One of the foundation of existentialism, written by a person who declined a Nobel Prize, the novel Nausea is our topic of the day. The novel depicts the life of Antoine Roquentin, a historian living in France in the town of Bouville, which in French would be interpreted as “Mud town”. Bouville is a seaside town, and overall resembles the city “Le Havre” in France, a city where JP Sartre spent multiple years of his life.
The story follows Antoine Roquentin writing a book about an historical figure, the Marquis de Rollebon which I will refer to as Rollebon, not without troubles, which leads him to undergo an existential nausea. This is used to explore multiple themes, such as existential anxiety, as well as the absurdity and freedom of existence.
The novel is written in a quite interesting way, at least it piqued my interest. It was the first time I encountered a book written as journal entry logs.
Foreword 🔗
As a native French speaker, I read the original text in French and not an English translation. Any quote from the book would be a translation done to the best of my ability.
***Spoiler alert!***This review contains passages of the book, as well as, key topics of the plot. I do not think it will impact you if you want to read the book afterwards. However, you are warned!
A deep dive on Existence 🔗
The plot really begins once our protagonist, Antoine Roquentin, has a revelation about adventures.
“Here is what I thought: To transform a mundane event to an adventure, all one has to do is start narrating it. That’s what fools people: a man is always a storyteller, he lives surrounded by his stories, and the ones of others. He sees all that happens to him through them; he tries to live his life, as if he narrated it. But you have to choose: live or narrate.”
Antoine comes to a conclusion that you cannot live your life if you are trying to create a perfect story. It also gives us a probable root cause of Antoine’s nausea, by writing the adventures of Rollebon, and thinking about the great adventures he had. He is faced with the emptiness of his life, he lives to narrate the life of Rollebon. To him, his life has no adventures, no stories to be told any more.
This is the commencement of a lengthy reflection on existence, and finding purpose for Antoine. During the novel, he will find a conclusion for both. The first conclusion he comes to is what is existence.
“ I can’t say I feel lighter, nor happy, quite the opposite I feel crushed; However, my goal is attained: I know what I wanted to know. All that happened to me in January, I understood it. The nausea didn’t leave me, and I do not believe it will ever; However, I do not undergo it any more. It’s not a disease: it’s me. So earlier the roots of the tree were sticking in the earth, just below my bench. I couldn’t even remember what a root was. The words were vanishing, and with them, their signification of the things, their usage manuals, and the feint human landmarks as well. (…) Before that, if you were to ask me what was existence, I would have replied, in good faith, that it was nothing, an empty shape that would add itself to the outside things, without modifying anything to them. But then, all of a sudden, as bright as day, it had lost its inoffensive look of abstract idea: it was the dough of everything. ”
I had to shorten and paraphrase some parts, but the core idea is still present.
Antoine discovers that everything exists, everything is imbued with existence. Existence is everywhere, and everything. The implications of this is that everything exists, but not everything is acknowledged in the same way. Some existence is not seen by most people, and that does not just imply some specific grain of sand in the middle of the Sahara. It also implies that his existence, one with no friends, no family, and no notable work to show off, is invisible. He could cease to exist without having any impact on anyone.
In some way, he expresses this a bit later in the same journal entry by wondering who planted the tree that just gave him this realization. He would like to speak with the person, ask him about his life. As this person created existence, that would impact others, without anyone acknowledging his. This person, for Antoine, has managed to exist past his existence. This would spark the idea of outliving himself, and finding meaning in life for Antoine later on in the book.
***Spoiler alert!***I am about to quote and speak about the end of the book. Again, I do not think it would impact you to know the end of the book if you still want to read it. But if you would rather not be spoiled, please skip to “The Story”.
“ A book. Some people would read it and say: Oh it’s Antoine Roquentin who wrote it, he was a ginger who hung around in coffees. And they would think about me like I think about this song. Something precious, and almost legendary. A book. Yes, that would be a laborious and lengthy labour; However, that wouldn’t prevent me from existing, nor prevent me from feeling that I exist. But there will be a moment when it will be finished, and it will be behind me, it will exist in my past. Then, maybe, through him, I might be able to reflect on my past without being disgusted. ”
This is shortened and paraphrased because it contains some words that I would rather not write. Antoine concludes the novel by thinking that to exist and to give meaning to his existence, he has to leave a legacy. Such as the gardener who planted the tree, he wants to create something that will out live him. I think saying “wants to” is a bit of an understatement because he only finds meaning through this. We can also understand that this book is probably an alter-ego of Sartre, which was also someone hanging around in coffees, then writing this book to leave a legacy due to living a similar experience.
The story 🔗
Now that we tackled the philosophical aspect of the book, well, at least the bulk of it. Let’s talk about the story and the plot, or in this case, lack thereof plot. The book has some great moments, engaging moments, moments you can reflect on.
However, the story itself is, in my humble opinion, bad. The ideas in the book are of great quality, but it has been harming the story. Throughout all of the book, you can clearly understand that the ideas are prevalent to anything else. The protagonist is empty of any essence, they are parts where you just get to learn about him being sited in a coffee while talking poorly about the others sharing the place with him. A good way to portray our protagonist would be a depressed historian unleashing his self-hatred on others in his little journal.
An additional point I would like to bring on is an interaction between Antoine and one of the side characters called the Self-taught. After being caught doing some quite disturbing things to a minor in public, the Self-taught gets beaten up by an adult who noticed it. Antoine is fully aware of the whole scene and still goes to the Self-taught, and with empathy. I am not sure why he is feeling bad for him, knowing the events which happened with Sartre involving paedophilia. I was not sure how to feel about it. This definitely broke any bond I had made with Antoine, which was already fragile.
Conclusion 🔗
This book is a great introduction to existentialism. However, it is quite difficult to read due to the lack of plot, the very abstract ideas, as well as, the poor quality of Antoine as a protagonist.
If you are mainly interested in a good story with great characters, I would not recommend this book to you. However, if you are interested in philosophy or existentialism, you will probably enjoy reading it.
Thank you for reading, feel free to leave your opinion or feedback! 😊