Summary
The main character in the novel Nausea is
Antoine Roquentin, a historian who has retired to a small, depressing
village called Bouville. The novel is made up of Roquentin’s journal
entries from 1932, in which he records his ever-intensifying struggle
to understand the sickening anguish that overwhelms him as he observes
the world and questions its meaning.
Nausea begins with a fictional editors’
note, claiming that the diary was found in Roquentin’s papers, and
the actual diary then begins with a brief introduction by Roquentin
that explains his thoughts about diary keeping. In the entries that
follow, Roquentin describes an uncomfortable feeling that plagues
him from time to time—a feeling he calls “the Nausea.” He describes
his daily life, in which he talks to few people, has casual sexual
encounters with women, and thinks occasionally of a former lover
named Anny. He interacts with the town and its people, often describing
them and his interactions with them. He visits the library frequently
and often sees and talks to someone he calls the Self-Taught Man.
He wishes to escape the feelings of despair and hopelessness that
overwhelm him, but he cannot repair the disconnect he feels with
reason and the comforts of humanity. Failing to find salvation in
his outward pursuits, he is forced to look inward, and he describes
his confusion with what the world means and the Nausea that comes
and goes.
In one entry, he reports receiving a letter from Anny,
requesting that he meet her at a hotel. He remembers pieces of their
past together and decides he’ll go to see her when she arrives in
one week. In subsequent entries, he describes occasionally thinking
about her as he goes about his daily life.
In conversation one day with the Self-Taught Man, Roquentin
is suddenly struck by the reality of a dessert knife he is holding
in his hand—the feel of the handle and blade, its appearance. Believing
he suddenly understands the Nausea, he says, “Now I know: I exist—the
world exists—and I know that the world exists.” He is overcome by
the bare reality of existence. When he examines a stone on the seashore,
the root of a chestnut tree, and other objects, he is taken aback
by a revelation that exposes the things as pure existence rather
than the “essence” of what they are. The discovery forces Roquentin
to confront what he sees as the complete meaninglessness and nauseating
purity of existence.
A few entries later, Roquentin describes his meeting with
Anny, who looks older now. Their encounter is awkward, and Roquentin describes
feeling uncomfortable in her hotel room. Although he is initially
happy to see her, eventually the conversation becomes accusatory,
with both of them bringing up hurts from the past. He dreads leaving
her and knows he’ll probably never see her again. The next day,
he finds her at the train station, but they do not speak, and her train
leaves.
In an entry near the end of Nausea, Roquentin
describes sitting in a café and spotting the Self-Taught Man at
a table with two young boys. A Corsican sees the Self-Taught Man
make a sexual advance to one of the boys, and he and another café
patron say this isn’t the first time they’ve seen the Self-Taught
Man do this kind of thing. The Corsican punches the Self-Taught
Man in the face, and though Roquentin tries to help him, the Self-Taught
Man orders him away.
Roquentin ultimately discovers at least the possibility
of a way out of the emptiness that consumes him. He has decided
to leave Bouville and return to Paris, and, sitting in a café, he
is moved by the sublime melody of a jazz recording. Roquentin the
historian, a recorder of deadness, pledges to write a novel. Art,
perhaps, is the way to transcend the nauseating predicament of human
nothingness in the face of pure existence. As Sartre emphasizes
time and again, the human condition is that of complete freedom:
we are our own maker. Through creatively exercising the freedom
that man is condemned to, Roquentin can perhaps find a cure for
his nausea.
Analysis
Along with the short story “The Wall” (1939), which details
the psychological battles of a prisoner of war facing imminent execution, Nausea is
considered an essential example of early Sartrean existentialism. Nausea,
Sartre’s earliest substantial work, serves as an introduction to
many of the philosophical themes he contemplates in later works,
particularly in Being and Nothingness. Nausea also
contains many allusions to phenomenology, the study of objects as
we consciously experience them, a philosophy that influenced Sartre
greatly, particularly in the earlier stages of his career. Today, Nausea endures
as one of the most significant works of “philosophical fiction”
produced in the twentieth century.
Although it was only his first novel and not meant as
a philosophical tract, Nausea is remarkable for
the degree to which it contains many key tenets of Sartre’s mature
existentialist philosophy. Most important are the concepts of pour-soi,
or being-for-itself, and en-soi, or being-in-itself.
Being-for-itself, represented by Roquentin, is conscious and aware
of its own selfhood and existence. Being-in-itself, represented
by the stone on the shore and the entire nonhuman world, is that
form of being that has a definable and complete essence yet does
not possess consciousness and cannot be cognizant of its own existence.
In Nausea, when being-for-itself is confronted by
being-in-itself, the former is nauseated by the latter. Being-in-itself
suffocates being-for-itself. Pure being is an undifferentiated, amorphous
whole that knows no lack and no emptiness. Pure being sucks everything
into itself, a fact that causes the being-for-itself to experience
the feeling of nausea. For Roquentin, the world external to his
body is meaningless, and world within him is nothingness. The way
out of this sickening feeling of despair is a mystery, but Sartre
alludes to the potential of art, both in its consumption and creation,
to provide a place of respite at least.
