Thinking Outside the Box

       Plato and Sartre both address limitations to thinking in different ways.  In the allegory, thoughts are confined to a cave.  There is an opening, but the prisoners are chained and prevented from escape.  When they are released from their shackles, they are so accustomed to the darkness that they fear the light.  In No Exit, a similar situation occurs.  They are confined in a room by a locked door.  The door opens open there request.  They stand in apprehension and in the end none of them have the courage to see what is outside.  They know that they cannot handle isolation in the room with the people they are stuck with, yet they fear something worse.  The valet or whoever is in charge of the door seems to call them on their bluff.  Garcin claims he would prefer torture to staying in the wretched room, yet when given the option, he will not leave.  Both authors depict the limitations on thinking exclusively through dialogue.  In the allegory, the dialogue presents the teacher-student aspect that parallels the enlightened-unenlightened situation found in the cave.  In the play, the characters reveal themselves through their speech.  They reveal how they ended up in hell, though it isn't all that important to them.  The dialogue depicts the jockeying for power in a new situation that all sinful people will naturally take part in.  The characters are limited by this type of thinking.  They cannot cooperate.  They rationally decide that silence will be the best for them, but they cannot resist the urge to speak.  They form two-person alliances with one remainder, left for eternity.  But these alliances do not last and they shift  mercurially.  These people would be liberated if they were capable of working for more than themselves.