In The Words, Sartre seeks to be truthful for the reason that he despises himself deeply in his childhood, and in this novelistic autobiography the author is talking about himself in fact up to 10 years. The reader is presented with the image of an eccentric, pampered scoundrel, an egocentric, effeminate boy who suffers extreme pain when the public does not pay attention to him. Someone might be surprised that such a weak boy will grow up into such an uncompromising fighter for freedom and justice, as Jean-Paul Sartre.
Sartre looks into childhood and untwists the knot of himself, in search of the Beginning, the rudiment of his goals, aspirations, fears. The father died too early for Sartre himself to experience the "Oedipus complex", and his mother is perceived as a sister. He had the pleasure of public speaking and wanted everyone to consider him special. Religious grandfather taught him to atheism.
Atheism is a well-known feature of Sartre's world view. In The Words he presents it in a peculiar foreshortening, indicating that he never believed in God, but always in the Holy Spirit. He felt an aversion to religion by watching his grandfather. The everyday indifference of the grandfather to God and the church, the painful refusal of the flesh, embedded in the essence of Catholicism, provoked rejection in the young philosopher. Moreover, Jean Paul notes that if Catholicism was presented to him by his grandfather from a different angle, he would have ended his life as a monk.
