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Friendship Through Literature: Camus, Beauvoir, And Sartre, Ann Taylor

Ann Connolly

In his book entitled, What is Literature?, Jean-Paul Sartre says of literature that, “If you name the behaviour of an individual, you reveal it to him; he sees himself. And since you are at the same time naming it to all others, he knows that he is seen at the moment he sees himself.” It seems that literature, according to Sartre, was a medium in which the writer could expose the subject to himself in a way impossible for him to see on his own-- perhaps a reflection allowing the subject to see himself as others saw him. We know …