What is the motivation of the character in the novel Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre?

Question

Motivation is the reason or reasons for engaging in a particular behavior, especially human behavior

Answer 1

Nausea.

Answer 2

He is fundamentally stifled by what he accounts for modern existence.  He is disgusted by his own intellectual pretension yet, at the same time he cannot tolerate what he believes to be the hypocrisy of so-called happy society.  He is inspired by profound apathy towards suffering and yet suffers himself from such immense self-pity that he is unable to function.  If you are looking for single word answers I believe hypocrisy and emptiness should suffice, but he really finds the whole world to be spinning out of control--certainly out of his own control and therefore, being as self-absorbed as he is, he points his finger way beyond himself and imagines his ideas are the rotting root core of the dying human spirit.

Answer 3

Disgust.