Furthermore he shares a reluctant bond with Tom.

“Only it didn’t please me to think the same things as Tom. And I knew that, all through the night, every five minutes, we would keep on thinking things at the same time,” Pablo Ibbieta said. “I looked at him sideways and for the first time he seemed strange to me: he wore death on his face.

“My pride was wounded: for the past 24 hours I had lived next to Tom, I had listened to him, I had spoken to him and I knew we had nothing in common. And now we looked as much alike as twin brothers.”

While the three prisoners began to die long before their scheduled execution, the Belgian doctor remained full of life.

“The Belgian was taking notes,” Tom says. “All three of us watched him because he was alive. He had the motions of a living human being, the cares of a living human being; he shivered in the cellar the way the living were supposed to shiver; he had an obedient well-fed body. The rest of us hardly felt ours — not in the same way anyhow.

“I wanted to feel my pants between my legs but I didn’t dare: I watched the Belgian, balancing his legs, master of his muscles, someone who could think about tomorrow. There we were, three bloodless shadows; we watched him and we sucked his life like vampires.”

Pablo then tells of his three-day anger because he does not want to die. The reader later becomes more familiar with his alienation as he learns that he has no message to send to Concha, his girlfriend.

Tom and Juan are executed a short time later. But Pablo is spared because his comrade Ramon Gris is on the run.

The authorities are after Gris, and again ask Ibietta about his whereabouts. He knows where Gris is hiding, but decides to tell them that he is hiding in the cemetary in an effort to have one last bit of fun before he faces the firing squad.

His fan, however, leads the Spanish authorities to Gris, who happens to be hiding in the gravediggers’ quarters.

His life is then spared in this ironic twist and he laughs so hard that he cries.

Here, we see all the elements of Sartrean Exisistentialism; Rebellion, the absurd, alienation. Ibietta would have to be the existential hero because he leads his life his way — without regard for the law, the guards, the doctor, and those who were executed.