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Chapter 2: Undated Pages
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 is now convinced that something is wrong with him, after all. He recounts some incidents he’s experienced lately. For instance, he recently felt an unfamiliar object with “a sort of personality” in his hand as he entered a room, only to realize it was a doorknob. He also failed to recognize the face of the Self-Taught Man, whom he’s known for two years. And he was also disgusted by the Self-Taught Man’s hand, which Roquentin here compares to a worm. Reflecting on these incidents, Roquentin wonders whether it’s himself or the world around him that has changed.
The strange incidents bothering Roquentin seem to be connected by his newfound inability to recognize commonplace objects and people. The pattern indicates that his underlying problem must be related to a breakdown of the part of his consciousness that connects objects to their names. In other words, Roquentin is losing his ability to interact with the world through the filter of essence and is instead being assaulted by the existence of things. The latter is the “sort of personality” that he tries to describe in the doorknob.
Themes
In a new section, Roquentin concludes that he is the one who is not the same as he was. He supposes that throughout his life, changes have crept up on him and taken him by surprise once they’ve accumulated so much that he can’t ignore them anymore. Roquentin remembers when he first started travelling the world with Mercier, an archaeologist. It was Roquentin’s passionate dream to travel, but after six years of seeing the world, he suddenly “woke up” and felt disgusted by his surroundings. Roquentin particularly remembers the smell of perfume wafting from Mercier’s beard as he told Mercier that he wanted to return to France. Breaking from his reminiscence, Roquentin wonders whether he is on the brink of a drastic change in his life. He worries that something will awaken inside of him and take control of his actions.
Although Roquentin has only recently begun to feel disgust and fear when touching and regarding objects, this section clarifies that he has felt disgusted with his own life for quite a bit longer. Just as Roquentin became disenchanted with travel and felt overwhelmed by the scent of Mercier’s beard, so now does he grow unhappy with his life in Bouville and overwhelmed by his other senses. In the midst of all his confusion, Roquentin’s passivity is remarkable. Accustomed to thinking of his life as something that simply happens to him, he looks at these new changes in much the same way. Although he’s afraid, he seems resigned to sitting back and documenting his mental state as it shifts.
Themes
