Why did Jean-Paul Sartre turn from novels back to writing plays after 1949?

After publishing the third volume of his four-part novel series, Les Chemins de la liberté, in 1949, Jean-Paul Sartre shifted his focus away from the novel as a medium of communication.

Sartre concluded that the novel was less effective for his goals than drama. He believed that a writer’s primary task is to depict human beings as they truly are, and he argued that humans are most authentically human when they are in action—a quality he felt was best captured through the medium of theater. By returning to writing plays, Sartre sought a more direct way to convey his ethical message and his views on social responsibility to the world at large.1