This paper was written for PhD seminar “C. S. Lewis and Imaginative Apologetics” (2026) at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

Introduction

Imagination is necessary for us to have vicarious experiences, which our brains process very similarly to actual experiences.[1] There are many things we may never be able to actually experience, but vicariously (e.g. via film, novels, even personal stories) we can feel many of same emotions associated with those actual experiences but without literally living through them.[2] In other words, imagination can be, in part, an emotional stand-in for actual experience.

Imaginative apologetics uses imagination to show how the propositional truth claims of Christianity are fleshed out.[3] But imaginative apologetics is not merely illustrative; rather, it provides something that propositional forms of apologetics often do not—and sometimes cannot: As Lewis writes, imagination allows us to “steal past those watchful dragons” of the analytical and judgmental parts of our interlocutor’s or audience’s brains.[4] Or, to put that another way: Imaginative apologetics provides a different path into dialoging with someone from a fundamentally different worldview.[5]

Historically, apologetics is the discipline that defends the reliability or reasonableness of Christian truth claims. Most recently (in the scope of Church history), this has primarily given priority to propositional arguments, where facts are presented for investigation and logic can be examined. And while apologetic approaches with qualifiers like “historical apologetics” and “scientific apologetics” provide a fairly easy guess as to their method, “imaginative apologetics” can be quite different, prompting the question: What exactly is imaginative apologetics? Or, how does one know if they are doing imaginative apologetics or not? And, flowing from that: Does this mean that, as good arguments are used to combat bad arguments, good stories can be used to foil bad ones?[6]

Here it is important to delimit how “imaginative apologetics” is used in this paper. Many works can be used asimaginative apologetics without actually being works of imaginative apologetics. For instance, Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion (2006) can be used by a Christian apologist, by claiming something like: God is without contradiction; Dawkins is not; and so even Dawkins’ own arguments can find a way of pointing to God (or any such framings). Though some innovative apologist may use it as such, The God Delusion is not, by my usage, a work of imaginative apologetics.[7] Also, there is a difference between imagination used in a work of apologetics and a work of imaginative apologetics. As Lakoff and Johnson note, “what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.”[8] This was largely the point Lewis made in his article “Bluspels and Flalansferes.” We cannot communicate purely abstractly without stories (or metaphors), and so every apologetic approach we use will include some form of imagination, and in significant ways. But imaginative apologetics, as I am using it here, is an intentional apologetic crafted from an imaginative medium, like a novel, movie, or other imaginative form.

In this paper, I hope to show one way imaginative apologetics can be used to test the veracity of truth claims made in philosophical works. To do this, I will compare two mid-twentieth century public figures: C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980). Each wrote significant philosophical works, and each also wrote fiction to further teach their philosophical views. What fundamentally separates these two are their worldview commitments. Each had a strong sense of morality; but while Lewis believed in an objective truth that all people abide by (which he sometimes labeled “the Tao”), Sartre believed in a subjectivity that allows individuals to create moral truth (existentialism). In this way, I intend to begin a case that shows how story can function as the experimentum crucis for philosophical themes.

A Method to Compare Stories

One irreducible requirement for good imaginative writing is that it must be internally consistent.[9] That is, it must abide by its own worldview’s rules. For example, magic works in the Harry Potter series, not because we need to be convinced (in the real world) that magic could actually be real, but because magic is a given in that storyworld. If Jack Reacher, on the other hand, came up against a bad guy that began to use magic—not voodoo or shamanism, but Harry Potter-style magic—then the story would not work, because Lee Child’s storyworld uses different rules. While there are many ways that story can test truth claims, in this paper I will focus on internal consistency as verification between each writer’s philosophical thought and corresponding imaginative apologetic.[10] I will begin by identifying a single (but significant) theme found in each author’s philosophy and fiction (the theme does not need to be the same across writers, but it does need to be the same across each writer’s genres, then I will assess whether the philosophical theme is being applied consistently within their fiction to, finally, see whether their respective imaginative apologetic works for or against their philosophical imperatives.

“Theme” is a technical term in literature that either describes (what is) or prescribes (what should be) a part of a worldview that has a significant impact on the shape of the message or story.[11] In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone(1997), a prominent theme is the role familial love plays in conquering evil. In the first Jack Reacher novel, Killing Floor(1997), a central theme is that vigilantly justice is sometimes justified.

When considering stories by writers like Lewis and Sartre, the themes of their fiction are deeply tied to their philosophical writings. In the case of Lewis, he posits that we can only know that our actions and thoughts are truly good or evil because there is an objective moral standard (OMS) outside of ourselves.[12] If this is true, and if his story is to function as an imaginative apologetic for his philosophy (that is, not just a story that is sympathetic or adjacent to his worldview, but a story that advances his worldview[13]), then this theme must play a significant role in his story. We can assess this through three questions: (1) Does the storyworld of Lewis’s fiction show a clear sign of an OMS? (2) If so, is this OMS essential to the story, or trivial? And (3) do major plot movements and character arcs align with a worldview that is dependent on an OMS?

With Sartre, he claims that there is no a priori good yet it is our responsibility to act morally.[14] As with Lewis, if these claims are to act as an imaginative apologetic for his worldview, then they must also be reflected in his stories. And so, a similar version of the same three questions can also be asked of Sartre’s fiction: (1) Does the storyworld of Sartre’s fiction show a clear lack of an a priori good (LAPG)? (2) If so, is this LAPG essential or trivial to the story? And (3) do major plot movements and character arcs align with a worldview that is dependent on a LAPG?

Of the three questions, the first two are qualifiers. If the first question is answered in the negative, then the story does not function as an imaginative apologetic. And if the answer to the second question is trivial (non-essential), then the work, again, does not qualify. These are both important so as not to come to an arbitrary or premature conclusion. The third question is the most substantial: it analyzes the theme in context of the plot’s major movements and the characters’ developments. [15] Once the first two questions have qualified the story, then the author’s position must be reflected in the plot and character development in a significant way. Most importantly, it is also at this step that story can show us the veracity of the themes (experimentum crucis) proposed in the author’s philosophy. Specifically, we will compare whether the philosophical theme function consistently in the fiction.

C. S. Lewis

Lewis, in his nonfiction writing, explicitly makes the case for an objective moral standard (OMS), which is the first major move in his Christian apologetic. Most famously, this is Book 1 of Mere Christianity (1952). Though these ideas—many word-for-word: speaking notes turned manuscript—were widely made public a decade earlier as live and unrecorded radio-broadcasts during World War II, between 1941–42. A year later, in 1943, he published The Abolition of Man, which takes a deeper look at the existence and necessity of an OMS. While Mere Christianity begins with a case for objective truth, it quickly moves to a full case for Christianity proper. The Abolition of Man (AoM) on the other hand is a more subtle defense[16] where he uses “the Tao” as a stand-in for his OMS. Here, he is primarily critiquing Modernist subjectivism, which has only grown in popularity in the ensuing eighty years since MC was published.

 Starting in the late 1930’s with Out of the Silent Planet, the first of his space trilogy, Lewis began writing fiction that specifically displayed how these fundamental worldview ideas could look in story form.[17] The main value was not entertainment for entertainment’s sake, but to show how the subjectivism does not come to the positive end its supporters were claiming. But it was the third novel in his space trilogy, That Hideous Strength (1945), that worked most closely as an imaginative apologetic for his ideas in The Abolition of Man. And so these are the two works that will be the focus of this paper.

The Abolition of Man

The Abolition of Man (AOM) uses “Gaius” and “Titius’s” The Green Book (later known to be Alec King and Martin Ketley’s The Control of Language [1939]) as a jumping off point to discuss the dangers of rejecting the existence of objective truth. The Green Book is meant to teach children how to understand literature. But, as Lewis critiques, it is really a philosophical book by a couple of “amateur philosophers.”[18] However, while these two are his foil, he really has in mind the Logical Positivism of A. J. Ayers and, perhaps more pointedly, the general subjectivity of I. A. Richards.[19]

In his first essay, he introduces the Chinese concept of “the Tao” as “the reality beyond all predicates,” which from here forward he uses as a metaphor for the “doctrine of objective value.”[20] Not only have Gaius and Titius, Lewis notes, found themselves in the difficult Modernist position of needing to justify the self-evident, but “it still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.”[21] This is the “men without chests” problem. The chests, per Lewis, are the regulated emotional centers of a person: the connection of rationality and instinct.[22]

The second essay looks at the grounding of subjective morals. This cannot come from reason but is rather “by Instinct,” or properly basic.[23] One of the reasons Lewis uses the Tao as his stand in is because he differentiates between the ontic and axios.[24] In AOM, his primary objective is to show the former: However you may understand (or misunderstand) it, there is an objective moral value. And to throw this out in place of one’s own novel system of values “is a rebellion of the branches against the tree: if they rebels could succeed they would find that they had destroyed themselves.”[25]

The final essay builds upon the problem of men without chests attempting to make values where values cannot be made, resulting in an “artificial Tao” which advances nothing: neither good nor duty have value or meaning.[26] Stepping into this artificial Tao, Lewis notes, “they are not bad men. They are not men at all. Stepping outside the Tao, they have stepped into the void . . . they are artifacts. Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of man.”[27] The irony is that no one wins: “the magician’s bargain: give up our souls, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us.”[28] Stepping outside of the Tao is a loss of individualism and self-control.[29]

In AOM, Lewis makes a case for an OMS. Without which, he contends, we cannot make sensible judgements about anything. But, perhaps even worse, without such a standard, the very essence of humanity is erased. This is the theme that will be considered for That Hideous Strength (THS) below.

That Hideous Strength: Brief Summary

THS primarily follows the path of two protagonists, Jane and Mark, who are also married. Mark, who has never claimed to be a Christian, is confronted with the reductio ad absurdum of where his worldview commitments—a morally-subjective naturalism— will take him if he continues to pursue them; while Jane, who once was a Christian but has since abandoned it, sees that, when pressed, Christianity is not only far more robust, but may be the only worldview that holds up to the scrutiny of this life. As Schakel notes: “Mark’s problem, then, is a wrong commitment as his wife’s is a wrong lack of commitment.”[30]

The plot largely holds up to a classic three act structure.[31] The first act begins with the ordinary world and all of the typical assumptions of the protagonists.[32] Jane, recently married but not entirely happy with how that’s going, begins to have nightmares. But these nightmares are having a startling resemblance to real life. Meanwhile, Mark, an academic, values external validation above all else. As Mark prioritizes his career (above Jane), he begins to finally be inducted into the Inner Ring.[33] Originally his pursuit was on the “progressive element” at his college, but he soon begins to find greater opportunity just outside of academia with the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.). In seeking help for her nightmares, Jane meets some of the group at St. Anne’s. Initially, she is turned off by their traditional values, but by the end of the act, she understands more of what they are doing, and even begins to support them—though tacitly, as she is not yet ready to commit herself to them. Mark, deep now in the N.I.C.E., has some apprehension about their methods, but it provides him the validation he craves. The act ends with Mark doing something he knows to be wrong (writing an article that appears under the guise of journalism but actually designed for social destabilization). The divide has now been set: What is morality? Is it objective truth, from God, found in Christianity? Or is it power and ambition that allows man to transcend his previous limitation, even becoming “god” himself? The company at St. Anne’s is on the one side, while the N.I.C.E. is on the other.

In the second act we see Jane’s desire to help the company at St. Anne’s, but she wants to do it on her own terms and within her own measures of control. At the midpoint of the story, though, Jane begins to consider in earnest the question of God, which is to say, the worldview of those at St. Anne’s. She’d previously dismissed this, but now she’s beginning to believe that this could in fact be a central part of life. As Mark moves deeper into the work and life of the N.I.C.E., he has both successes (further into the Inner Ring) but also misgivings. After layers upon layers of ambiguity and non-answers, he tries to leave, but the N.I.C.E. doesn’t allow him to. They want Jane to live with him there. But for Mark, Jane represents a purity or ideal that he still has buried within him. At one point, after learning that some at the N.I.C.E. have captured and tortured Jane (and then subsequently let her go), he changes. For the first time, he understands that his “love” for Jane was really just selfishness, and with that, his understanding of the two sides slowly begins to take shape, and rather than longing for acceptance, he starts to hate the N.I.C.E. and its players. After the midpoint, both Jane and Mark attempt to deal with their newfound understandings. Jane begins to separate God from “religion,” and starts to find joy in being created by God (moving toward submission), while Mark challenges the “subjective” nature of the N.I.C.E. by fixating on the true love represented by Jane. As the book progresses, the stories of the protagonists make more room for the larger narrative to emerge. Both sides have sought to find Merlin, who has come back to life: The N.I.C.E. to wield their “hideous strength” and St. Anne’s because Ransom—now tying in to the previous—has taken over Merlin’s former role as the Pendragon (guardian).

The story continues and ultimately, the N.I.C.E. is dismantled in chaos and the local town is destroyed. Jane (it is implied) comes back to her faith, and Mark rejects his anti-faith worldview; the two are reunited in a healthy way for the first time. A major theme of THS, as with AOM, is the basic need of absolute truth. Without it, the world crumbles: metaphorically and spiritually in his philosophical writings, and literally in his fiction.

That Hideous Strength: Theme Analysis

Though part of a trilogy, THS can be read as a standalone story given how overt its theme is (and given, also, Lewis’s comments about its connection to AOM). But if considered in the fuller context, the first two can almost act as warnings with the third as a culmination. In the first novel, Ransom is transported to Malacandra (Mars), and the theme of scientism (bad) is introduced and creation (good) is contrasted. In the second novel Ransom is again transported, but this time to Perelandra (Venus), where the theme of rebellion (bad) is introduced and obedience (good) is contrasted. This all comes to a head, back home on Thulcundra (Earth), where we see what evil—a rejection of objective truth/morality—looks like in its mature form.

(1) Does the Storyworld Show a Clear Sign of an OMS?

Yes. Looking first at the two protagonists we see this clearly in both. Jane initially rejected Christianity because she thought it was shallow, not because she thought it was false. She eventually comes to see that it transcends all of life. Mark rejected his own worldview (and that of the N.I.C.E.) because he came to learn that it was incompatible with his deeper longings (love). But we also see this from the antagonistic forces, as well.[34] The director of the N.I.C.E. practices a kind of physical transcendence which ultimately makes him weaker, not stronger; Feverstone—Divine from Out of the Silent Planet—is always for sale, which does not pay off for him; and the Macrobes (the hideous strength) really just form a lesser kind of objective force.

(2) If So, Is This OMS Essential to the Story?

Yes. The resolution of good over evil would not work (or make sense) apart from an OMS, nor would Jane and Mark’s character arcs. Apart from an OMS, this could, at best, be entertaining, but not an imaginative apologetic for AOM.

(3) How Do Major Plot Movements Align/Misalign with an OMS-dependent Worldview?

Ultimately, what THS shows us is that a subjective morality/truth is untenable. Without this, Mark would have no tension in the first act. His love for Jane and his desire to please the N.I.C.E. would not be incompatible. And likewise, the pull Jane felt toward St. Anne’s would not have been anything other than a psychological or personal preference. After the midpoint, Mark and Jane have each become resolved to a path that neither can see, and of which neither yet has tangible proof. Jane believes in the goodness of God and Mark believes in the value of love (seen as Jane). Finally, the destruction of the town and the preservation of St. Anne’s becomes somewhat cartoonish or even ad hoc without the underlying forces/theme at play. The entire structure of the story and development of the characters requires an OMS. And so Lewis has been quite consistent from AOM to THS.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Like Lewis, Sartre did not believe that communicating his ideas philosophically was sufficient, and so he also wrote stories to show his ideas.[35] And while a contemporary of Lewis, Sartre’s ideas were quite different. As an atheist himself, Sartre sought to show that morals were not inconsistent with atheistic beliefs. From this came his famous line: “existence precedes essence;” which is to say: goodness is not defined outside of us or given to us (that would imply a giver; rather, by virtue of exercising freedom, which functions as a kind of playing field—that its use is our morality. This, naturally, alleviates specific commands like do not lie (or murder). The ultimate command becomes do not do not. Sartre calls this “bad faith,” where we avoid exercising our own freedom based on external rules or laws (e.g. “God said not to…” or “It is not socially acceptable to…”). And so, the essence of Sartre’s existentialism is that our lives determine our morality, or our very selves.[36] While he writes about this extensively in his (very long) Being and Nothingness, this paper, for the sake of scope, will look at his shorter work, Existentialism is a Humanism, which also covers his core philosophy.

Existentialism is a Humanism

While Being and Nothingness is Sartre’s magnus opus, its initial reception was underwhelming. One likely reason for this was it was published in France, in 1943, during the middle of World War II. However, it was not long before people began to take notice. And by the time Sartre gave the talk that became Existentialism is a Humanism (EIAH), its reception was anything but mild. EIAH is really an essay meant to clarify some of the misunderstandings—and sometimes scandals—of his philosophy, some of which came from the first two novels in his Roads to Freedom trilogy, while other misunderstandings came from his densely-written Being and Nothingness.[37]

The structure of EIAH is simple: first, a defense of his existentialism as a legitimate philosophy (or worldview), and then, second, a doubling-down on key existential themes.[38] To begin, existentialism exists because God does not. Looking at Heidegger and others, he coins their commonality as “existence preced[ing] essence; or, if you prefer, that subjectivity must be our point of departure.”[39] He uses the example of a knife to illustrate. It exists first in the mind of its creator, and so its essence proceeds its existence. However, if there were no creator, then the only thing left—if there is meaning at all—is for existence to proceed essence. “Man is not only that which he conceives himself to be, but that which he wills himself to be.”[40] And so: If “existence truly does proceed essence, [then] man is responsible for what he is.”[41] An outworking of this is a morally good life. “In creating the man each of us wills ourselves to be, there is not a single one of our actions that does not at the same time create an image of man as we think he ought to be,” and so, naturally, our decisions are the good.[42] Interestingly, Sartre never believed in a kind of radial individuality. In his quotation above, about responsibility, he continues: “And when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men.”[43] By way of example, he uses marriage. If one decides to get married, the good of that is not merely private; instead “I am nonetheless committing not only myself, but all of humanity, to the practice of monogamy.”[44]

Two things flow from this: there is a responsibility, or liability, that all men must face; this is the “freedom” of each person. And secondly, there is a subsequent realization and anguish (“nausea”) of this responsibility/freedom.[45]But how do we deal with competing worldviews? Or, to put it in Sartrean terms, what if my view of responsibility for all men competes with my neighbor’s view, so much so that we come to an impasse? As I understand him, he is not saying that we have a moral obligation to convert the other. Rather, we must not see our choices as merely selfish. So, in a sense, it is a subjective version of Lewis’s OMS above. It is objective in that it is a standard that extends to all and carries the weight of that; it is subjective in that it is not applied to all: each has the freedom (obligation) to act. But he is still not a radical individualist. In his often misunderstood line, “hell is other people,” he is actually confessing that we are responsible to others. “I cannot discover any truth whatsoever about myself except through the mediation of another.”[46]For Sartre, this is a moral point. While the individual “cannot avoid bearing full responsibility for his situation,” he simultaneously understands that “he cannot be anything . . . unless others acknowledge him as such.”[47]

Sartre does ascribe to “absolute truth,” by which he means morality that is not merely a series of probabilities. He uses Descartes’s cogeto as a starting point, whereas all truth comes from a sincere point inside each individual.[48] But this absolute truth is not given to man; instead, “man makes himself . . . [and] he has no option other than to choose a morality.”[49] He contrasts his position with Kant, noting that the abstractness of Kant’s categorical imperative “fail[s] to define action,” that “inventiveness is always part of the process,” and that freedom (responsibility) is the ultimate virtue.[50]

Reading Sartre can have a dizzying effect. But the central idea that he is working both from and back-to is that there is no a priori good,[51] yet man is not without value: value, then, comes from man.[52] Or, to see it from Lewis’s position: There is no OMS. So below, consistent with our methodology above, the question of this theme will be: Can Sartre show his philosophy of existentialism consistently without needing to rely on an OMS?

Nausea: Brief Summary

Sartre’s first novel, Nausea, is his best known. In many ways, it seems to have been at the center of his philosophical works, though they came later. And while his Roads to Freedom trilogy and other fictional works were very much philosophically informed, Nausea has held its place as preeminent. The central theme here is freedom, which is Sartre’s concept for responsibility. Its corresponding phenomenon is “nausea,” or an existential angst that comes with the understanding/experience of such freedom. Implicit is the rejection of “bad faith,” or a rejection of one’s freedom. All of this works on the assumption that there is no a priori good. The entire novel is crafted as first person journal entries from his protagonist, Antoine Roquentin. The antagonist is not a person but an idea (or ontology) that life has no inherent meaning. Any meaning one does have is derived through action (existence precedes essence).

While Sartre did not intend this to fit neatly into a standard literary form, it ultimately does, though the (intentionally) erratic thoughts of the protagonist obscure that somewhat. As with above, a three-act framework will be used. In the first act, the protagonist Roquentin is overtaken by a terror which he comes to call “nausea,” which sends him into a series of existential crises. “For the first time I am disturbed at being alone. I would like to tell someone what is happening to me before it is too late;” upon fixating for a long time at himself in the mirror, “nothing human is left;” he is assuaged by his favorite song, “and yet I am troubled; it would take so little to make the record stop;” “I am generally proud of having had so many adventures. But today . . . it seems as though I am lying, that I have never had the slightest adventure in my life.” [53] At one point, he picks up a novel that he had never read before, opens it to a random page and began to read. “It isn’t that I get any great pleasure out of it: but I have to do something.”[54] This, for Roquentin, is where his story truly begins.

In the second act, Roquentin, recognizing that doing is his only hope, begins sloppily pursuing action. Here we read a series of reflections on the lives of others Roquentin observes. In a café, he overhears conversations of lives consumed with past stories. Walking through the streets on a Sunday, crowds use their only day off to mingle, which Roquentin sees as nothing but “tragic” “sleeper” who were barely “alive.”[55] Foreshadowing the midpoint, Roquentin writes:

“Nothing has changed and yet everything is different. I can’t describe it; it’s like the Nausea and yet it’s just the opposite: at last and adventure happens to me and when I question myself I see that it happens that I am myself and that I am here; I am the one who splits the night, I am as happy as the hero of a novel.[56]

And then, almost without a breath: “I am full of anguish: the slightest movement irks me.”[57] Through a series of other interactions and introspections, Roquentin continues to stumble through what it means to attack the nausea. However, his writing project on Rollebon (his vocation) is still “the only justification for my existence.”[58] At the midpoint, Roquentin abandons his book project about Rollebon (“M. de Rollebon had just died for the second time”[59]) and a new vision is set in front of him. From here, Roquentin pursues freedom in earnest. Throughout the rest of the act, Roquentin struggles back and forth with the reality of his nausea and his almost manic need to “make myself exist, to thrust myself into existence.”[60] Throughout, he interacts mostly with the Self-Taught Man (a representative of failed Modernist humanism—not Sartre’s “humanism”) and fantasies about his past lover, Anny, who he is set to reunite with soon.

The final act begins with Roquentin sitting in a park, captivated by the roots of a chestnut tree. “And suddenly, suddenly, the veil is torn away, I have understood, I have seen . . . it is no longer an illness or a passing fit: it is I.” For “never, until these last few days, had I understood the meaning of ‘existence.’” And “I didn’t feel it, although I realized it.” Considering the meaning of existence, “the word absurdity is coming to life under my pen; a little while ago, in the garden, I couldn’t find it, but neither was I looking for it.” “But I soon stopped questioning myself because I had the feeling of knowing where I was.” And finally: “I understood the Nausea, I possessed it.” Volitionally, “the smile of the trees, of the laurel, meant something; that was the real secret of existence.”[61] This last line gets the fundamental movement taking place: even in the absurdity of life, we can elect as free agents, to find (define) meaning. Eventually, Roquentin sees his former love interest, Anny. She is not interested in living in the past with him, but, as it turns out, neither is he. This is part of his growth. And in the last major episode of the novel, the Self-Taught Man is revealed to be a pedophile. Originally, Roquentin looked down on him for his humanism. But in his own growth, he comes to pity him, at least in the way he was ostracized. The novel ends, externally, in the same place it starts, but Roquentin, is a new person.

Nausea: Theme Analysis

The basis of Sartre’s worldview is the lack of an a prior good (LAPG). It is from here that Sartre reasons that good (purpose) is found in action. And so, the question to explore here is: Does Nausea consistently reinforce Sartre’s concept of freedom and an LAPG? Is this the best explanation of Roquentin’s angst and experiences? Or, Does Sartre have to skip anything to present his character consistent with his philosophy?

(1) Does the Storyworld Show a Clear LAPG?

Yes. Since this is written in first person, our main characters and narrator are one. Because of this, we know nothing more than what the narrator knows. Sartre does not explicitly tell us that Roquentin is an atheist, but his entire life is consistent with this premise. At no point does Sartre make a positive case for an a priori good; its lack is simply assumed throughout.

(2) If So, Is This LAPG Essential to the Story?

Yes. The premise of the novel is the protagonist’s (Roquentin’s) existential crisis. He interacts with church-goers only at a very superficial level, and the only time he entertains God’s existence is as a psychological excuse for those who believe in him. The entire novel takes place inside the protagonist’s thoughts (via his journal). At no point does his “nausea” cause him to seriously consider God’s existence. And the resolution is his learning to find meaning in such a godless world.

(3) How Are Major Plot Movements Aligned/Misaligned with an LAPG Worldview?

With the first two qualifiers answered in the positive, it is right to judge Nausea as a work of imaginative apologetics. To do this, we consider the question of consistency. Can we expect the novel to extend or elucidate Sartre’s LAPG philosophy? There are two levels to this answer. On the face of it, his novel is consistent with his philosophy. Sartre says that nausea is the result of his character coming to understand reality, and this is what he shows us in its plot. But on a deeper level, there are some significant questions for Nausea to overcome.

The first question to consider is one of legitimacy. In the end, Roquentin has an epiphany where he realizes the truth and finally understands why he exists. But, critically, Roquentin did not take the path of those around him. So then, what justifies him to consider his own understanding as an authority above others’ understandings? This can be considered against the mass of people who do not conclude as he does, or against the numerous philosophers and poets who have come before him. Other than an extreme belief in his own intuition, what justifies him in his assertion of what is true?[62]

The second question is epistemic. How does Roquentin know that his epiphany is finally right? Any number of psychological factors could be at play that are blinding or confusing him.[63] An essential premise of Sartre’s novel is that many (if not most) people believe lies as truth.[64] Why should Roquentin think he is any different?[65] And what if someone experiences “nausea” but concludes something quite different, like: there is a god? Other than preference, how is one to judge what nausea means?[66] Exercising one’s freedom to act (avoiding “bad faith”) does not get us out of this problem, because this is just an ethical paradigm Sartre invented. Unless Sartre himself is somehow objectively necessary, where is this concept grounded?

A third question stems from Roquentin’s statement: “Never until these last few days had I understood the meaning of ‘existence.’”[67] Unless he is referring to a completely private definition of existence (which he is not), “meaning” implies a kind of transcendence or standard. Sartre himself is not opposed to transcendence in some sense, but his transcendence was in justification of a consciousness found outside the self (his ontological proof), which is to say, things exist even if we cannot (subjectively) see them.[68] What his transcendence does not address is why things are there at all. And so, looking back at Roquentin’s statement, we can ask: How could there be non-subjective meaning of existence in a materialist world? Is this not just assuming the thing one has set out to prove?

As noted above, the novel crescendos with Roquentin finally finding meaning in his existence. But I think what he really finds is significance, and that is the lesser of the two. Here I am not using Sartre’s definitions but my own.[69] As I am using it, “meaning” is objective and has some external standard. In communication, a word (illocution) means what its author intended. Meanwhile, “significance” is subjective. For instance, it is possible for me to understand (perlocution) a word accurately, but its significance may vary by other contextual factors or applications. In such a case, significance does not change meaning. While significance can be legitimately manufactured, meaning (as I am using it here) cannot. And so what his novel has shown us is that the best one can do in an LAPG world is to find significance. Meaning, unfortunately, is still elusive.[70]

Conclusion

One of the jobs of imaginative apologetics is to extend the argument: to take the philosophical and plant it into a world where it can be seen and touched, tried on and experienced. In this way, the imaginative apologetic—beyond just being an illustration—offers something that propositional argument does not. And to show this, we have looked at the criterion of consistency, as a kind of test. In the case of Lewis, the theme presented in AOM is both represented and significant in THS, and so THS is able to go beyond AOM by showing the real-world—albeit fictionalized—consequences of jettisoning an OMS.

And in the case of Sartre, it shows us that as much as everything in his novel may be slanted toward a LAPG worldview, such a thing simply cannot be sustained. There are too many assumptions for this to be reasonable, unless perhaps one is already convinced of this conclusion. But in that case, nothing has actually been accomplished. Another way to consider this is to look at freedom (responsibility) directly: What master gives man greater freedom? An OMS (per Lewis), or one’s own felt insights (per Sartre)? And authority question: Where does this freedom come from? And finally, how are we supposed to verify what our nausea is really leading us to? Sartre never seems to answer these questions; for Sartre, atheism is more of a realization rather than a reasoned conclusion, or, an assumed a priori truth.[71] The best his novel does is show us this.

A Note on Hope

Hope is at least implicit in all imperatives. We know this because the opposite of hope—despair—is forfeit, or surrender, or giving up. So even though Sartre’s philosophy may not be considered as “hopeful,” there is a necessary hopefulness built into its rejection of lesser paths (the disingenuousness of “bad faith”) and its spurring on toward greater ones (the responsibility, or “radical freedom,” to not waste one’s life).[72] In this way, story can provide a further check on its philosophical base, by teasing out what kind of hope it delivers. This then leads to another form of comparison: between the ultimate Story of hope and all its imitators.

Further Research

This paper is meant to be a proof of concept: a beginning to the idea that story can function for philosophical ideas as the experimentum crucis. I have looked at a single factor—logical consistencies—and rather briefly at that. But there are at least seven additional ways that story can further show philosophies to be true or false: (1) Ineffably, by showing rather than telling, we can get at the indescribable parts that stories reveal; (2) emotionally, by applying emotive value to abstract concepts, we can comprehend them in a different way; (3) ethically we expose the virtues (or vices) of an idea; (4) contextually we can compare complex ideas holistically; (5) empathetically we see relationships and social structures can work for or against ideas, which expose a different kind of weaknesses or strengths; (6) projectionally, stories model how life could be (which overlaps with history, as well); and (7) exponentially, through the use of form (e.g. genre conventions, etc.) we can gain extended insights from what is embedded in a multitude of previous stories.

Selected Bibliography

Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, 2^nd edition. Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Aristotle. Poetics: With the Tractatus Coislinianus, Reconstruction of Poetics II, and Fragments of the On Poets. Indianapolis, IN: Hacket Publishing, 1987.

Augustine. The City of God. New York: The Modern Library, 1993.

Bakewell, Sarah. At the Existentialist Café. New York: Other Press, 2016.

Begbie, Jeremy S. Abundantly More: The Theological Promise of the Arts in a Reductionist World. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2023.

Beversluis, John. C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religions. Second edition. New York: Promethius Books, 2007.

Cox, Gary. Sartre and Fiction. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009.

Downing, David C. Planets in Peril: A Critical Study of C. S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy. The University of Massachusetts Press, 1992.

Ferretti, Francesco. Narrative Persuasion: A Cognitive Perspective on Language Evolution. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2022.

Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction. New York: Alfred A. Knoff, 1984.

Goldthorpe, Rhiannon. Sartre: Literature & Theory. Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Herrick, Jim. “C.S. Lewis and Narrative Argument in Out of the Silent Planet.” Mythlore, Autumn 1992, Vol. 18, No. 4.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. Affective Narratology: The Emotional Structure of Stories. University of Nebraska Press, 2011.

Kreeft, Peter. C. S. Lewis for the Third Millennium. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994.

Lakeoff, George and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press, 1980, 2003.

Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001 [1944, 1947].

———. An Experiment in Criticism. Cambridge University Press, 2013 [1967].

———. Image and Imagination. Cambridge University Press, 2013.

———. Mere Christianity. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001 [1947, 1952].

———. Miracles. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001 [1947].

———. Of Other Words: Essays and Stories. San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 1994 [1966].

———. On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1982.

———. Out of the Silent Planet. New York: Scribner, 2003 [1938]

———. Perelandra. New York: Scribner, 2003 [1943]

———. Selected Literary Essays. Edited by Walter Hooper. Cambridge University Press, 2013 [1969].

———. That Hideous Strength. New York: Scribner, 2003 [1945]

———. The Weight of Glory. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001 [1949].

McGrath, Alister. Narrative Apologetics. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2019.

Middleton, J. Richar and Brian J. Walsh. Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995.

Naugle, David K. Worldview: The History of a Concept. Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans, 2002.

Onega, Suzana and José Ángel García Landa, eds. Narratology. London: Longman Group Limited, 1996.

Ordway, Holly. Apologetics and the Christian Imagination: An Integrated Approach to Defending the Faith. Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2017.

Phelan, James and Peter J. Rabinowitz, eds. A Companion to Narrative Theory. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Age of Reason: A Novel. New York: Vintage International, 1992 [1947].

———. Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology. New York: Washington Square Press, 2018 [1943].

———. Existentialism is a Humanism. Yale University, 2007 [1947].

———. The Imaginary. London: Routledge, 2004 [1940].

———. Nausea. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2007 [1938].

———. No Exit and Three Other Plays. New York: Vintage International, 1989 [1946].

———. The Reprieve: A Novel. New York: Vintage International, 1992 [1947].

———. Troubled Sleep: A Novel. New York: Vintage International, 1992 [1951].

———. What is Literature? Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2001 [1948].

Schakel, Peter J., ed. The Longing for a Form: Essays on the Fiction of C. S. Lewis. The Kent State University Press, 1977.

Scheub, Harold. Story. The University of Wisconsin Press, 1998.

Sire, James. The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020.

Storr, Will. The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell them Better. New York: Abrams Press, 2020.

Suhl, Benjamin. Jean-Paul Sartre: The Philosopher as a Literary Critic. Columbia University Press, 1970.

Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007.

Tomlinson, Paul. Plot Basics: Plot Your Novel or Screenplay in Eight Sequences. Self-published (Kindle Direct Publishing), 2017.

Truby, John. The Anatomy of Story. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007.

Turner, Mark. The Literary Mind.  Oxford University Press, 1996.

Utell, Janine. Engagements with Narrative. New York: Routledge, 2016.

Walsh, Brian J. and J. Richard Middleton. The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian Worldview. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1984.

Ward, Michael. After Humanity: A Guide to C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man. Park Ridge, IL: Word on Fire Academic, 2021.

Wells, Gordon. The Meaning Makers. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2009.

Wielenberg, Erik J. God and the Reach of Reason: C. S. Lewis, David Hume, and Bertrand Russell. Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Williams, Donald T. Answers from Aslan: The Enduring Apologetics of C. S. Lewis. Tampa, FL: DeWard Publishing Company, 2023.

———. Deeper Magic: The Theology Behind the Writings of C. S. Lewis. Baltimore, MD: Square Halo Books, 2024.

———. Mere Humanity: G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien on the Human Condition. Tampa, FL: DeWard Publishing Company, 2018.

Endnotes

[1]. fMRI research over the last decade has shown that our brains display emotional responses to imagination (in this case, movies) very similarly to real life first-hand experiences. See Vezzali et al, “The greatest magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, vol. 45, issue 2, 2014, https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12279, accessed March 16, 2026.

[2]. Lewis wrote something similar in his essay, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to Be Said:” “But at its best it [a story] can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of ‘commenting on life,’ can add to it” (C. S. Lewis, Of Other Worlds[San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 1994 (1966)], 38).

[3]. By way of definition, Holly Ordway defines imaginative apologetics as “seek[ing] to harness the God-given faculty of imagination to work in cooperation with reason” (Holly Ordway, Apologetics and the Christian Imagination [Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2017], 15). Alister McGrath writes that it is the stories that “enable us to make meaningful connections between the gospel and lived human experience” (Alister McGrath, Narrative Apologetics [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2019], 16).

[4]. Lewis, Of Other Worlds, 37. Of course, the emotions stirred up from imagination are not permanent. But a door does not have to be open forever for one to walk through it and see what’s on the other side.

[5]. This is contrasted with propositional forms of apologetics. While propositional forms of apologetics lay out arguments clearly, they are often understood combatively rather than productively. This is because argument engages the analytical right side of the brain, while imagination is happening primarily on the left side. See Schurz et al, “Common brain areas engaged in false belief reasoning and visual perspective taking: a meta-analysis of functional brain imaging studies,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2013, 7:712. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00712, accessed March 16, 2026.

[6]. In this paper, I am making an implicit distinction between works that can be used as imaginative apologetics and works that areimaginative apologetics. The purpose of these questions is to highlight the need to distinguish imaginative apologetics as its own legitimate method, not merely a subset of another. However, this is not to say that imaginative apologetics does or should function independent of other apologetic methods.

[7]. To clarify: I am not claiming The God Delusion is not a work of imaginative apologetics because it is non-Christian, but rather because it is not a story designed to promote a philosophy. As will be shown below, Sartre’s novels function as an imaginative apologetic for his existentialist philosophy. Though both are atheistic, one qualifies as imaginative apologetics while the other does not.

[8]. George Lakeoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (University of Chicago Press, 2003 [1980]), 3.

[9]. Lewis, it can be argued, makes this claim implicitly and regularly by adhering to an objective moral standard. The claim of consistency is baked into his larger claim. Likewise, Sartre confirms the pursuit and intent of consistency directly: “Existentialism is merely an attempt to draw all of the conclusions inferred by a consistently atheistic point of view” (Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism [Yale University, 2007 (1947)], 53).

[10]. While I focus only on one form here (consistency), stories, generally, can test truth claims through various forms of clarification (i.e. nuance, commentary, or visualization) and meaning (i.e. application, emotion, or character impact). Additionally, in the conclusion (“further research”), I list an additional seven ways story can test the veracity of philosophical claims.

[11]. John Trubby acknowledges that “theme” is a widely misunderstood concept, but, writing to modern screenplay writers, his definition is similar to mine: “Theme is the author’s view of how to act in the world. It is your moral vision” (John Truby, The Anatomy of Story[New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007], 108).

[12]. C. S. Lewis, Abolition of Man, (Harper Collins Publishers, 2001 [1944, 1947]), 17–19. To Note, “Objective moral standard” (OMS) is my attempt at a consistent term for this paper.

[13]. One way to understand this is akin to a picture or film switching from black and white to color (or from color to black and white). Such a move can actually change the functional composition (what one focuses on). Another metaphor along similar lines is the editing of a film. Two versions could be the same story, but one could, for instance, provide a stronger backstory, which could then affect the emotional resonance of the conclusion.

[14]. Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, 28-29, 32-33, 40.

[15]. In a story there are often multiple themes present. Even when an author explicitly claims such-and-such as a theme, a careful reader can still spot other themes; while other times, a writer may include a theme without being completely conscious of it. This is relevant to this analysis, because the themes I have chosen—while significant to the author and their story—will not be the only themes present. And so during the analysis, plot movements and character arcs can turn on other themes as well.

[16]. The “subtlety” of Abolition of Man is found in Lewis purposefully not arguing directly for Christian truth. Lewis is anything but subtle in his critique of subjectivism.

[17]. In the preface to the third installment in the trilogy, Lewis writes: “This is a ‘tall story’ about devilry, though it has behind it a serious ‘point’ which I have tried to make in my Abolition of Man.”

[18]. Lewis, Abolition of Man, 12.

[19]. Michael Ward, After Humanity (Park Ridge, IL: Word on Fire Academic, 2021), 6, 8.

[20]. Lewis, Abolition of Man, 18.

[21]. Ibid., 24.

[22]. Ibid., 24-25.

[23]. Ibid., 33. And “If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all” (ibid., 40); “Not one of them can claim any authority other than that of the Tao” (ibid., 41); and “The direct frontal attack ‘Why?’—‘What good does it do?’—‘Who said so?’ is never permissible; not because it is harsh or offensive but because no values at all can justify themselves on that level. If you persist in that kind of trial you will destroy all values, and so destroy the bases of your own criticism as well as the thing criticized” (ibid., 48-49, emphasis in original).

[24]. “Even if it were true that men had a spontaneous, unreflective impulse to sacrifice their own lives for the preservation of their fellows, it remains a quite separate question whether this is an impulse they should control or one they should indulge” (ibid., 35).

[25]. Ibid., 44.

[26]. Ibid., 61, 62-63.

[27]. Ibid., 64. And “When all that says ‘it is good’ has been debunked, what says ‘I want’ remains” (ibid., 65).

[28]. Lewis, Abolition of Man, 72. And “A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery” (ibid., 73).

[29]. Ibid., 75.

[30]. Peter Schakel, The Longing for a Form (The Kent State University Press, 1977), 92.

[31]. In a typical three-act structure, the first and third acts are each around a quarter of the story’s length, while the middle act is approximately half. However, an important thing happens in the middle of the second act: the mid-point. Here it is where the story changes fundamentally. And so some have considered a three-act story to actually be a four-act story. For my purposes here, the distinction does not matter. It is enough to see how the shape of the plot (form) displays the theme in question. This is true for both Lewis and Sartre.

[32]. “Ordinary world” (as well as “special world”) are terms borrowed from Joseph Campbell and the hero’s monomyth, which he based on Carl Jung’s archetypes psychology. While I borrow some terms from Campbell, I am implying a Campbellian (or Jungian) system.

[33]. C. S. Lewis, “The Inner Ring,” The Weight of Glory (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001 [1949].

[34]. The following characters were omitted from the summary above, for the sake of space.

[35]. It should be noted: this idea of insufficiency does not imply a priority on literary forms over philosophical forms. Both Lewis and Sartre saw that to properly communicate one’s ideas—at least, worldview shaping ideas—both forms of writing are necessary.

[36]. Sartre writes that “man first exists: he materializes in the world, encounters himself, and only afterward defines himself” (Sartre, EIAH, 22).

[37]. Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal writes in the Preface: This lecture “was therefore to present the public with a consistent and more accurate perspective on his philosophy” (EIAH, ix-x).

[38]. Cohen-Solal, “Introduction,” EIAH, 10.

[39]. Sartre, EIAH, 20. “Subjectivity” in Sartre is best understood as something like perspective rather than relativity, though, it would almost certainly be relative as well.

[40]. Ibid., 22.

[41]. Ibid., 23.

[42]. Ibid., 24.

[43]. Ibid., 23.

[44]. Ibid., 24. The natural question arises: How do we handle competing moralities? Sartre appears to take a somewhat optimistic view that freedom (as he defines it) will work it all out in the end. So he is not saying that we have a responsibility to fall in line with society, but that every authentic thing we do affects more than just ourselves.

[45]. Ibid., 29.

[46]. Ibid., 40. This thinking is also how Sartre connects existentialism to humanism. Later he comments that his definition of humanism is not “man as an end and the supreme value,” but rather as a kind of “transcendence,” where “man is always outside of himself, and it is in projecting and losing himself beyond himself that man is realized” (Ibid., 51-52).

[47]. Ibid., 45, 41.

[48]. Ibid., 40.

[49]. Ibid., 46.

[50]. Ibid., 49-50.

[51]. “There could no longer be any a priori good, since there would be no infinite and perfect consciousness to conceive of it” (ibid., 28, emphasis in original).

[52]. This statement is not a summation of Sartre’s philosophy but rather a theme found in Sartre’s philosophy. Also, in using the word “humanism,” Sartre is not referencing the Modern philosophy of man above all else. Sartre’s usage of the word is more epistemic, whereby we can know because we exist to know. Our humanity is defined by our “freedom” (Sartre’s term).

[53]. Sartre, Nausea, 9, 17, 22, and 36.

[54]. Ibid., 47.

[55]. Ibid., 52-53.

[56]. Ibid., 54.

[57]. Ibid., 55.

[58]. Ibid., 70.

[59]. Ibid., 96.

[60]. Ibid., 100, emphasis in original.

[61]. Ibid., 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, and 135.

[62]. This point could be further teased: What does true even mean in this context? If it is purely subjective (one’s own perspective), then how can “hell [be] other people”? If there is some transcendence (this is “nothingness” that Sartre discusses), then how can there not also be a transcending standard? And if that standard is simply the compellation of other choices, then how is this not merely the probability he argues against?

[63]. On this point, it is well known that solitary confinement in the prison system is one of the worst forms of punishment. Longterm spelunkers, separated from the rising and setting of the sun, quickly become deregulated and often take GMT wristwatches to know whether its morning or evening. Roquentin admits at the outset that he does not have friends. He talks to people, and some extensively (e.g. the Self-Taught Man), but these are not friends. They are objects for his consideration. It is hard to see Roquentin as a representative example of a person acting faithful to Sartre’s existential pursuits.

On a similar note, Gary Cox comments: “it can be argued that Roquentin is not authentic but actually inauthentic and deluded. Arguably, he is attempting to be his own nothingness in a last desperate attempt to escape the indeterminacy of his being and as such has fallen into the most desperate project of bad faith — the faith of nihilism” (Cox, Sartre and Fiction, 97).

[64]. This reality is the basis for Roquentin’s existential crisis (nausea).

[65]. In a pivotal passage, he writes: “Now I knew: things are entirely what they appear to be—and behind them . . . there is nothing” (Sartre, Nausea, 96). Again, what is any of this based on? The only way for it to make sense is to be based on something transcendent that does not depend on himself, which largely works against his overarching theme.

[66]. Rhiannon Goldthorpe notes that “in both L’Etre et le Néant [Being and Nothingness] and La Nausée [Nausea], Sartre uses the phenomenon of fascination to exemplify the quasi-identity of consciousness with its object. Indeed, for Sartre, fascination seems to represent a fundamental mode of knowledge in its purest form . . . Yet this state of fascination cannot be said to be one of fusion with the object, however strong the momentary illusion of such a fusion” (Goldthorpe, Sartre, 27-28).

[67]. Sartre, Nausea, 127.

[68]. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 20-23.

[69]. For Sartre, meaning comes from the self. He notes that “we have grasped the for-itself’s [individual’s consciousness] innermost meaning, as the foundation of its own nothingness” (Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 245). For Sartre, “nothingness” is the space between objects. So when we reflect on something, we can only do so because we are separated from that something by a margin, or “nothingness.” So nothingness is a medium but not an object.

[70]. Much, much more can be said in analysis of Sartre’s philosophy. But, as stated above, the purpose here is to see how stories show (or test) the philosophy in question.

[71]. “Existentialism is not so much an atheism in the sense that it would exhaust itself attempting to demonstrate the nonexistence of God; rather, it affirms that even if God were to exist, it would make no difference — that is our [existentialists] point of view. . . what man needs is to rediscover himself and to comprehend that nothing can save him from himself, not even valid proof of the existence of God” (Sartre, EIAH, 53-54).

[72]. While Sartre does consider existentialism hopeful (see: Sartre, EIAH, 54), the implication her is that it is hardly hopeful when compared to something truly hopeful, like the gospel.