'Sartre is a stern moralist who teaches above all things the need to be responsible and mature' - Maurice Cranston. During the German occupation Sartre wrote 'the secret of a man is...the limit of his own freedom; his capacity for standing up to torture and death'. These three plays explore the limits and possibilities of the self-knowledge to be gained in extreme situations. Victims of cruelty and oppression, like the Resistance writers in Men Without Shadows, may respond heroically, and murder can be an act of liberating courage, as it is for Orestes in The Flies. The lack of self-knowledge, however, results in devastating consequences, as Franz in Altona retreats into self-imprisonment and madness rather than face the outcome of his guilt. This title includes Altona, Men Without Shadows, and The Flies.