THE THEME AND SYMBOLISM OF MEMORY IN THE CONDEMNED OF ALTONA BY JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

Abstract

The paper discusses symbolism of memory and time in Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Condemned of Altona. The writer structures the text so that the focus on the stage is given to the suffering of the war criminal Franz von Gerlach and his parents who are conceived by the author to be his supporters. The reality of the war years and peacetime is like a wall for them, which covers the real present. Time is splitting in the minds of the characters into objective and subjective, while the illusions and phantasms are shown by the author of the play to be the creatures of an unhappy existential consciousness. Time modes represent a certain route along which the main character’s “for-itself” moves. He tries in vain to preserve in “in-itself” and reduce everything to the events of the past, stuck in the time loop of his sick self-consciousness.