Torture as an Ineffective Tool of Demoralization in Jean Paul Sartre’s Men Without Shadows

Abstract

This paper attempts at explaining the ineffectiveness of torture as a tool of demoralization and as a useless method of obtaining credible information during the interrogation practices observed throughout the civilized world by analyzing the play Men without Shadows written by Jean Paul Sartre. Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist and political activist. He was a leading exponent of the existentialist philosophy. In this play he has depicted the horrors of torture on a squad five freedom fighters and the inability of the interrogators to break their morale in order to get information on one hand, and on the other hand there is a streak of Sartre’s existentialist philosophy governing the horrible incidents depicted in the play. My aim is to study the incidents of the play in the perspective of existentialist philosophy and depict the ineffectiveness of torture.