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Chapter 11: Friday, 3.00 p.m.
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Nausea, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Existence vs. Essence
Time
Love and Sexuality
Art and Legacy
Summary
Analysis
In the library, Roquentin sees the Self-Taught Man watching a student from afar. Roquentin returns to the notion of adventure. He theorizes that something doesn’t become an adventure until it’s told as a story. While an adventure is happening, it blends in with the rest of time, and it doesn’t feel special at all. It’s only once the adventure has ended that it can have a “beginning.” Roquentin goes on to say that all stories take on significance because of the listeners’ awareness of the end, which makes every moment of the story feel important. He writes that he wants his life to have the significance and “order” of a memory in the present moment, which is impossible.
The Self-Taught Man’s discreet attention to the student foreshadows the end of his character arc in the last few entries of the diary. Roquentin’s argument about the meaning of adventure again highlights the subjective experience of time. He suggests that events become significant only relative to one another, and only from particular perspectives. Roquentin’s reasoning also indicates that a “listener” of some sort is necessary to make adventures meaningful—a striking idea, given that Roquentin himself has no one to whom he can tell stories. This argument highlights the framing narrative of Nausea as Roquentin’s published diaries. After all, Roquentin actually does have a listener, and he is presenting the events of the journal as a story, even if he doesn’t yet know it.
Themes
