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Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

 "Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is."

 Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre is one of the most important philosophers of all time. Despite his work garnering considerable flak over the years, his theories on existentialism and freedom cement his place among the most influential Western philosophers of the 20th-century and beyond.




Nausea is Sartre's first novel. I am not big with philosophy, but man do I love words and books! I picked up Nausea because first, it has a very curious title and second, I was looking for something short and interesting. Nausea is 100-something pages long. It is the diary of Antoine Roquentin. 

Roquentin is a French writer and the narrator. He lives in solitude writing History related texts. In the book he interacts with two other characters regularly. One is the self-taught man and the other is a woman with whom the narrator sleeps with often. The self-taught man is an important character. He spends his time reading books, he reads them in patterns, he knows a lot and keeps looking for more. He represents modern hypocrisy, the need of people to exist through things, knowledge, intellect and especially labels. Mostly he represents the world, the hypocrisy that makes Roquentin nauseous.

Roquentin is writing about Rollebon , a person in history. While writing about Rollebon, he is encompassed by the existence of this character, the existence of which is in the past. Once he finishes writing his book he is plunged into a crisis where he comes face to face with his own existence. He fails to find any purpose or meaning, he is horrified to acknowledge his being. 

In the second half of the novel, we come across another character called Anny. He is in love with her and they have remained separated for years. They meet again and share a dialogue which I found to be very interesting. Anny says she has outlived herself; she compares him to a milestone in her life, she uses his existence to measure the changes that come in her and her life. Roquentin wants to live like her, to give into his existence.

Again and again, throughout the book, Roquentin is surrounded by an unknown feeling which he calls the 'nausea'. He thinks and he thinks about things and their existence and then he thinks about his own existence, and he thinks about his thinking. The more he becomes aware of the objects around him the more he thinks about them and the more aware he becomes of his own existence; the deeper is he pushed into his dread. 

This novel is about a man questioning and then coming to terms with his existence. Sartre is famous for his works on Existentialism. I felt like a child reading this book. I do not claim that I have understood everything; but what's fun about reading a book you already understand? The writing is engaging given my explicit bias towards stories written in the first person, and the novel has quite a few funny moments that made me chuckle. I loved reading this book and I hope to reread it someday. 








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