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Chapter 24: Tuesday
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 meets the Self-Taught Man for lunch. The Self-Taught Man alludes to a problem he’s having with the Corsican guard, but he trails off before saying what it is. A young couple enters the restaurant, and Roquentin feels disgusted by their apparent affection for one another. Reflecting on how everyone in the room is avoiding confronting their own existence, Roquentin starts to laugh. When the Self-Taught Man questions him, Roquentin admits that he thinks there is no reason to exist, and the two enter a philosophical conversation. The Self-Taught Man, a humanist, tries to convince Roquentin that even in the absence of God, people give life meaning. He tells Roquentin that after being taken prisoner in a crowded camp during World War I, he fell in love with humankind, ultimately becoming both a humanist and a Socialist.
Roquentin and the Self-Taught Man’s initial conversation foreshadows the Self-Taught Man’s secret again. Roquentin continues to struggle with seeing couples in public places, and in this section, seeing a couple seems to prompt his reflection on his own lack of meaning. Notably, the philosophical conflict between Roquentin and the Self-Taught Man starts with the mutual assumption that there is no God. Neither Roquentin nor the Self-Taught Man believes that a higher deity endows humans with essence, but both men are concerned with other possibilities for the meaning of life. Generally, this conversation is representative of the debate between Existentialists (or at least Sartre) and humanists. It’s also striking that the Self-Taught Man has travelled and adventured perhaps more than he initially let on—after all, he fought in World War I. He has also dedicated his life to a higher purpose in a way that Roquentin has not, which seems to partially form his humanist perspective.
Themes
The Self-Taught Man presses Roquentin to disclose his motivation for writing his book and asks him to label himself. Roquentin uncomfortably admits that he writes only to write and that he’s opposed to humanism and all of the other labels that the Self-Taught Man suggests. He feels that humanism engages with humankind only shallowly, contradicting itself in its acceptance of all types of people and undermining itself in its treatment of humans as symbols. The Self-Taught Man tries to insist that Roquentin loves humanity at heart, but Roquentin is overtaken by a strong bout of Nausea and leaves the restaurant abruptly. The other patrons watch him judgmentally as he exits.
Again, Roquentin is wary of names and labels, which often obscure the bare existence of the things they describe. Roquentin’s dislike of humanism comes from the same impulse: he dislikes reducing things to their essence, which he believes humanism does in order to sustain itself. The Self-Taught Man’s attempt to reassure Roquentin that he loves humanity echoes Roquentin’s own effort to love the crowd of people he walked with on Sunday, but Roquentin still is unable to come to grips with the idea of loving so abstractly.
Themes
Roquentin makes his way down the street, comparing himself to a crab among men. He muses that the existence of God is merely a “veneer” covering the true existence of all else. In a daze, Roquentin boards a tram and examines the seat next to him. He finds that the objects around him confront him with their existence, but he can’t attach them to their names or meanings. Roquentin rushes off the tram and to a park, where he sits, feeling suffocated. Suddenly, however, he has a realization.
Roquentin is excruciatingly self-aware again, and his paranoia at people observing him as he transgresses social norms manifests in visions of himself as a shamefaced, scuttling crab. His thoughts on God place God in the position of essence, something that obscures existence in an effort to explain and justify it.
Themes
