The Wall

Jean-Paul Sartre · 1939 CE · Short Story · French · Contemporary

Three prisoners are sentenced by a Falangist tribunal in Spain and put in a cellar to wait for morning, with a Belgian doctor sent down to sit with them and take notes. One weeps, one talks about his brother, and the narrator watches his own body sweat and refuse food while he tries to work out what a man is supposed to think in the last hours. Written as the Spanish war was being lost, and Sartre's sharpest test of freedom.

Open The Wall in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.

Attributes

Closest analogues

• End Zone
  Don DeLillo · 1972 CE · Novel

  62% · 12 shared
  PsychologicalDeath & MortalityExistential AbsurdityIsolation & AlienationWar & ViolenceContemporaryEverymanAnti-Herovs Selfvs SocietyAbsurdistIronic
• The Hurt Locker
  Kathryn Bigelow · 2008 CE · Film

  56% · 11 shared
  WarPsychologicalDeath & MortalityIsolation & AlienationWar & ViolenceContemporaryEverymanAnti-Herovs SelfRealistIronic
• Malone Dies
  Samuel Beckett · 1951 CE · Novel

  56% · 11 shared
  PsychologicalDeath & MortalityExistential AbsurdityIsolation & AlienationContemporaryAnti-HeroConfessionThe Prisonvs SelfAbsurdistIronic
• Endgame
  Samuel Beckett · 1957 CE · Play

  56% · 11 shared
  PsychologicalDeath & MortalityExistential AbsurdityIsolation & AlienationContemporaryAnti-HeroSingle DayThe Prisonvs SelfAbsurdistIronic
• The Last Day of a Condemned Man
  Victor Hugo · 1829 CE · Novel

  55% · 11 shared
  PsychologicalDeath & MortalityIsolation & AlienationEverymanConfessionThe PrisonThe Thresholdvs Selfvs SocietyRealistFrench
• Nausea
  Jean-Paul Sartre · 1938 CE · Novel

  53% · 12 shared
  PsychologicalExistential AbsurdityIsolation & AlienationContemporaryEverymanAnti-HeroConfessionvs Selfvs SocietyAbsurdistIronicFrench