Hell is yourself.

I can't stand the sight of you.

Presumably, as literature students taking a class on Samuel Beckett, we are all familiar with the famous quote from Sartre's No Exit, "hell is other people." After reading a number of Beckett's plays, all of which seem to depict various kinds of existentialist crises or moments, we arrive at Happy Days, a play that presents the audience with another harrowing Purgatory scenario. The sizeable difference between No Exit  and these two plays is that instead of three characters forced to interact with one another for eternity, there is only a single character interacting with him- or herself, allowing for Sartre's most famous existential statement to be rewritten as "hell is yourself."

Much like Krapp's Last Tape, Happy Days presents a single character waxing nostalgic and poetic on her life, wondering how she got to where she is. And, similarly driven through constant monologue, the play relies upon the actors' facial expressions and calculated reactions to tell their stories of inner turmoil.

Stuck in the middle with nothing.

When one is stuck in a hole, like Winnie in the earth or Krapp in his study, and the only company is a person one cannot interact with, like Willie or Krapp's former self, all one has left are thoughts and memories. All one can do is analyze the moments that led up to the current, the define the current, that predicted the current. How is this not completely torturous? How does this not represent Hell? If there is no hope for a future, if nothing ever changes and all that's left to examine is one's past, who could truly claim a happy existence? By putting these characters in such awful situations, Beckett creates for them a Sisyphean being where one is forced to relive the past over and over without ever coming to any kind of conclusion. Without reprieve, without catharsis, without epiphany, Krapp and Winnie will never grow, change, develop, or understand. Thus, to be stuck with yourself for eternity is the ultimate definition of hell.