Antoine Roquentin
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Antoine Roquentin is a fictional character and protagonist of the novel Nausea by Sartre. He is a former adventurer who has been living in Bouville for three years. Antoine does not keep in touch with family, nor has any friends. He is a loner at heart and often likes to listen to other people's conversations and examine their actions. When asked by a man to accompany him for lunch, the protagonist agrees, only to write in his diary later that: "I had as much desire to eat with him as I had to hang myself." He is unemployed, but spends a lot of his time writing a book about a French politician of the eighteenth century. Antoine does not think too highly of himself: "The faces of others have some sense, some direction. Not mine. I cannot even decide whether it is handsome or ugly. I think it is ugly because I have been told so." When he starts suffering from the Nausea he feels the need to talk to Anny, but ultimately decides against telling her anything about it. He eventually starts to think he does not even exist: "My existence was beginning to cause me some concern. Was I a mere figment of the imagination?"
