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Chapter 32: Wednesday: My last day in Bouville
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
With two hours before his train is to depart, Roquentin walks through the city toward the Rendezvous des Cheminots. He feels as though Bouville is indifferent to him, as if it has forgotten him already. Only Roquentin is aware of his own existence, he muses. Drifting out of the first-person perspective, Roquentin dwells on consciousness itself. He thinks of the Self-Taught Man and Anny, imagining where they are now. Roquentin arrives at the Rendezvous des Cheminots and bids Françoise and Madeleine goodbye. Madeleine puts on Roquentin’s favorite record, and he reflects on the purity and nonexistence of music. Roquentin imagines the song’s composer and singer and has an idea: perhaps, if he creates something new, he can “justify” his own existence. Excited, Roquentin contemplates writing a novel as night falls on Bouville.
Despite living in Bouville for a while, Roquentin believes that he has made essentially no impression on the people there. Still, Françoise and Madeleine wish him a fairly warm goodbye, and Madeleine still remembers his favorite record. Between them and the fleeing Self-Taught Man, it seems like some people will remember Roquentin. As he listens to the record, Roquentin finally has a breakthrough. He realizes that if he creates a work of fiction, something removed from the dependence on existence that comes from a discipline like history, he can live on in some way as pure essence. Given that Roquentin’s diary gets published by the nameless Editors at some point, it seems likely that he succeeded in his endeavor.
Themes
