Back More
Salem Press

Table of Contents

Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed

The Wall

by Jean-Paul Sartre

1937

Novella

Lending its title to Sartre's only collection of short stories, “The Wall” deservedly has been anthologized frequently and remains among the most widely disseminated of Sartre's published works. Although Sartre stopped writing fiction rather early in his career, “The Wall” still stands as a landmark in the developing technique of the short story.

Set amid the confusion of the Spanish Civil War, which was in progress at the time of its composition, “The Wall” documents the capture, imprisonment, and eventual execution of three leftist revolutionaries through the eyes and voice of one of their number, who eventually identifies himself as Pablo Ibbieta. As Pablo recounts his experiences, the wall against which prisoners are lined up to be shot by the firing squad comes to symbolize the absolute boundary between life and death, presaging the later development of Sartre's existentialist philosophy. As Pablo prepares to die, he becomes so detached from his own life and experiences that he no longer seems alive, or even human. That Pablo survives to tell the tale at all, because of ludicrous coincidence, is one of the more skillfully managed ironies in all of modern fiction.

Notable for the economy and occasional coarseness of its language, “The Wall” also illustrates what would become Sartre's criteria for the evaluation of fiction written by others: The story is told, in the first person, by an “unprivileged” narrator whose narrative is limited to what he sees, feels, and remembers; the narrator, moreover, is “engaged” in a political cause, and the tale is told entirely from inside the situation being described. In the first few years after its publication, this story was hailed as an example of “authentic,” almost primitive fiction. By now, however, it is easy to detect the artifice involved in the production of such evident simplicity, and to sense the hand of the omniscient Sartre behind the words and actions of the supposedly authentic Pablo.

Notwithstanding, the story continues to survive its author, having long since outlived his own brief interest in the writing of narrative prose.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Sartre, Jean-Paul. "The Wall." Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed, edited by Editors of Salem Press, Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=6CR_0580.
APA 7th
Sartre, J. (2015). The Wall. In E. Salem Press (Ed.), Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Sartre, Jean-Paul. "The Wall." Edited by Editors of Salem Press. Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2015. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.