a role to correspond with her
situations.
true self ultimately leads her to practice "bad faith".
All the characters of Sartre's plays, novels, and other
writings wear masks. Their masks offer the audience but
a passing glimpse of what lies beyond what they reveal
about themselves. We never really get to know Garcin,
Estelle. Orestes, Kean, or any of the others. That which
is behind the mask, and some of which Sartre makes
known ultimately through the dialogue, is what constitutes all of his writings as dramatic philosophy.
Three plays serve as a good introduction to Sartre's

Deception in role-playing defines Zeus, as well as

Clytemnestra and Aegistheus. While Zeus keeps hidden
from the Argives an important secret, namely, that he
created all men free, Clytemnestra and Aegistheus
promote their annual cult of the dead in order to impose
their own guilt on the people of Argos. Although
rejected as a saviour, Orestes has forced everyone to
consider his own roles and the accompanying masks.
In No ExitK* Sartre situates three persons, Garcin.

16. Ibid., pp. 174-175.

17. R. D. Laing, The Divided Self. An Existential Study of Sanity and Madness (Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin
Books, 1970), p. 95.
18. Jean-Paul Sartre, The Flies, in No Exit and Three Other Plays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1946)
19. Ibid.
200

Inez, and Estelle wearing the masks of the dead in a

hell of interpersonal relationships from which they
cannot escape. They wear the masks of the dead because
for them "the chips are down". Their life now is a dead
life.

for his performances on the stage of Drury Lane, he

finds himself restricted to his own circle of friends. Social
custom will not allow him to overstep the boundaries of
his birth and background. He tries to hide the fact of
his illegitimacy and low social class behind his many
masks.

Garcin and Estelle keep protesting that they do not

know why they are in hell, a literary device Sartre uses
allegorically to describe life on earth. They are strangers
to each other, but before the drama at the end is about
to take its natural course, the naked past of each is
revealed and everyone knows why he or she is in hell.
Beyond the mask of their pretended innocence is the
true self wherein is hidden their fear, frustration, regret,
disappointment, and hope.

Kean has value as a man of many faces only because

he entertains others and makes them forget their own
problems and difficulties. He helps them forget their
own lives by inviting them to become involved in the
lives of Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo, and Othello. He exists
for his audience by means of their look and becomes
their victim through their applause.

The masks of Garcin are basically three: liar, coward,

and unfaithful husband. His life is ended and he is
defined according to the masks he has worn. Inez, on
the other hand, seems to assume fewer masks. Her face
suggests the kind of person she is. According to her own
description, she is "one of those women'*. She wears this
mask in arguing with Garcin, as well as when she tries
to seduce Estelle. Estelle enters the room wearing a very
definite mask and keeps protesting her innocence; she
becomes depressed when she finds there are no mirrors
to help her to keep reasserting her self-righteousness.
Garcin, Inez, and Estelle in the end wear the masks
of torturers of each other in a hell they have created
by their own past. Their frustration at each other's
hands will keep them busy exchanging one mask for
another. The role of a spectator, which each will play,
maintains them individually as a consciousness conscious
of its completed essence and its specific past.
Sartre's famous phrase, "Hell is other .people!"
which Garcin speaks at the end of the play, has been
badly misunderstood. Sartre explains: "I mean that if
relations with others are twisted, damaged, then the
others are hell. Why? Because the others are really the
factor which is most important in ourselves for knowledge of ourselves."^ Joseph H. McMahon remarks:
"They [Garcin. Inez, and Estelle] are not suddenly in
hell; they are only suddenly conscious of the hell in
which they have always existed.''^/
In Keanii Sartre is concerned with one basic question:
Who is Edmund Keon? Though hailed as a national hero

If Kean is an actor and is described as a mirage, this

means that he is always changing roles which make it
impossible for anyone to get to know him. In his life
off stage he attempts to seduce Elene, the Countess of
Koefeld, in order to assert himself as a man. He likewise
hopes to ridicule the social class that has excluded him
from its ranks. He protests to the Prince of Wales, who
describes him as a "shadow, a mirage," although the
Prince himself is actually trying to compete with this
shadow:
You, and all the others. We believe that men need
illusion that one can live and die for something
other than cheese. What have you done? You took
a child, and you turned him into an actor an
illusion, a fantasy that is what you have made
of Kean. He is a sham prince, a sham minister,
sham general, sham king. Apart from that, nothing.
Oh, yes, a national glory. But on the condition that
he makes no attempt to live a real life. In an hour
from now, I shall take an old whore in my arms,
and all London will cry 'Vivat!* But if I kiss the
hands of the woman I love, I shall find myself torn
in pieces. Do you understand that I want to weigh
with my real weight in the world? That I have been
acting a part to amuse you all. Can*t you understand
that I want to live my own life.*-?
Sartre suggests two problems here: First. Kean wishes
to be recognized as a great actor, but society refuses
also to acknowledge him as a man who has a personal
life of hopes and desires. Society by its intolerance has
misunderstood the man behind the masks of Macbeth.
Lear, and Othello. Second, Kean the actor runs the risk
of playing diversified roles with such intensity that he
confuses these roles with his own personal life.
Kean is described as "perpetually contrasting the

20. Jean-Paul Sartre, in Le Figaro Littraire (Jan. 7-13, 1968).

21. Joseph H. McMahon, Hitman Being. The World of Jean-Paul Sartre (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1971), p. 80.
22. Jean-Paul Sartre, Kean, in The Devil and the Good Lord and Two Other Plays, Nekrassov and Kean.
trans. Kitty Black (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1960).
23. Ibid., pp 188-189.
201

emotion he acts on stage with that which he experiences

in the wings. As Othello he can rage, gesture, modulate
his voice appropriately to the perfect words which give
form to his jealousy and despair. When he is Kean the
sharpest blow finds him sinking Nback weakly in his
chair and murmuring, 4You have hurt me very much.'
Worse than this, he cannot tell us whether what he
thinks are real reactions are genuine or merely part
of another role."J

Kean makes his first attempt to emerge out of the

roles which have been confused with his true self. This
occasion has given him the unexpected opportunity to
express his innermost feelings. He is definitely not without emotion. "Sartre takes the final step of showing that
in real life, no less than in theatrical experience, persons
are alienated from themselves, i.e., from their roles, their
essences, their very emotion, and all learned behaviours.".^

In the Fifth Act we find a play within a play. Kean

has agreed to a benefit performance to help his friend.
He allows Anna Danby, who pursues him in the same
way that he pursues Elena, to play Desdemona even
though Elena objects to this. Disturbances from the
Countess* box, as well as from that of Lord Neville
whom Kean insulted earlier, cause him to break
altogether from the Shakespearean drama. He takes a
step toward the audience, raging with the jealousy of
Othello:

Robert J. Nelson remarks that "The Sartrean hero

[Kean] has a less exalted notion of his art, for he knows
the play for what it is no romantic identification with
the role for him."^5 The actor Kean was not free to Jo
as he pleased even on the stage. As an accomplished
actor, the theatre demanded of him a certain allegiance
and conformity to the rigid rules 'prescribed for specific
roles. However, once Kean removed the masks he wore
on stage, he found that life-acting forced other masks
upon him. For society would not accept him as a man
among other men. This led him to realize that all
members of society play roles, and that the roles played
in real life do not differ from those played on the sta^e.
Nelson further remarks that "Behind this Kcan\
ironical, self-castigating demeanor lies the conception of
the theatre as a vast deception of the actor's life as :
fabric of lies."2 Kean* s advice to Anna who pretends
she wants to become an actress reveals his own convie
tion:

All against me? What an honor! But why? Ladies

and gentlemen, will you allow me a question? What
have I done to you? I know you all but this is
the first time I see you with murderous faces. Are
these your real aspects? . . . I thought you really
loved me. . . .25
Consciousness of the Other has been intensified to such
a degree that Kean now sees a familiar audience becoming hostile. In fact, he suddenly realizes that he had
merely existed in a master-slave relationship with them.
But now the slave has rebelled against its master.
McMahon remarks that "There is good reason to claim
that while the profit Kean draws from his rage does not
cancel out Sartre's theory of the emotions, it does
suggest an adjustment in it. In this play, Sartre seems
to be indicating that there are emotional moments when
the sheer expense of energy produces an encounter with
real situations and motivations; under other circumstances the encounter might never come about.".?*?
The creative responsibility for this monstrosity, a term
Kean uses to describe himself, is placed by him on the
shoulders of all the audiences who have applauded his
performances. In smearing the make-up on his face, and
in proclaiming to the audience to "Behold the man/'

. . . You cannot act to earn your living. You act to

lie, to deceive, to deceive yourself; to be what you
cannot be, and because you have had enough of
being what you are. You act because you want to
forget yourself. You act the hero because you arc
a coward at heart, and you play the saint because
you are a devil by nature. You act a murderer
because you long to poison your best friend. Yon
act because you are a born liar and totally unbitto speak the truth. You act because you would to
mad if you didn't act. Act! Do I know myself when
I am acting? Is there a moment when I cease to
act?#>
Nelson remarks that "Ironically, like the Kean of Dumas.
Sartre's actor ultimately identifies himself with his role
but with this crucial difference: that he confirms in their
unreality his own unreality."?/

24. Hazel E. Barnes, Humanistic Existentialism. The Literature of Possibility (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of
Nebraska Press, 1967). pp. 208-209.
25. Sartre, Kean, pp. 250-251.
26. McMahon, p. 185.
27. James M. Edie, "The Problem of Enactment," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, XXIX (Spring.
1971), p. 113.
28. Robert J. Nelson, The Play Within a Play. The Dramatist's Concept of His Art: Shakespeare- to Anouilh
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1958), p. 101.
29. Ibid.
30. Sartre, Kean. pp. 199-200.
31. Nelson, p. 105.

202

The dialectic of encounter which Kean experienced . which make them recognize that, all the world being a
on and off stage forced him to wear many masks. stage, some men are inevitably invited to play parts not
Perhaps, from one point of view, one might say that necessarily of their own choosing".-??
Kean was really more interested in Kean the actor after
all. From another point of view, one might argue
Sartre's philosophy of the mask applies to all men,
whether he ever involved himself in the actual struggle whether in life-acting or play-acting situations. His
of the dialectic of encounter which demands constant characters are not perfected or complete when they make
role-playing.
their appearance in a given situation. To the contrary,
they are merely in a position to choose for themselves
Role-playing can be understood as a natural pheno- what they will be. But neither are they completed after
menon, and its value is recognized in the various goals they have made their choices. For the dialectic of
which an individual determines for himself. For example, encounter, along with the accompanying anguish, fear,
a cafe waiter, says Sartre, "must play at being a cafe frustration, hope, and desire, merely begins anew in a
waiter in order to be one'\? Thus it is with regard to constant on-going process. The significance of the mask
all the other goals that a man intends for himself. He and role-playing is established as the Sartrean man's
will profit from role-playing and masks only in so far as means of survival as far as freedom and subjectivity are
he controls the inner and outer influences from disturb- concerned. In this short essay we have only set the stage
ing the plans that he has devised for his self-creation. for a consideration of the variables of the drama of the
Commenting on Kean's predicament, McMahon says that human condition about which Sartre keeps writing.
"Kean's problem is presented as a metaphor for the
problem of all men who run into obstacles and limits
John Carroll University

32. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 83.

33. McMahon, p. 181.
203