As he explains to the Autodidact, human beings are an accidental offspring of a meaningless reality. However, Roquentin finds only “nothingness”, an empty vacuum that paradoxically makes up existence. He thinks that people attribute essences to objects to supply a reason for their existence.
If evolution were to happen over again, the results would be completely different. There is no necessary reason for anything to exist. One of the key themes is the idea of “ contingency”.
The world was waiting, holding its breath, making itself small – it was waiting for its attack, its Nausea”.
I felt surrounded by cardboard scenery which could suddenly be removed. He is struck by episodes that simultaneously alienate and overimmerse him from reality. He documents his every feeling and sensation about the world and people around him. He begins to write in a diary to help him explain the strange and sickening sensations that have been bothering him. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am I am because I think, why do I think? I don’t want to think any more, I am because I think that I don’t want to be, I think that I. However, he is horrified of his existence and its meaninglessness, but he does not understand why. He constantly repeats “I exist” and mocks the people of his town. Thus, he loses interest in his work and decides to live in the present. Roquentin decides that the past is a meaningless concept that does not exist, people use the past to take a “vacation from existence”. Roquentin is overcome by a feeling of nausea as he realises that he had been attempting to resuscitate a historical figure from the past in order to justify his own existence. He is at war with Bouville, literally “mud-town” (where he lives), at war with the regulars at the café, at war with the two principal characters with whom he interacts, which are in some way his doubles: Anny (his former lover) and the Autodidact (who has spent hundreds of hours reading at the library, and who thinks he can learn all there is to know by reading every book available in alphabetical order), and finally, he is at war with himself. He is a solitary figure and a solipsist he has no friends and usually eavesdrops on other people’s conversations and watches their actions. His life revolves around writing this book, going to cafés, and spending many hours in the library.
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