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Chapter 3: Monday, 29 January, 1932
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 reports that “nothing new” has happened since his last entry. As he writes, he eats at the Café Mably, a place he frequents. The owner of the café, Monsieur Fasquelle, talks to customers when the building is full but takes naps when business is slow. Looking around at the other customers chatting with one another, Roquentin reflects on how alone he is. He sometimes has sex with Françoise, a woman who runs the nearby Rendezvous des Cheminots, but their conversations are impersonal and businesslike. Roquentin has even mostly forgotten his ex-lover, Anny. Most of his thoughts are vague and fleeting.
Here and throughout Nausea, Roquentin is frequently in or adjacent to groups of people without really being a part of them. Even in a room full of people, Roquentin seems to have nobody to talk to. The relationships he does have, such as his arrangement with Françoise, are superficial and lacking in significance. Seemingly without realizing what he has done, Roquentin has isolated himself.
Themes
Roquentin muses that people who live alone forget how to talk to others and put their experiences into coherent words. At the same time, however, he suggests that solitary people can be attentive to everything without worrying about how their observations will sound to other people. As an example, Roquentin recalls seeing a woman in blue bump into a Black person in a raincoat under a streetlight. He remembers the colors of their clothes and the light and the expressions on their faces in detail. The scene inspired a powerful emotion in Roquentin, but it soon faded away into nothingness. He states that a person must be lonely to feel this emotion. Roquentin has felt it for some time, but he has always believed that he could ease it by seeking out others’ company again. Now, however, he thinks that it’s too late.
Although Roquentin tends to observe couples with mild condescension, here he seems to feel genuine longing when he recalls the scene under the streetlight. His memory of the man and woman meeting is vivid and evocative. Roquentin’s careful attention to detail and the emotion that he feels in recalling it make the scene a picturesque and striking one, the sort of incidence that Anny later calls a “perfect moment.” Seeing a man and woman together makes Roquentin feel aware of his loneliness as an observer of life rather than a participant in it.
Themes
Roquentin now has trouble looking directly at objects. He believes that beneath their external characteristics, the objects contain something else, but he can’t articulate what it is. Roquentin remembers a man with a neck tumor that he used to see while playing with his friends as a child. The man would wear a boot on one foot and a slipper on the other, and he would periodically stare at his own outstretched foot in fear. Roquentin and his friends were terrified of the man’s visible loneliness and derealization. Roquentin wishes that he could reunite with Anny and tell someone his fears.
Roquentin’s recollection of the man with the neck tumor mirrors his own earlier behavior. The crowd of children that watched him drop the stone by the sea recalls Roquentin’s own pack of childhood friends. Now, Roquentin is starting to understand what that man, whose perceptible instability once frightened Roquentin, might have felt like.
Themes
Roquentin admits that he started his entry with a lie: something did happen to him. He confesses that he saw a piece of paper lying on the ground and wanted to pick it up, but he found himself unable to. Roquentin usually likes to pick things up from the ground and touch them, but this time, he tries and fails to make himself do it. He states that he has lost his freedom and is no longer able to do what he wants. Roquentin describes the feeling that he gets when interacting with objects now: instead of touching them, they seem to touch him. He calls the sensation “a sort of nausea in the hands.”
Here, Roquentin finally gives a name to the strange feeling that’s been plaguing him: Nausea. His passivity comes through even in how he thinks about this sensation—it's something that touches him while he’s helpless to avoid it. Beyond that, it becomes clear in this section how unreliable and subjective Roquentin’s narration is. He admits to lying and omitting in his journal entries, which calls the “truth” of all of Nausea into question. Moreover, though, it highlights the individuality and subjectivity of all human experience, which is one aspect of the Nausea that Roquentin must come to terms with.
Themes
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