Literature
Nausea
CevvelaSummary
The physical and spiritual “nausea” the historian Antoine Roquentin feels before the naked, meaningless reality of objects and of his own existence. An existentialist masterpiece showing that human existence in the world has no predetermined purpose — existence precedes essence.
Quotes from Cevvela
“Existence is not necessity but contingency; nothing has a reason.”
“Everything exists, everything exists, yet nothing has any meaning.”
“Man is condemned to be free.”
“The Nausea has not left me, and I don’t believe it ever will. The Nausea is me.”
“The past is a luxury. I can bear only the present — if even that.”
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Reader Score: 8.5 / 10(296 votes)
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Sartre’s words are sticky, suffocating and deliberately nauseating. The moment Roquentin looks at a tree root and grasps the meaninglessness of the world is the moment your comfort zone shatters. The text dismantles the religions, ideologies and career plans that tell us life has a script. Sartre says: the world has no meaning to give you. You will create your own meaning by scraping it out with your fingernails from inside that nausea, that nothingness. This brings a frightening freedom. You cannot make excuses; you cannot blame the system. For Sartre, the inner gem appears only when one faces nothingness.