LA PEUR DE JUPITER
JUPITER'S FEAR

Summary/Abstract: Jean-Paul Sartre rewrites the myth of Orestes from the point of view of his own philosophy of freedom. This is a paradox given the writer is known as a promoter of an atheistic existentialism. Agreeing to approach freedom through the voice of a mythological character such as Orestes, know as a victim of fatality, of an inescapable destiny, Sartre introduces Jupiter, the god of gods, in a double hypostasis: as an impostor in flesh and blood, who borrows a false identity (Demetrios) under which he interacts with human beings and present issues, and as an authentic god, who comes down from the Olympus for showing himself to Egystus, in order to perpetuate his reign and image through him. Forced to reveal his secret, Jupiter has to admit that he is afraid of his own creation, upon which he lost control: in freeing Orestes, Jupiter ignored the consequences that would diminish his position. Agreeing to bring a credible god into light, Sartre gives life to a god that has fears: The fear of Jupiter turns him into a character that completes the gallery of literary Jupiters, in an original way, perfectly rhyming with the deepest beliefs of Sartre's philosophy. As Sartre does not count on God, his conventionally accepted Jupiter, as God of gods that he is, could only be a fearful one. It is like he would say: if he existed, he would definitely be afraid. By the plume of Sartre, fear becomes an existential condition for Jupiter. It is all that the great philosopher grants to this character: acceptance of his fear. Turning the king of gods, the god of gods, into a fearful character – protected by all the attributes that we have mentioned above: impostor, manipulative, changeable, subjective, vengeful – questions faith, belief, the role of religion, even the existence of God. Through this play, Sartre the atheist seems to send a disrupting message, that turns christian traditions upside down: it is not God that created mankind in his image, rather it is man who conceived a God in his own image (see his Jupiter whose existence orbits around fear, one that humans accept being instilled in with, and one of his own, that contains the terrible secret that is eating away at him: human freedom).

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