Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
Published 1938 · 196 pages · 84,365 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is Nausea to read?
Nausea scores 59 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 58 out of 100
- Sartre writes in precise philosophical French (translated into equally precise English), developing his existentialist vocabulary through Roquentin's observations. Terms like contingency and existence take on specific, technical weight.
- Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
- The diary format keeps sentences manageable, though Roquentin's philosophical passages can become dense and recursive as he circles around his insights. The prose style mirrors the journal's intimacy.
- Abstraction: 75 out of 100
- This is philosophy in fictional form. Roquentin's nausea is the physical sensation of confronting existence's meaninglessness. Readers must grapple with abstract concepts about being, contingency, and essence.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Long passages dissect single moments of perception or philosophical insight. The density is conceptual rather than narrative—a chestnut tree root can occupy pages of analysis.
- Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
- Roquentin records his experiences directly, but the meaning of those experiences requires interpretation. His nausea is literal, but what it represents must be inferred from his spiraling thoughts.
- Symbolic density: 65 out of 100
- Objects—the pebble, the chestnut root, the café mirror—become laden with existential significance. Sartre transforms ordinary things into symbols for the horror of pure existence.
- Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
- Roquentin takes his philosophical crisis with complete seriousness, and so does Sartre. There's no ironic undercutting of the existential project—the nausea is meant to be felt.
- Resolution withholding: 60 out of 100
- Roquentin glimpses a possible redemption in art, but Sartre leaves it uncertain whether this offers real escape from contingency. The ending suggests rather than resolves.
- Structural complexity: 52 out of 100
- The diary format provides chronological structure, but entries vary wildly in length and focus. The real structure is philosophical, tracking the development of Roquentin's existential awareness.
How Nausea is regarded
Nausea holds a literary regard score of 86 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.