French philosopher, playwright and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre is considered to be the founder of modern existentialism, though before his death, he came to hate the term.

Sartre, who refused the Nobel Prize for Literature, once complained in his writings that the word had become so diluted that it lost its meaning.

“[The word existentialism is] so loosely applied that it no longer means anything at all,” Sartre once wrote.

This certainly is not the case in Sartre’s literary work. In his 1948 short story “The Wall,” Sartre tells the story of three political prisoners and their final night before execution, Tom Steinbock, Juan Mirbal and Pablo Ibbieta are given a farce of a trial that lasts no more than a few minutes. They are then ushered into a cell and later told that they would be executed by firing squad at dawn the following day.

From the beginning, the existentialist concept of the absurd is evident. These prisoners are anarchist revolutionaries, save Mirbal, a youngster whose only crime is that his brother is an anarchist.

The trial and sentence are swift but the three prisoners’ final hours on earth are nothing short of unadulterated torture  — not inflicted by the guards but by the prisoners themselves. Mirbal does little more than cry. He is scared and does not want to die. But his personal torture is not really ever discussed.

Tom Steinbock’s character is common in European and other existentialist literature. Steinbock is similar to Dostoyevsky’s “Smerdyakov” (from The Brothers Karamazov)and Camus’ Anselmo (The Stranger). Sure, Dostoyevsky’s aforementioned character did murder his father. But like Steinbock and Aselmo, he’s little more than an idiotic nuisance.

Steinbock serves little more purpose in “The Wall” than to be the constant babbler that irritates Ibbieta.

He constantly says that he does not understand his impending death. He exhibits the existentialist concepts of darkness and despair but he spouts off so much that he is no more than an irritation for Ibbieta — and the reader.

Ibbieta is the true tortured soul in Sartre’s short story. He is a victim of the absurd (being locked up and sentenced to death without a former trial).

Then he becomes alienated, first from society, then from his fellow man (he often describes Juan and Tom as “disgusting”), from his lover and then from himself.

Later in the story, a doctor enters and takes center stage. He is a seemingly minor character, but his symbolism, along with that of the guards is undeniable. As Ibbieta narrates.  He explains how the life had suddenly left his Tom’s and Juan’s skin, how their complexions half become grey.

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