Nausea Themes

In his novel Nausea, Sartre makes an argument that becomes a central tenet of his philosophy: Existence precedes essence. In other words, before an object can have an essence (what it is), it has an existence (that it is). Sartre’s thesis is one of the founding principles of Existentialism, a 20th-century philosophy that explores the implications of human existence with a focus on choice and free will. In general, Existentialists like Sartre…

Nausea posits that time is relative and subjective. This contradicts the usual way people typically think of time: normally, one makes sense of time using absolute units of seconds, minutes, hours, and so on. But Sartre conceives of the experience of time as important in its own right. Nausea, which takes the form of a series of Roquentin’s diary entries, forces its reader to confront Roquentin’s adventures as he records them, in irregular…

After many thought-provoking encounters with art in Nausea, Roquentin finally finds hope for an antidote to his suffering in his aspiration to write a novel that will “make people ashamed of their existence.” This conclusion to the story suggests that art—at least in some forms, like music and novels—endows the artist with a legacy that transcends existence itself. Throughout Nausea, Roquentin interacts with art forms that are heavily contingent on things that have…