Lobster thoughts

I was just talking to a non-GBLS student about the interesting nature of Sartre’s existentialist text.  We reflected that it, like other existentialist works, is a highly personal and subjective account of the main character’s search for meaning and significance in the world.  In this way, Sartre’s diary format is so appropriate because it is so personal.  Instead of relying on external belief systems or philosophies to find meaning in the world he lives in, he finds significance (and/or exposes the insignificance) in the objects he encounters, the people he interacts with, and his perception of past events.  His narrative seems haphazard, nonlinear, almost insane — and yet, how much of our perception is really linear?  When you are inside a moment, you don’t notice everything, you don’t make connections to past events or ponder the implications of the things you see and do.  You’re focused on the physical world around you, on the conversation you’re having, on the random memories recalled by something that catches your attention.  Most of this happens in a random fashion as objects and people ebb in and out of our consciousness.  While Nausea is disconcerting to read, it is also true to life.  Part of its brilliance is that it puts into words a phenomenon that most of us are not aware of: the truly random nature of our own experience.  It is only afterwards, in retrospect, that we arrange the events of our lives into coherent stories, or find meaning in those events and reject others as meaningless.

 I found last week’s discussion really interesting because that, in a way, epitomized the random, fleeting nature of the text itself.  Different readers focused on different things and tried to form connections based on what they saw.  I focused on the main character’s personal life, his intimte (or not-so-intimate) encounters with the women in his life, his relationship withAnny, the woman of his memories who still haunts his thoughts.  Other people focused on the sensual data surrounding him: his reaction to soothing jazz music, his obsession with the texture of fine paper, his analysis of a stone.  Still others questioned his mental state.  Why did he react to people the way he did?  Why is he so dissatisfied, even disgusted, by what is around him?  Why does he accuse strangers of having “lobster thoughts”?  In this way, the text extends itself within our discussion by revealing our own existentialist grappling with (sur)reality as Sartre presents it.  Each of us found meaning in the text, not necessarily through outside agencies, but through our own perception of the objects, the people, the miscellany of life.

Cogito ergo es: I think, therefore you is.

I was thinking about the idea I was trying to express in class. The person exists, but the essence of that person only exists because of the interaction with others. The essence of that person becomes determined by others, which means that the”soul” of that person is completely subjective. A person who has their essence determined by others would, I think, be constantly looking out for what others think, and how they are perceived. This would mean that their notion of identity is determined by the ‘audience’ as well. So since all of these things that can be said to make up such a large part of our humanity are determined by others, how can we decide who we really are?

I think this is where I lose all grasp of what Sartre is trying to put across in Nausea. That we are only able to determine who we are in relation to others is a concept I can understand. Everything is relative, and there is so much in our lives that is only able to be understood by comparison to other things. Even when we look within ourselves to find meaning, we are comparing ourselves to others. But to say that our lives have no meaning without an audience is a concept that I have trouble with. I don’t feel I need to have others justify my existence.

Annaliese

Sartre & Nausea

Reading the first half of Nausea reminded me of the few instances in my life when my mind has been altered, through sleep deprivation or through substances.  The world takes on a different cast.  It can be either malevolent or blissful, but usually the former, full of grotesque shapes glimpsed through the corner of the eye, or ideas dawning not with the slow surety of a realization, but with the stab of fear that is paranoia.

I recognize the state that Nausea’s narrator is in.  I can appreciate it.  It is amazing, how well that feeling comes through, even though the text has been translated from another language.  Sartre succeeds in explaining something that is almost impossible to explain in words as you’re feeling it, much less through the written text of a novel.

Nausea’s unreliable narrator ambles through life, seeing human relationships, objects, other people and his own life from a skewed perspective.  Even his memories of the past can’t be trusted; “My memories are like the coins in the devil’s purse: when it was opened, nothing was found in it but dead leaves.”  The narrator admits that his interpretation of the world is insubstantial, not to be trusted.  What, then, can we infer of his reality?

To paraphrase what was said in last night’s discussion, with modernity came the idea that reality is subjective, flexible, that one’s experiences were not solid, unalterable truth but instead open to a variety of interpretations.  This “modern” awareness of the world is both comforting and terrifying.  It is positive in the sense that one is free to shape his or her own reality, without limitation, with or without the sanction of the outside world.  But that is also what is so frightening about it.  Where, when, do we stop?  How can we ever trust that anything is real?  How is it possible to make judgments about anything, to know anything, when the basis of those judgments might well be as slippery and unreliable as our memory?

In some ways, this view of human lives gives dignity and importance to the experiences of the individual.  It means that one does not have to use the yardstick of any particular arbitrary standard or canon or “expert opinion” to validate and qualify his or her own existence.  This is freeing.  I think, as well, this is something we all take for granted as inhabitants of a truly modern age.  And yet, it makes the world such a precarious place to be.  It means that, when we are stumbling around in a nauseated haze, like Sartre’s protagonist, there will be nothing solid to grab hold of, no anchor.

– Aly