Character of Antoine Roquentin in Nausea

       Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophical novel Nausea is an influential text of the existential movement that emerged in France. In this novel, the main character is Antoine Roquentin, a historian who has retired to a small village called Bouville. Roquentin keeps himself engaged in a phenomenological study of his existence and
its relation with the world. Roquetin realizes throughout the novel, anything can happen at any moment. This leads him to believe that human existence is completely accidental.

          Antoine Roquetin is a 30 years old man who begins keeping a diary, in January of 1932. He has spent several years travelling throughout the world. He is supported by a modest family inheritance, so he does not have to work to make a living. For the first three years, he has been living in the small seacoast town of Bouville, France, while doing research and writing a history of the Marquis de Rollebon, a 18^th century French political figure. Roquetin begins his diary in order to record the subtle changes. He has been experiencing in his perceptions of himself and the world around him. He finds that he has been experiencing a "sweetish sickness", which he calls the Nausea. The Nausea, which is both a physical and a mental sensation, comes over him at moments when he is feeling overwhelmed by a sense of disgust at the absurdity of existence.

          Antoine Roquetin was former adventurer who has been living in Bouville for three years. He does not keep in touch with family nor has any friends. He is recluse at heart and often likes to listen to other people's conversations and examine their actions. He is unemployed, but spends a lot of his time writing a book about a French politician of the 18^th century. Antoine does not think too highly of himself: "The faces of others have some sense, some direction. Not mine. I cannot decide whether it is handsome or ugly. I think it is ugly because I have been told so."

          Unlike most people, Roquetin captures from time to time certain realization about his existence. While engaged in an historical research on Monsieur de Rollebon, he comes across a perception- "I have been lying to myself for ten years"... that helps him avoid "bad faith" in the future. It appears to his consciousness that an historical account is not a truth, rahter a creation of the researcher. He has, in fact, already started to 'believe that nothing can ever be proved'. After travelling around most of Africa and the Far East, he returned to Bouville to complete his historical research on the Marquis de Rollebon. Yet, not only has he lost interest in his research, but something about the way he sees both himself and the outside world begins to worry him. Whether it is holding a stone or looking at a glass of beer, he feels confronted by the bare existence of things. The result is what he calls the Nausea. He soon realizes that the Nausea comes from the fact that "existence precedes essence'.

          Roquetin visits his ex-lover Anny in Paris. He had hoped that they would get back together again. He imagines that this love will be answer to his confusion over the nature of his existence and the significance of his life. But Anny makes it clear that she has no interest in getting back together with him. Roquetin vainly attempts to explain his feelings of nausea to Anny, but she does not understand. They part, knowing that they will never see each other again. Back in Bouville, Roquetin resolves to free himself from the past by embracing his existence in the present. He tries to explain his views to the Self-Taught Man, a lonely cafe acquintance, but he cannot perpose him that human love is just an essence, and that there is no purpose to existence, only 'nothingness'. Despite his despair and abandoning his research, Roquetin chooses to move to Paris and write a novel.

          Thus Sartre demonstrates the inability to justify one's existence through the existence of another person. Roquetin has disavowed the past, embraced his existence and discovered that there is no purpose to existence.