Sartre's plays, and especially The Flies, are generally considered to be vulgarizations of his previously elaborated philosophical positions. This assumption is misleading. The Flies is the first work in which Sartre presents what can be taken as an ethics of freedom. Being and Nothingness concerns not ethics but ontology, freedom not as value but as a structure of Being, that essential freedom which makes it possible and meaningful for man existentially to make himself free. In a footnote to the chapter of Being and Nothingness, "Concrete Relations with Others," Sartre indicates that his description of human reality does not exclude "the possibility of an ethics of deliverance and salvation." But, he continues, "this can be achieved only after a radical conversion." Such a radical conversion takes place … in Act II of The Flies; it involves a complete transformation in Orestes' understanding and use of his freedom. In committing...