Abstract
This study aims to examine Éric Emanuel Schmitt’s play, Hotel of Two Worlds and explore how the residents’ confrontation with death transforms them. Their urgent desire for escape and the inability to escape from that atemporal and aspatial place adds fuel to the fire. While the play alludes to Sartre’s No Exit and other existentialist works, Schmitt’s emphasis on spirituality clearly distinguishes it from absurdist and nihilist literature. In this work death is not absolutely defined as the absurd destination for humans, instead, what is highlighted is the mysterious aspect of death. And the interrelation of death with the halo of light gives death a more enigmatic status rather than an absurd status. The philosophical views of Blanchot and Heidegger on death, particularly Heidegger’s concept of Sein-zum-Tode (Being-toward-death), are central to this study. It is concluded that though death cannot be defined, it is unavoidable. Humans must live their moments as though death were near, and yet its proximity must not devitalize their lives.