Jean -Paul Sartre's Nausea (Themes of alienation and despair) Written by:        Course:               09271
– The question of freedom by Sartre Professor:           Date:               I.      Introduction         In his 1938 novel Nausea, (La Nausee), the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre explored the themes of existential alienation and despair within the framework of a fictional "diary" of a thirty-year-old Frenchman, Antoine Roquentin. Sartre, a student of the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl and the German ontologist-existentialist Martin Heidegger, resorted to the writing of fiction as an expression of the existential realities of subjectivism and personal interpretation. Yet Sartre's novel does convey a larger, coherent philosophical outlook, as found in the protagonist's practice of making decisions and struggling to come to an understanding of the world, which is categorically divided into the "self", for which Roquentin feels increasing disgust and morbid contempt, and the "other", for which he feels despair and a growing disgust as a projection of his own perception of it.
        In this paper, I will examine the treatment of the theme of alienation in Nausea, to see how Sartre defines the human condition through the introspective psychological states of the first person narrator, who stands of course for the author and for the self in every human life. I will show that Sartre's "nausea", far from being a simple description of self-disgust or world-weariness such as we might encounter in a novel of 19th century decadence, is a philosophical concept keyed to the existential doctrine of alienation – the separation of thought and feeling that occurs in the absence of a higher meaning or purpose to a godless world.
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        Roquentin leaves for Paris, barely able to stop and say goodbye to Francoise or his landlord or housekeeper. The stupefying level of boredom, distraction and alienation which Roquentin has reached obliges him to pass the time counting his money, contemplating the future stretching ahead of him like a series of payments every month until death. He asks to hear his old favorite record one last time, and reflects, "To think that there are idiots who get consolation from the fine arts" (P. 174). The cheap suffering and feeling that he derives from this piece of music are a source of shame to him, yet he will not deny himself even this small consolation. Roquentin wants to have done with it all, to abolish his own existence and along with all of the pretentious and empty aspirations of mankind including the "fine arts" of books, paintings and poetry. Yet he asks to hear his record a second time, reveling in the voice of the "Negress" as she sings her lament, "Some of these days, you'll miss me honey".
        Sartre's protagonist has reached an absolute dead end, and we see him for the last time wondering whether or not he will even be able to make the decision to leave.
The condition of alienation which engulfs him is particular, subjective and unique to him, but only in its existential fact and its details. His alienation is the universal condition of modern humankind, having progressed through excessive self-consciousness and detachment from the world to a state of near paralysis. All of his ambition and talent and hope are now a holding action against this terrifying awareness of an empty circle of being reflecting upon itself.
Bibliography Sartre, Jean-Paul. Nausea. Translated from the French by Lloyd Alexander.
New York: New Directions, 1964.