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This paper examines how Jean-Paul Sartre's reworking of the Orestes myth in The Flies (1943) highlights a central leitmotif and underscores a contradiction running through his philosophical and literary oeuvre: On the one hand, Sartre's idiosyncratic depiction of the human subject as an “empty consciousness,” radically detached from his past and continually engaged in acts of self-creation, free and entirely responsible for his choices. On the other, his vivid portrayal of “inhabited souls” (Collins, 1980)- individuals who, having been subjected to the Other's domination early in life, internalized his Will so violently that they lost ownership of their own being.
It is argued that it is precisely this contradiction that generates the enduring power and affective resonance of Sartre's work. His protagonists appear caught in a tragic double bind: they yearn to be loved, admired, and confirmed by the Other, yet dread intimacy, equating it with passivity, subjugation, and psychic annihilation. In his prose, Sartre creates an emotional texture which manages to capture with exquisite clarity, a specific constellation of universally shared desires, - and the conflicts and provisional resolutions they generate: He evokes with rare immediacy, “what it feels like” when, as infants, sensing the stirrings of our emerging selves and the “magical” power of our first words, we waver between surrendering ourselves to the care (and inevitable dependence) of the omnipotent Other, and active, even “ruthless” pursuits of control and mastery over our libidinal objects.