I was sitting at a bar when I first picked up The Reprieve.
The bartender was slow. The beer was warm
The guy next to me smelled like he’d been living inside a sock.
Perfect setting for some Sartre.
This isn’t a book for the hopeful.
It’s a book about people scrambling to make decisions that won’t matter in the long run.
The title says it all. A delay. A pause before the hammer comes down.
The second book in Sartre’s Roads to Freedom trilogy, The Reprieve follows a messy cast of characters in the days leading up to World War II.
The world is going to hell, and they all know it.
But instead of acting, they fumble. They talk. They hesitate. They make love. They drink. They tell themselves they have time, even when they don’t.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s life.
1. Time is a Cheap Trick
Sartre plays with time like a sadistic magician who knows the trick was never about fooling you—it was about making you admit you were fooled all along.
The entire novel takes place in just eight days—September 23 to September 30, 1938—right before the Munich Agreement. Eight days. Less than two hundred hours. Just enough time for a man to convince himself that he has a choice.
Hitler is pushing, Europe is panicking, and nobody knows what to do. But they talk like they do.
Politicians shake hands and call it peace. Soldiers wait for orders that won’t come in time. Lovers tell each other it will all be fine, knowing it won’t.
And in the middle of it all, the characters do what people always do when the walls start closing in: they scramble. They argue. They stall.
And here’s the trick: Sartre doesn’t give us clean chapters with a beginning, middle, and end. No. He gives us a chaotic mess.
A narrative that feels like someone shuffled the pages of a dozen different stories and slammed them together. Rapid, overlapping perspectives.
A man lights a cigarette in one sentence, and in the next, a woman a hundred miles away is already exhaling the smoke. People talk over each other. Some thoughts never finish. Others start before they’re supposed to.
It’s not just storytelling.
It’s what panic feels like. The disjointed, breathless rhythm of a world running out of time. No breaks. No relief. Just waiting.
And that’s the real horror, isn’t it?
The waiting. Not the war, not the death, not even the fear.
The slow realization that no matter how much you twist and turn, the end is coming. And all you can do is sit in it.
Drown in it. Like Sartre once said:
“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.”
Eight days. That’s all.
But some things don’t need more time to destroy you.
2. Choice is a Sick Joke
The characters all think they have choices. They don’t.
Mathieu, the sad sack philosophy teacher, wrestles with whether or not to join the army. He stares at his reflection, a man unsure of what to do, but all his choices are just shadows.
His mistress wants an abortion, a decision in the middle of their tangled mess. He thinks he has control over this, but does he?
His friends have their own dramas, all of them lost in their own version of control. But it’s just noise, isn’t it? Distractions from something they can’t change.
But here’s the kicker: no matter what they do, history is moving forward without them.
This is Sartre’s existentialism in action. You think you have control, but do you?
Or are you just dancing in place while time drags you forward like a drunk being tossed out of a bar?
As Sartre said, “We are condemned to be free.” And freedom, it turns out, isn’t the relief they thought it was. It’s just another trap.
3. Anxiety is the Real Enemy
The real villain in this book is anxiety.
Every character is drowning in it. They overthink. They doubt.
They hesitate. It’s a psychological nightmare. Sartre doesn’t just tell us they’re anxious—he makes us feel it.
The rapid shifts in perspective, the constant internal monologues, the unfinished thoughts. You don’t read this book. You spiral into it.
4. War Doesn’t Start With a Bang—It Starts With a Shrug
We like to think history happens suddenly. One day, peace. The next day, war. But The Reprieve shows us that’s not how it works.
Nobody wants to believe it’s coming. They rationalize. They say it won’t be that bad.
They tell themselves it won’t last. Sound familiar? It should.
Because that’s how every disaster starts. People don’t jump into hell. They slide into it.
5. Love is Just Another Distraction
Sartre fills this book with relationships—messy, painful, doomed relationships.
They cheat, they lie, they beg, they promise. But at the end of the day, it’s all just noise. Just another way to pass the time while the world inches toward destruction.
Love isn’t the answer here. It’s just another way to pretend the questions don’t exist.
6. Politics is Theater, and Everyone’s a Bad Actor
While normal people struggle, politicians play their parts.
The Munich Agreement is looming, and it’s all a big show. Smiles. Handshakes. Empty words.
The leaders tell themselves they’re keeping the peace. What they’re really doing is postponing the inevitable.
Sartre shows us the absurdity of it all. The people in power pretend to have control.
The people without power pretend to have hope. Everyone is lying to themselves.
7. There’s No Such Thing as a Reprieve
The book is called The Reprieve, but let’s be honest—there’s no reprieve. There’s just waiting.
The characters don’t get relief. They just get a little more time to make bad decisions.
A little more time to worry. A little more time to pretend. And then the war comes anyway.
Summary Table
| Theme | Takeaway |
|---|---|
| Time | An illusion that keeps you complacent |
| Choice | A cruel joke—history decides for you |
| Anxiety | The real war is internal |
| War | Creeps in while no one’s paying attention |
| Love | Just another way to kill time |
| Politics | A performance of control |
| Reprieve? | Doesn’t exist—just delays |
Final Thought
So what do we learn from The Reprieve?
That we’re all just waiting for something we don’t want to admit is coming.
We distract ourselves. We tell ourselves we have time. We pretend we’re in control.
And then the hammer drops.
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