The purpose of this article is double : to interpret the meaning of nausea which is considered as a real hero of Nausea, Sartre"s first novel, in terms of his philosophical ideas developed especially in Being and nothingness, and to demonstrate ways t...
The purpose of this article is double : to interpret the meaning of nausea which is considered as a real hero of Nausea, Sartre"s first novel, in terms of his philosophical ideas developed especially in Being and nothingness, and to demonstrate ways to overcome nausea. This attempt could be exposed to critical attitude from the start. Since there is five years gap between this novel published in 1938 and Being and Nothingness publshed in 1943. And several methods of criticism, such as genetic criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, sociological criticism, etc. can be mobilized to read this novel. But the philosophical reading, based on the philosophical ideas of Sartre himself, is considered as the most effective approach to understand this novel. In fact, Sartre describes nausea as a foreign and absurd sentiment felt by man in front of the world that reveals his nakedness under the rule of contingency. In other words, the nausea is a kind of ontological and metaphysical anguish felt by man who is familiar with an instrumentality and an usefulness of the beings. Although nausea is a symbol of the clarity of the consciousness of man, it is also a mental crisis to overcome. In Nausea, Sartre proposes two methods for this purpose : inauthentic method and authentic method. The first method takes between four forms : Roquentin"s writing the bibliography of the Marquis de Rollebon, the Autodidact"s pursuit of total knowledge, the perfect moment of Anny and the wrong way of life of the citizens of the Bouville. After analyzing one by one these four forms, we turned to the authentic method that is an artistic creation. Having experienced the disappear of nausea listening to music, Roquentin decides, at the end of Nausea, to write a novel. We tried to show that this decision is closely related to literary salvation and the famous Sartre"s notion of literary religiosity.