Abstract
This research paper, in a close textual reading, investigates Jean
Rhys‟ Good Morning, Midnight in light of Jean-Paul Sartre‟s The Nausea. Both
novels in their respective ways attempt to explore the nature of existence before
the catastrophic war. In both novels, an atmosphere of fear, loneliness, despair,
anguish, viscosity and nothingness occupies the reader‟s imagination. Sasha, the
central character of Good Morning, Midnight, is no Faustian character but she
suffers patiently and endures on a grand scale. The social world denounces her
in cold blood when she was heartlessly abandoned by her husband in Paris. She
felt her womanhood shamelessly abused and her status as an individual denied
her. She believes that suffering is the result of an unjust social and political
system. Sasha seems to have gone beyond repair; she fails to find any satisfying
means to resurrect herself from the damage done to her. Nevertheless, in the
midst of large-scaled moral indifference and coldness of the world, her faith in
humanity is reaffirmed. In The Nausea, Roquentin is not presented as a character
caught up in the web of domesticity and traditional family relations. He belongs
to the line of seekers who attempt to explore the enigma of existence. Roquentin
sets before himself a self-appointed task of philosophizing over the nature of
things and existence. His philosophical wanderings yield a vision of humanity in
the end. He undertakes to write a novel to „make people ashamed of their
existence‟
Sajjad Ali Khan. (2020) Literature of Pre-war Mentality and Existential Crisis: A Study of Rhys’ Good Morning, Midnight in Light of Sartre’s The Nausea, Journal of the Research Society of Pakistan, Volume 57, Issue 1.
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