Jean-Paul Sartre both Gide and Malraux were undecided, and this may have been the cause of Sartre's disappointment and discouragement. "Socialisme et liberté" soon dissolved and Sartre decided to write instead of being involved in active resistance. He then wrote "Being and Nothingness", "The Flies", and "No Exit", none of which were censored by the Germans, and also contributed to both legal and illegal literary magazines. In his essay "Paris under the Occupation", Sartre wrote about the "correct" behavior of the Germans had entrapped too many Parisians into complicity with the occupation, accepting what was unnatural as natural, writing: The Germans did
Jean-Paul Sartre be "transformed" by such an award, and did not want to take sides in an East vs. West cultural struggle by accepting an award from a prominent Western cultural institution. Nevertheless, he was that year's prizewinner. After being awarded the prize he tried to escape the media by hiding in the house of Simone's sister Hélène de Beauvoir in Goxwiller, Alsace. Though his name was then a household word (as was "existentialism" during the tumultuous 1960s), Sartre remained a simple man with few possessions, actively committed to causes until the end of his life, such as the May 1968 strikes