The Fall by Albert Camus

“May I, Monsieur, offer my services without running the risk of intruding?” These are the opening words for Camus’ later work of 1956 – The Fall. It is Camus' last complete prose novel and narrated as an entire monologue somewhere in Amsterdam. In fact, from the beginning on the setting is just a frame, the real story is set among memories of a life and reported conversations. The narrator, a lawyer named Jean-Baptiste Clamence, starts his journey in Amsterdam, where the reader gets at first absorbed into his unselfishness, his self-confidence and eloquence. One has to say ‘at first’, because while following his monologues, Clamence is actually unreal and haunted by his inabilities. Every positive attribute in the beginning is turned around into a negative one; he slowly announces his vanity, his excessive way of life but also his inability to connect with others. It is at this time that Clamence cannot hamper the suicide of a young girl, because it would mean to get his own life at risk. Clamence is a hypocrite who is aware of his flaws, someone so deeply stuck in his own crisis that his way of dealing is to ignore and leave it. A blind person cannot watch the bowing gesture, only outsiders can. The whole monologue appears to be a confession, a confession of how we all make judgments and how wrong judgments can haunt our lives. The judging starts in the beginning with the Dutch bartender, whose accent he is teasing, then further the Dutch people, his home – the French and furthermore Parisians, the girl on the bridge, the motorcyclist he encounters and so forth. The list is endless, and the reason is very simple as Clamence finally declares himself that “People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.”

The act of falling becomes a reminder of the fall as a kind of judgement. It thus has not only a literal meaning but also a symbolical one. When the woman jumps off the bridge, the fall Clamence feels is his decision, his judgement not to help. In a wider frame, his decisions and impacts describe the Fall of Man. Evidently, Clamence ate the apple like Eve did once. And through this bite he gained too much knowledge and fell out of heaven. Yet, this falling is entirely self-inflicted, so we can say that Clamence fell out of heaven as a hypocrite. Most of the time, Clamence can cover up his flaw through eloquence of speech, but when it comes to action (e.g. the woman on the bridge), he appears to be frozen. Even though Clamence falls out off the society-frame, in this particular case, he cannot let himself fall far enough and actually do something about his situation. In the role as an observer, Clamence is at his very best, but when it comes to being human, he lacks empathy and – surprisingly – judgement. This is surprising because his job as a lawyer fundamentally deals with judgement. His personal court and ability to judge is focused on the outside world and not his own. This lawyer keeps life in a secret distance for a long time in the book and realises only in the end (and maybe too late) that he needs to make a final judgement about himself. The society he cares about does not equally care about him; the judges he commands are not there for his own sins and crimes.

It is what we call unfair, that some people are able to get away with everything, but in the end, their punishment is themselves. The saying, that real hell is in ourselves, becomes painfully true in the life that Clamence shows us. Near the end of the books, he owns a part of the Ghent Altarpiece, The Just Judges, reflecting ironically what he has been looking for all along: a just judge. Despite his careful observations, he was never able to find real justice. Jean-Baptiste is longing for someone who finally arrests him for one crime so that he can atone for all the others. With ‘arrest’ I do not necessarily mean to put him into prison, but rather to lecture Clamence. The society around him and even the reader is not a reliable just judge since they merely take in the information and let go of it. We are in the first stages like Clamence ourselves and are way too concerned with our lives. Camus thus opens a can of fundamental critic on society and questions social hierarchy. How objective is judiciary? Can we rely on one judgement? Is justice defined by punishment? Every reader must answer these questions alone first.

What services does Monsieur Clamence offer the readers in the end? The most striking feature of the novel is its singularity. It is a modern one-way, only one direction is given. The reader has to rely on Clamence, whose narcissistic behaviour actually reveals that we cannot rely on anything. It is the book next to Camus’ The Stranger where the main character is mute; his only speech resembles an echo of the talking around him. Eventually, Camus lets us take a look into the mirror: we are all like Clamence. It is this occupation of a judge that makes us human, but equally a threat to other people. The biggest lesson we can learn from Camus’ prose fiction is to let go and let ourselves fall – and so not to end like the lawyer Jean-Baptiste Clamence.

Svenja Schrahé

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