The only person capable of bringing some optimism into Antoine's life was Anny, his lover. He lived from quotes and thought said by others and he was unable to make anything on his own. He wanted to rule the culture but after 7 years he managed to come to the letter L and in the meantime he neglected his life.

He believed that by doing so his knowledge will be absolute. He is an official who spent his days reading books in an alphabetic order. Antoine believed that a caricature that mocked him existed as well and that it was called Self-Taught Man. He criticized the higher class of that small town by observing statues and pictures of important officials. He couldn't connect to anyone and he always felt alienated from everyone who based their principles on duty and kindness. Also, everything can become something else.Īntoine lived a lonely life and the people who stayed in touch with him had a completely different vision of the world than him. The world he had experienced lost all reasons to exist.Īntoine realized that things weren't connected to divine force and that everything can exist out of law and order.

Soon he started analyzing the state that took over him every now and then. He could defeat nausea by listening to jazz music because its simplicity brought him back to the outside world. He linked the feeling to some objects so it was hard to him to lift a piece of paper or a rock sometimes. In the beginning, the feeling would just come and go and it drove Antoine crazy. In 1932 during winter a strange feeling of vagueness, emptiness and meaningless took over him and he named the mixture of those feelings nausea. Then he was involved in a sexual relationship with Francoise, owner of a café. Antoine wanted to finish his historic study about marquis de Rollebon, a man who lived in the 18 th century and used to travel a lot. He had no will or desire to travel so he decided to stick around in a city named Bouville. Then he met Anny and had a relationship with her but he hadn't seen her for a few years. He also took part in many archaeological expeditions in India. The novel became an inspiration for many other authors.Īntoine Roquetin has a diary and travels Asia, Africa, and Europe. The novel almost has no plot and revolves around the question of existence, life meaning, freedom, human will and the world's indifference towards an individual. His conscious is the main aspect of this novel filled with philosophic and essayistic paragraphs. The work 'Nausea' is written like Antoine's diary.

The main characters are Antoine Roquetin, Self-Taught Man (his real name is Ogier P.) and Anny. The novel describes a few week in the empty life of Antoine Roqueting who is haunted by feeling of nausea and the fear of existence.

Nausee sartre