Existentialism and Thomism by Joseph C. Mihalich

Author:Joseph C. Mihalich [Mihalich, Joseph C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2013-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

The function of mood in cognition plays an equally important role in Roquentin’s final visit to his cafe before leaving Bouville, the small town in which he lived for three years colored by the experience of the Nausea. On previous occasions when the Nausea visited him in the cafe, Roquentin derived some measure of relief from listening to a recording of the song Some of These Days. He found the song brought a sense of warmth and happiness, and felt the Nausea vanish as the music “crushed our miserable time against the walls.” On his final visit his last act is to request the waitress to play the recording once more, and he lingers to listen to the number again—“for the last time.” As he listens he makes perhaps the climactic decision of his life, a decision forced by his solution of the Nausea and the new insights it presses upon him. He perceives that the singer of the song and its author share in the song’s eternal potential to convey meaning, and escape thereby the “drowning in existence” that is the fate of the non-creative. Their individual existence is no longer wholly meaningless but is at least partially justified—“not completely, of course, but as much as any man can....” Roquentin sees in this a glimmer of hope, a possibility for his own escape from the stark inevitability of being.

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