The Night Rhetorical Analysis

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The scene is a drawing room with Second-Empire French furnishings, including three couches and a bronze mantelpiece. Enter through a door a valet and a man named Joseph Garcin. Garcin is extremely surprised at the room’s appearance – it seems he was expecting something very different. vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv The two of men converse cryptically about this place and the rules (no mirrors, no nighttime, no sleep) while Garcin guesses about the methods of "torture." The valet reveals that, beyond the door, there are simply more passages and more rooms. Odd. The valet finally excuses himself. Before he exits, he informs Garcin that he can be summoned via the call-button, but that the call-button is temperamental and…show more content…
Garcin watches his colleague, Gomez, talk about him to their friends. Inez watches her old apartment get closed up and then rented out to someone new. Estelle watches her friend, Olga, flirt with a boy who used to love her. All of them proclaim ignorance as to why they are in hell. And then the real stories come out. Garcin was a big-time adulterer who used to bring his mistresses home with him for his wife to host in the morning. His wife adored him, but he treated her badly. Estelle carried on an affair with a young man and got pregnant with his child. She fled to Switzerland so she could have the baby away from the sight of her husband, and then drowned the infant while her lover watched helplessly. Inez lived with her cousin and his wife, Florence. She slowly turned Florence against her husband and then took the woman for herself. Now that they’ve admitted why they’re in hell, they can start to understand what hell is about. It’s clear that each of them is meant to torture one of the others. Garcin tortures Estelle, because she wants him to love her and think her beautiful, while he refuses to do so. Estelle tortures Inez, because Inez feels an unreciprocated attraction to Estelle. And finally, Inez tortures Garcin. He wants to be considered a hero, not a coward, and it is Inez’s approval that he seeks (since he has correctly identified that she, not Estelle, knows and understands human emotions and
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