Nausea

“Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of from a distance: it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast—or else there is nothing at all.”

Part One: The Diary Begins

Antoine Roquentin, a solitary historian living in the French town of Bouville, keeps a diary to document his growing sense of unease. He is researching the life of an 18th-century politician, Marquis de Rollebon, but finds the work increasingly meaningless. Roquentin begins experiencing strange sensations—objects seem to lose their familiarity, and he feels a creeping disgust toward existence itself.

Part Two: The Roots of Nausea

Roquentin’s discomfort intensifies. Ordinary experiences—holding a pebble, sitting in a café—trigger overwhelming nausea. He realizes that existence is arbitrary, without inherent meaning. His past relationships, including one with his former lover Anny, now feel hollow. Even his own body feels alien to him, as if it exists independently of his will.

Part Three: The Crisis

During a visit to the Bouville museum, Roquentin is repulsed by the portraits of the town’s bourgeois elite, seeing them as absurd and self-deceived. He abandons his biography of Rollebon, recognizing it as a futile attempt to impose meaning on a meaningless life. His nausea becomes an all-consuming awareness of existence’s absurdity.

Part Four: The Epiphany

Listening to a jazz record in a café, Roquentin has a fleeting moment of transcendence. He realizes that art—unlike life—can offer temporary escape from nausea. Though he remains trapped in existence, he considers writing a novel as a way to create his own meaning, even if only illusory.

Key Ideas

• The absurdity of existence and the lack of inherent meaning in life.
• The physical and psychological experience of nausea as a confrontation with raw being.
• The futility of historical and intellectual projects in the face of existential dread.
• The possibility of art as a fleeting refuge from meaninglessness.
• The alienation of the individual in a world without predefined purpose.

• Readers interested in existential philosophy and the nature of consciousness.
• Those grappling with questions of meaning, alienation, or absurdity in modern life.
• Fans of introspective, psychologically dense literature.