Diction, Dry Style, Theme and Mood in "The Wall" by Jean-Paul Sartre

As a prisoner of World War II, Jean-Paul Sartre was able to write a realistic fictional story about Spanish anarchists being held as political prisoners. A member of the growing class of philosophers known as existentialists, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote about human existence as a series of blind choices. In "The Wall," three men sharing a cell receive the same sentence; death by shooting. As the story tracks the approximately twenty-four hours after the delivery of the sentence, the narrator, Pablo Ibbieta shares his increasingly disconnected and existentialist feelings. Jean-Paul Sartre uses diction and a dry, existentialist style as a means of creating mood and developing characters in "The Wall."…