Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris in 1905. In 1939, at the age of 34, he was drafted into the French army. He wrote much of his work during his involvement with World War II and after, with the exception of some works, like Nausea and The Transcendence of the Ego. He spent roughly a year in a German prisoner of war camp. After, he returned to civilian life in German-occupied Paris from 1941 to 1944. No Exit was written and first performed only a handful of months before the Allied forced forcibly removed the German occupation.

Sartre is one of the creators of existentialism, a philosophical school of thought centered on radical human freedom and the creation of meaning through action. When the Germans occupied Paris, Sartre hated how Parisians were passive with German soldiers, who often went out of their way to be kind and civil in public life toward Parisians. Sartre condemned the Parisians’ passivity as endorsing the German occupation instead of physically resisting. In Sartre’s eyes, the German occupation turned Parisian life into a mockery of itself. This was heightened by severe food shortages and starvation caused by the war and the Germans’ exportation of goods back to Germany.