The Word is the Knife: Janus-Faced Communication in Sartre’s No Exit and Rose’s Twelve Angry Men

Abstract

In this article the authors offer an analysis of Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1946 play Huis Clos (No Exit) and Reginald Rose’s 1954 play Twelve Angry Men, with particular attention paid to exploring the insights from each theatrical text about communication. The process of communication may be ambivalent or Janus-faced, and one of the objectives of this analysis is to consider communication in terms of its duality and incisive power. In doing so, the aim is to explore its antithetical tensions by amplifying the mythological, deliberative and philosophical dimensions of communication praxis. In particular, the archetype of the knife provides a useful metaphor for understanding the potentials and pitfalls of communication in human interaction. Scott Haden Church is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communications at Brigham Young University. He has recently published in Critical Studies in Media Communication. Jesse King Jones is in the Masters Programme of the School of Communications at Brigham Young University.