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Chapter 28: Friday
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Nausea, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Existence vs. Essence
Time
Love and Sexuality
Art and Legacy
Summary
Analysis
Roquentin visits Anny. Entering her hotel room, he’s immediately struck by how bare it is; as he remembers, Anny always carries a trunk full of masks and shawls to decorate her rooms. Anny herself looks different, too: older, fatter, and more tired. She gleefully tells Roquentin that he hasn’t changed since they last spoke six years ago. Anny divulges that she uses Roquentin’s fixed nature as a milestone against which she can judge her own transformation. She admits that she has quit the theater, that she is a “kept woman” to an older man, and that she no longer experiences the “perfect moments” that used to motivate her.
Anny’s masks and shawls suit her old profession as an actor; they’re made to cover and beautify the things they touch. In Roquentin’s memories, Anny herself likewise tries to make every moment as perfect as it can be. The fact that she has packed up her decorations and quit the theater aligns with her inability to experience perfect moments any longer, suggesting that Anny is also beginning to confront the bare existence that lies underneath essence.
Themes
Roquentin asks Anny to elaborate, and she describes a state of mind that’s similar to Roquentin’s Nausea. Anny used to conceive of “privileged situations,” rare scenarios that create the potential for a perfect moment. Her relationship with Roquentin was one of Anny’s privileged situations, but Roquentin generally failed to predict what response he should give to make moments perfect for Anny. Now, however, Anny feels apathy toward the abstract ideas that characterize privileged situations, finding it pointless to differentiate between them. Roquentin, excited at her description’s resemblance to his own struggles with adventure and existence, tells her everything he’s experienced.
After months of cataloging the strangest figures he sees in Bouville, Roquentin has finally found someone whose predicament perfectly mirrors his own. Anny’s concept of perfect situations cleaves to his theory of adventure in the sense that the irreversibility of time is an important component. Having aged, both Roquentin and Anny find the days blurring together without significance. More than ever, he seems to wonder if a partnership with Anny would ease his own Nausea.
Themes
Anny asks Roquentin what his reason for living is now, and he can only answer by telling her about the happiness music brings him. Anny admits that she copes by living in the past as much as possible, revising her memories to be perfect moments and reminiscing to pass the time. Still, she’s dissatisfied with this solution. Roquentin and Anny sit for a moment in silence before Anny directs Roquentin to leave. He offers to visit again tomorrow, but she declines. Anny kisses Roquentin one more time for memory’s sake. She pulls away and congratulates him for finally creating a perfect moment, then shuts the door on him.
Roquentin’s best solution to the Nausea is to live in the present, while Anny’s is to live in the past. All in all, Roquentin seems to be closer to a genuine breakthrough than Anny is. Still, she’s resigned to her life as it is. Unlike Roquentin, she doesn’t appear to have seriously entertained the possibility of rekindling their relationship. The failure of Roquentin’s efforts indicates that the solution to a meaningless life is not to hide in the embrace of another person; instead, one has to justify their existence independently.
Themes
