Jean-Paul Satre: Nausea Essay Example
4/6/2012
Nausea Essay
Antoine’s way out in Nausea, by Jean-Paul Sartre, is an opened ended question with the potential to have many answers, or no answer at all. Existentialism is the root of these many answers because it has many definitions. It would be misleading to assign it a concrete definition because as Hayden Carruth says, “Existentialism is not a produce of antecedent intellectual determinations, but a free transmutation of living experience, it cannot be defined.”i The definition can only be determined by the individual and cannot be based upon “antecedent intellectual determinations” because it is an experience, and experiences cannot be defined, until experienced. The individual conjures his or her own definition from these experiences, and in Antoine’s case, is disgusted by life. Antoine visualizes life as bare existence without meaning or purpose. As he says, “I cannot even conceive of anything around me being other than what it is.”ii In other words, life has no meaning or essence and just “is”. The lack of essence and the bare existence is the root of Antoine’s nausea and problems and from what he must find an escape. Unfortunately, he never finds this “way out” but does find a means of survival by the end of the novel. The nausea Antoine suffers during the novel is sourced from his lack of ability to understand how existence developed. As Sartre says,
The World was everywhere, in front, behind. There has been nothing before it. Nothing. There has never been a moment in which it could not have existed. That was what worried me: of course there was no reason for this flowing larva to exist.iii
4/6/2012
Nausea Essay
Antoine woke up and realized the veil was pulled away and only existence remained. The world was “in front, behind” for no apparent reason. He was thrown into this situation, the situation of life without control or choice. Antoine feels this way because when he looks at an object he only sees it as an empty structure
Nausea Essay
Antoine’s way out in Nausea, by Jean-Paul Sartre, is an opened ended question with the potential to have many answers, or no answer at all. Existentialism is the root of these many answers because it has many definitions. It would be misleading to assign it a concrete definition because as Hayden Carruth says, “Existentialism is not a produce of antecedent intellectual determinations, but a free transmutation of living experience, it cannot be defined.”i The definition can only be determined by the individual and cannot be based upon “antecedent intellectual determinations” because it is an experience, and experiences cannot be defined, until experienced. The individual conjures his or her own definition from these experiences, and in Antoine’s case, is disgusted by life. Antoine visualizes life as bare existence without meaning or purpose. As he says, “I cannot even conceive of anything around me being other than what it is.”ii In other words, life has no meaning or essence and just “is”. The lack of essence and the bare existence is the root of Antoine’s nausea and problems and from what he must find an escape. Unfortunately, he never finds this “way out” but does find a means of survival by the end of the novel. The nausea Antoine suffers during the novel is sourced from his lack of ability to understand how existence developed. As Sartre says,
The World was everywhere, in front, behind. There has been nothing before it. Nothing. There has never been a moment in which it could not have existed. That was what worried me: of course there was no reason for this flowing larva to exist.iii
4/6/2012
Nausea Essay
Antoine woke up and realized the veil was pulled away and only existence remained. The world was “in front, behind” for no apparent reason. He was thrown into this situation, the situation of life without control or choice. Antoine feels this way because when he looks at an object he only sees it as an empty structure