No Exit

by

Jean-Paul Sartre

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Inez Serrano Character Analysis

Inez Serrano is an intelligent and stubborn postal worker who has been sent to hell because of the “cruel” way she treats others. When the valet first brings her to the drawing-room where she will spend eternity, she assumes that Garcin—who’s already there—is her torturer. He quickly dispels this idea, but Inez soon figures out that she, Garcin, and Estelle actually are supposed to torture each other. When she tells her companions this theory, Garcin is appalled and suggests that everyone should remain silent. Inez, however, is too drawn to Estelle to keep to herself. When Estelle wishes for a mirror, Inez goes to her and urges her to look into her eyes, saying that she will be Estelle’s “glass.” To her disappointment, though, Estelle doesn’t like being reminded of the fact that Inez is staring at her and making her own interpretations about what she looks like and who she is. When Estelle admits that she wishes Garcin would notice her like Inez has, Inez takes her anger out on Garcin, blaming him for the fact that Estelle isn’t interested in her. Shortly thereafter, Garcin suggests that they all explain why they’ve been sent to hell, so Inez says that she worked her way into the heart of her cousin’s wife, Florence. Eventually, she got Florence to leave her husband, which is when he got hit by a tram. Not long after this, Florence crept out of bed one night and turned on the gas stove, killing both herself and Inez. As the three companions continue their conversation, Inez resents Garcin more and more, while making constant appeals to Estelle. When Garcin finally realizes that he wants Inez’s approval, he tries to convince her that he’s not a coward, but Inez refuses to give him this relief, saying that he’ll always be a coward because she “wishes” it to be so. Inez is the only character who immediately accepts her fate in hell, and she eventually succeeds in getting Garcin and Estelle to do the same.

Inez Serrano Quotes in No Exit

The No Exit quotes below are all either spoken by Inez Serrano or refer to Inez Serrano. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Human Interaction, Control, and Sense of Self Theme Icon
).
No Exit Quotes

GARCIN: I can quite understand that it bores you having me here. And I, too—well, quite frankly. I’d rather be alone. I want to think things out, you know; to set my life in order, and one does that better by oneself. But I’m sure we’ll manage to pull along together somehow. I’m no talker, I don’t move much; in fact I’m a peaceful sort of fellow. Only, if I may venture on a suggestion, we should make a point of being extremely courteous to each other. That will ease the situation for us both.

INEZ: I’m not polite.

GARCIN: Then I must be polite for two.

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano (speaker)
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

INEZ: Can’t you keep your mouth still? You keep twisting it about all the time. It’s grotesque.

GARCIN: So sorry. I wasn’t aware of it.

INEZ: That’s just what I reproach you with. [GARCIN’S mouth twitches.] There you are! You talk about politeness, and you don’t even try to control your face. Remember you’re not alone; you’ve no right to inflict the sight of your fear on me.

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano (speaker)
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

Please, please don’t use that word. It’s so—so crude. In terribly bad taste, really. It doesn’t mean much, anyhow. Somehow I feel we’ve never been so much alive as now. If we’ve absolutely got to mention this—this state of things, I suggest we call ourselves—wait!—absentees. Have you been—been absent for long?

Related Characters: Estelle Rigault (speaker), Joseph Garcin, Inez Serrano
Page Number: 12
Explanation and Analysis:

INEZ: […] Look here! What’s the point of play-acting, trying to throw dust in each other’s eyes? We’re all tarred with the same brush.

ESTELLE [indignantly]: How dare you!

INEZ: Yes, we are criminals—murderers—all three of us. We’re in hell, my pets; they never make mistakes, and people aren’t damned for nothing.

ESTELLE: Stop! For heaven’s sake—

INEZ: In hell! Damned souls—that’s us, all three!

Related Characters: Inez Serrano (speaker), Estelle Rigault (speaker), Joseph Garcin
Page Number: 16
Explanation and Analysis:

INEZ: Wait! You’ll see how simple it is. Childishly simple. Obviously there aren’t any physical torments—you agree, don’t you? And yet we’re in hell. And no one else will come here. We’ll stay in this room together, the three of us, for ever and ever. . . . In short, there’s someone absent here, the official torturer.

GARCIN [sotto voce]: I’d noticed that.

INEZ: It’s obvious what they’re after—an economy of man power—or devil-power, if you prefer. The same idea as in the cafeteria, where customers serve themselves.

ESTELLE: What ever do you mean?

INEZ: I mean that each of us will act as torturer of the two others.

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano (speaker), Estelle Rigault (speaker)
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:

No, I shall never be your torturer. I wish neither of you any harm, and I’ve no concern with you. None at all. So the solution’s easy enough; each of us stays put in his or her corner and takes no notice of the others. You here, you here, and I there. Like soldiers at our posts. Also, we mustn’t speak. Not one word. That won’t be difficult; each of us has plenty of material for self-communings. I think I could stay ten thousand years with only my thoughts for company.

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano, Estelle Rigault
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:

ESTELLE [opens her eyes and smiles]: I feel so queer. [She pats herself] Don’t you ever get taken that way? When I can’t see myself I begin to wonder if I really and truly exist. I pat myself just to make sure, but it doesn’t help much.

INEZ: You’re lucky. I’m always conscious of myself—in my mind. Painfully conscious.

ESTELLE: Ah yes, in your mind. But everything that goes on in one’s head is so vague, isn’t it? It makes one want to sleep. [She is silent for a while.] I’ve six big mirrors in my bedroom. There they are. I can see them. But they don’t see me. They’re reflecting the carpet, the settee, the window—but how empty it is, a glass in which I’m absent! When I talked to people I always made sure there was one near by in which I could see myself. I watched myself talking. And somehow it kept me alert, seeing myself as the others saw me. . . .

Related Characters: Inez Serrano (speaker), Estelle Rigault (speaker), Joseph Garcin
Related Symbols: Mirrors
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:

To forget about the others? How utterly absurd! I feel you there, in every pore. Your silence clamors in my ears. You can nail up your mouth, cut your tongue out—but you can’t prevent your being there. Can you stop your thoughts? I hear them ticking away like a clock, tick-tock, tick-tock, and I’m certain you hear mine. It’s all very well skulking on your sofa, but you’re everywhere, and every sound comes to me soiled, because you’ve intercepted it on its way.

Related Characters: Inez Serrano (speaker), Joseph Garcin, Estelle Rigault
Page Number: 22
Explanation and Analysis:

When I say I’m cruel, I mean I can’t get on without making people suffer. Like a live coal. A live coal in others’ hearts. When I’m alone I flicker out. For six months I flamed away in her heart, till there was nothing but a cinder. One night she got up and turned on the gas while I was asleep. Then she crept back into bed. So now you know.

Related Characters: Inez Serrano (speaker), Joseph Garcin, Estelle Rigault, Florence, Inez’s Cousin
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis:

INEZ: Well, Mr. Garcin, now you have us in the nude all right. Do you understand things any better for that?

GARCIN: I wonder. Yes, perhaps a trifle better. [Timidly] And now suppose we start trying to help each other.

INEZ: I don’t need help.

GARCIN: Inez, they’ve laid their snare damned cunningly—like a cobweb. If you make any movement, if you raise your hand to fan yourself, Estelle and I feel a little tug. Alone, none of us can save himself or herself; we’re linked together inextricably. So you can take your choice.

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano (speaker), Estelle Rigault
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:

I want you to do me a service. No, don’t shrink away. I know it must seem strange to you, having someone asking you for help; you’re not used to that. But if you’ll make the effort, if you’ll only will it hard enough, I dare say we can really love each other. Look at it this way. A thousand of them are proclaiming I’m a coward; but what do numbers matter? If there’s someone, just one person, to say quite positively I did not run away, that I’m not the sort who runs away, that I’m brave and decent and the rest of it—well, that one person’s faith would save me. Will you have that faith in me? Then I shall love you and cherish you forever. Estelle—will you?

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano, Estelle Rigault, Gomez
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:

Open the door! Open, blast you! I’ll endure anything, your red-hot tongs and molten lead, your racks and prongs and garrotes—all your fiendish gadgets, everything that burns and flays and tears—I’ll put up with any torture you impose. Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano, Estelle Rigault
Page Number: 41
Explanation and Analysis:

GARCIN: Yes. You, anyhow, know what it means to be a coward.

INEZ: Yes, I know.

GARCIN: And you know what wickedness is, and shame, and fear. There were days when you peered into yourself, into the secret places of your heart, and what you saw there made you faint with horror. And then, next day, you didn’t know what to make of it, you couldn’t interpret the horror you had glimpsed the day before. Yes, you know what evil costs. And when you say I’m a coward, you know from experience what that means. Is that so?

INEZ: Yes.

GARCIN: So it’s you whom I have to convince; you are of my kind. Did you suppose I meant to go? No, I couldn’t leave you here, gloating over my defeat, with all those thoughts about me running in your head.

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano (speaker), Estelle Rigault
Page Number: 42
Explanation and Analysis:

GARCIN: […] I aimed at being a real man. A tough, as they say. I staked everything on the same horse. . . . Can one possibly be a coward when one’s deliberately courted danger at every turn? And can one judge a life by a single action?

INEZ: Why not? For thirty years you dreamt you were a hero, and condoned a thousand petty lapses—because a hero, of course, can do no wrong. An easy method, obviously. Then a day came when you were up against it, the red light of real danger—and you took the train to Mexico.

GARCIN: I “dreamt,” you say. It was no dream. When I chose the hardest path, I made my choice deliberately. A man is what he wills himself to be.

INEZ: Prove it. Prove it was no dream. It’s what one does, and nothing else, that shows the stuff one’s made of.

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano (speaker), Estelle Rigault
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

So this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is—other people!

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano, Estelle Rigault
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:

INEZ [struggling and laughing]: But, you crazy creature, what do you think you’re doing? You know quite well I’m dead.

ESTELLE: Dead?

[She drops the knife. A pause, INEZ picks up the knife and jabs herself with it regretfully.]

INEZ: Dead! Dead! Dead! Knives, poison, ropes—all useless. It has happened already, do you understand? Once and for all. So here we are, forever. [Laughs.]

ESTELLE [with a peal of laughter]: Forever. My God, how funny! Forever.

GARCIN [looks at the two women, and joins in the laughter]: Forever, and ever, and ever.

[They slump onto their respective sofas. A long silence. Their laughter dies away and they gaze at each other.]

GARCIN: Well, well, let’s get on with it. . . .

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano (speaker), Estelle Rigault (speaker)
Page Number: 46
Explanation and Analysis:
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Inez Serrano Quotes in No Exit

The No Exit quotes below are all either spoken by Inez Serrano or refer to Inez Serrano. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Human Interaction, Control, and Sense of Self Theme Icon
).
No Exit Quotes

GARCIN: I can quite understand that it bores you having me here. And I, too—well, quite frankly. I’d rather be alone. I want to think things out, you know; to set my life in order, and one does that better by oneself. But I’m sure we’ll manage to pull along together somehow. I’m no talker, I don’t move much; in fact I’m a peaceful sort of fellow. Only, if I may venture on a suggestion, we should make a point of being extremely courteous to each other. That will ease the situation for us both.

INEZ: I’m not polite.

GARCIN: Then I must be polite for two.

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano (speaker)
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

INEZ: Can’t you keep your mouth still? You keep twisting it about all the time. It’s grotesque.

GARCIN: So sorry. I wasn’t aware of it.

INEZ: That’s just what I reproach you with. [GARCIN’S mouth twitches.] There you are! You talk about politeness, and you don’t even try to control your face. Remember you’re not alone; you’ve no right to inflict the sight of your fear on me.

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano (speaker)
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

Please, please don’t use that word. It’s so—so crude. In terribly bad taste, really. It doesn’t mean much, anyhow. Somehow I feel we’ve never been so much alive as now. If we’ve absolutely got to mention this—this state of things, I suggest we call ourselves—wait!—absentees. Have you been—been absent for long?

Related Characters: Estelle Rigault (speaker), Joseph Garcin, Inez Serrano
Page Number: 12
Explanation and Analysis:

INEZ: […] Look here! What’s the point of play-acting, trying to throw dust in each other’s eyes? We’re all tarred with the same brush.

ESTELLE [indignantly]: How dare you!

INEZ: Yes, we are criminals—murderers—all three of us. We’re in hell, my pets; they never make mistakes, and people aren’t damned for nothing.

ESTELLE: Stop! For heaven’s sake—

INEZ: In hell! Damned souls—that’s us, all three!

Related Characters: Inez Serrano (speaker), Estelle Rigault (speaker), Joseph Garcin
Page Number: 16
Explanation and Analysis:

INEZ: Wait! You’ll see how simple it is. Childishly simple. Obviously there aren’t any physical torments—you agree, don’t you? And yet we’re in hell. And no one else will come here. We’ll stay in this room together, the three of us, for ever and ever. . . . In short, there’s someone absent here, the official torturer.

GARCIN [sotto voce]: I’d noticed that.

INEZ: It’s obvious what they’re after—an economy of man power—or devil-power, if you prefer. The same idea as in the cafeteria, where customers serve themselves.

ESTELLE: What ever do you mean?

INEZ: I mean that each of us will act as torturer of the two others.

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano (speaker), Estelle Rigault (speaker)
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:

No, I shall never be your torturer. I wish neither of you any harm, and I’ve no concern with you. None at all. So the solution’s easy enough; each of us stays put in his or her corner and takes no notice of the others. You here, you here, and I there. Like soldiers at our posts. Also, we mustn’t speak. Not one word. That won’t be difficult; each of us has plenty of material for self-communings. I think I could stay ten thousand years with only my thoughts for company.

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano, Estelle Rigault
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:

ESTELLE [opens her eyes and smiles]: I feel so queer. [She pats herself] Don’t you ever get taken that way? When I can’t see myself I begin to wonder if I really and truly exist. I pat myself just to make sure, but it doesn’t help much.

INEZ: You’re lucky. I’m always conscious of myself—in my mind. Painfully conscious.

ESTELLE: Ah yes, in your mind. But everything that goes on in one’s head is so vague, isn’t it? It makes one want to sleep. [She is silent for a while.] I’ve six big mirrors in my bedroom. There they are. I can see them. But they don’t see me. They’re reflecting the carpet, the settee, the window—but how empty it is, a glass in which I’m absent! When I talked to people I always made sure there was one near by in which I could see myself. I watched myself talking. And somehow it kept me alert, seeing myself as the others saw me. . . .

Related Characters: Inez Serrano (speaker), Estelle Rigault (speaker), Joseph Garcin
Related Symbols: Mirrors
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:

To forget about the others? How utterly absurd! I feel you there, in every pore. Your silence clamors in my ears. You can nail up your mouth, cut your tongue out—but you can’t prevent your being there. Can you stop your thoughts? I hear them ticking away like a clock, tick-tock, tick-tock, and I’m certain you hear mine. It’s all very well skulking on your sofa, but you’re everywhere, and every sound comes to me soiled, because you’ve intercepted it on its way.

Related Characters: Inez Serrano (speaker), Joseph Garcin, Estelle Rigault
Page Number: 22
Explanation and Analysis:

When I say I’m cruel, I mean I can’t get on without making people suffer. Like a live coal. A live coal in others’ hearts. When I’m alone I flicker out. For six months I flamed away in her heart, till there was nothing but a cinder. One night she got up and turned on the gas while I was asleep. Then she crept back into bed. So now you know.

Related Characters: Inez Serrano (speaker), Joseph Garcin, Estelle Rigault, Florence, Inez’s Cousin
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis:

INEZ: Well, Mr. Garcin, now you have us in the nude all right. Do you understand things any better for that?

GARCIN: I wonder. Yes, perhaps a trifle better. [Timidly] And now suppose we start trying to help each other.

INEZ: I don’t need help.

GARCIN: Inez, they’ve laid their snare damned cunningly—like a cobweb. If you make any movement, if you raise your hand to fan yourself, Estelle and I feel a little tug. Alone, none of us can save himself or herself; we’re linked together inextricably. So you can take your choice.

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano (speaker), Estelle Rigault
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:

I want you to do me a service. No, don’t shrink away. I know it must seem strange to you, having someone asking you for help; you’re not used to that. But if you’ll make the effort, if you’ll only will it hard enough, I dare say we can really love each other. Look at it this way. A thousand of them are proclaiming I’m a coward; but what do numbers matter? If there’s someone, just one person, to say quite positively I did not run away, that I’m not the sort who runs away, that I’m brave and decent and the rest of it—well, that one person’s faith would save me. Will you have that faith in me? Then I shall love you and cherish you forever. Estelle—will you?

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano, Estelle Rigault, Gomez
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:

Open the door! Open, blast you! I’ll endure anything, your red-hot tongs and molten lead, your racks and prongs and garrotes—all your fiendish gadgets, everything that burns and flays and tears—I’ll put up with any torture you impose. Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano, Estelle Rigault
Page Number: 41
Explanation and Analysis:

GARCIN: Yes. You, anyhow, know what it means to be a coward.

INEZ: Yes, I know.

GARCIN: And you know what wickedness is, and shame, and fear. There were days when you peered into yourself, into the secret places of your heart, and what you saw there made you faint with horror. And then, next day, you didn’t know what to make of it, you couldn’t interpret the horror you had glimpsed the day before. Yes, you know what evil costs. And when you say I’m a coward, you know from experience what that means. Is that so?

INEZ: Yes.

GARCIN: So it’s you whom I have to convince; you are of my kind. Did you suppose I meant to go? No, I couldn’t leave you here, gloating over my defeat, with all those thoughts about me running in your head.

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano (speaker), Estelle Rigault
Page Number: 42
Explanation and Analysis:

GARCIN: […] I aimed at being a real man. A tough, as they say. I staked everything on the same horse. . . . Can one possibly be a coward when one’s deliberately courted danger at every turn? And can one judge a life by a single action?

INEZ: Why not? For thirty years you dreamt you were a hero, and condoned a thousand petty lapses—because a hero, of course, can do no wrong. An easy method, obviously. Then a day came when you were up against it, the red light of real danger—and you took the train to Mexico.

GARCIN: I “dreamt,” you say. It was no dream. When I chose the hardest path, I made my choice deliberately. A man is what he wills himself to be.

INEZ: Prove it. Prove it was no dream. It’s what one does, and nothing else, that shows the stuff one’s made of.

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano (speaker), Estelle Rigault
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

So this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is—other people!

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano, Estelle Rigault
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:

INEZ [struggling and laughing]: But, you crazy creature, what do you think you’re doing? You know quite well I’m dead.

ESTELLE: Dead?

[She drops the knife. A pause, INEZ picks up the knife and jabs herself with it regretfully.]

INEZ: Dead! Dead! Dead! Knives, poison, ropes—all useless. It has happened already, do you understand? Once and for all. So here we are, forever. [Laughs.]

ESTELLE [with a peal of laughter]: Forever. My God, how funny! Forever.

GARCIN [looks at the two women, and joins in the laughter]: Forever, and ever, and ever.

[They slump onto their respective sofas. A long silence. Their laughter dies away and they gaze at each other.]

GARCIN: Well, well, let’s get on with it. . . .

Related Characters: Joseph Garcin (speaker), Inez Serrano (speaker), Estelle Rigault (speaker)
Page Number: 46
Explanation and Analysis: