Nausea Analysis

As Antoine tells us at the beginning of Nausea, he has decided to write a diary in order to: ...let none of the nuances or small happenings escape even though they might seem to mean nothing. (1.4)...

Since this book is written entirely as a diary, Antoine Roquentin is our first-person central narrator. True, we get a short note from the editors of this diary at the beginning of the book. But af...

Basically, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote the novel Nausea in order to explore some of the philosophical ideas that would make him one of the most famous philosophers of the 20th Century. More specifically...

You've got to hand it to Antoine—he's a poetic dude. But he's also a guy carrying a lot of pain, and he ain't afraid to show it in his writing. Sure, he doesn't really think there's any higher pu...

Antoine basically lets us know what kind of writing style we're in for when he begins his diary by saying he'll: Keep a diary to see clearly—let none of the nuances or small happenings escape eve...

Since its publication in 1938, Nausea has become a central term for describing the pain associated with existential philosophy. More specifically, the term describes the sickness that Antoine Roque...

Perhaps one day, thinking precisely of this hour, of this gloomy hour in which I wait, stooping, for it to be time to get on the train, perhaps I shall feel my heart beat faster and say to myself:...

You can probably understand all or most of the words that Antoine uses in this book, but the real challenging is sticking with him without letting your mind wander. We can't lie: there's not really...

A Diary Might be a Good IdeaSartre begins this novel by giving us a note from some fictional editors who have apparently prepared the diary of Antoine Roquentin for publication. They claim they ha...

It's clear pretty early in the novel that our protagonist, Antoine Roquentin, is having a bit of a crisis. More specifically, he is worried that there might be no purpose to his life. That's why...

Antoine lays out his life and his problems for us: this guy is a complainer. He feels that his daily activities lack purpose, and he is starting to think that beneath all of his concepts and ideas,...

You know how Sartre mentions crabs at different points of Nausea? Well it turns out that he borrowed this from his own life. After he started taking the drug mescaline, he constantly hallucinated t...

For a book that's mostly about a guy living inside his own (dirty) mind, Nausea can get super graphic in its sexual descriptions. Antoine starts the novel off by talking about his casual sexual rel...

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