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Chapter 21: Saturday morning
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
Roquentin goes to the Bouville museum to see a portrait of Olivier Blévigne, which he remembers looking odd. Near the entrance, he looks at a painting of a bachelor who died alone and reflects on what it means to live a life of self-gratification without significant relationships to other people. Marrying, having children, and leading others, Roquentin muses, is what gives the rest of the portraits in the hall the “right” to exist. Roquentin examines the other portraits and dwells upon how they spent their lives in meaningful ways. He thinks that he himself lacks the “right” to existence that the subjects of the portraits have. A couple enters the museum and comments on the awkwardness of the Blévigne portrait. Roquentin realizes that because of Blévigne’s short stature, the proportions of his portrait look awkward compared to the portrait next to him. Disgusted with his surroundings, he leaves.
The portraits in the museum are all immortalizations of existences, representations of people that last far beyond the actual lifespans of those involved. Roquentin’s struggle in this section comes from his difficulty in grappling with what gives people the right to exist while alive, much less after they die. What makes someone deserving of a legacy? In his musings, Roquentin supposes that, conventionally, being a credit to society (caring for a wife and children, serving the nation, etc.) is what validates someone’s existence and earns them a spot on the portrait wall. Roquentin, who spends his days walking aimlessly around the city and giving up on his esoteric historical research, has done no such thing, and this forces him to confront the possibility that he has no inherent right to life at all.
Themes
