47 pages • 1 hour read
Albert CamusThe Fall
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1956A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Epigraph
An epigraph is a short quotation at the beginning of a book or chapter that is intended to convey its themes. The Fall begins with an epigraph by Mikhail Lermontov commenting on his only novel, the 1839 A Hero of Our Time.
The Fall is an intentionally dense text. Its second-person narration is not common in fiction and often confuses readers. There is only one named character in the book, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, who delivers the narrative through seemingly disconnected anecdotes and monologues about human nature. Camus begins with an epigraph that hints at his intentions in order to help readers navigate the difficult text. A Hero of Our Time features an “immoral character” in its protagonist, Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin (1). Like Clamence, Pechorin treats women poorly and believes life is a game to dominate. The book’s title suggests Pechorin is a “hero,” and when it was published, readers bristled against seeing such a terrible man called a hero. Lermontov presents Pechorin as a mirror held up to the society of his time. He suggests that Pechorin is an accumulation of everything his society values. If Pechorin is a hero, Lermontov is not to blame; he is making observations of his surroundings as an author.
Camus uses this quote from Lermontov to show that Clamence is also a mirror for Camus’s audience and establish Clamence in the tradition of the literary antihero. Camus does not write Clamence’s views to endorse them but to explore what he sees as the “aggregate of vices of our whole generation” in the extreme (1). Camus then uses second-person narration to reinforce the epigraph’s claims. When Clamence addresses his friend as “you,” it is as if Clamence is speaking directly to the reader. Clamence’s residence in hell, where vices are at their most extreme, further reinforces his purpose as a mirror for an immoral society.
Irony
Irony is the contradiction between what one expects to happen in a situation and what does happen. This may also apply to speech where words that mean the opposite of what one wishes to convey are used while still conveying the original meaning. This is often done for humor, emphasis, or contradiction. Clamence’s description of the atomic bomb’s effect as “wonderful” is an example of irony. Clamence relies heavily on irony in his narration. He seems pleased to live on the site of “one of the greatest crimes in history” when explaining the ethnic cleansing of the Jewish Quarter in the Holocaust (11). This pleasure highlights the atrocity of the crime through irony, where the audience would expect Clamence to be saddened or repulsed. In another example of irony, Clamence is haunted daily by the death of the woman who drowned in the Seine River yet ends the novel claiming he wouldn’t save her if given a second chance because the water would be too cold.
Clamence’s use of irony reveals much about him as a character. He says he lived “on the surface of life, in the realm of words […], never in reality” before he spiraled into debauchery (50). While living on the “surface,” Clamence believed in virtue and meaning, which lead him to defend widows and orphans and give money to unhoused people. In Chapter 6, Clamence admits that “it’s very hard to disentangle the true from the false in what I’m saying” (119). Clamence believes reality is an ironic ambivalence, in which meaning isn’t where one expects it to be. Solely communicating through irony leaves Clamence’s friend without an “anchor” to decipher Clamence’s words. This overuse of irony makes Clamence’s speech absurd, which is a reflection of how he views “real life” under the “surface.” Camus uses irony as a kind of linguistic absurdity that destroys straightforward meaning.
Point of View
Point of view is the perspective from which a story is narrated. The Fall is narrated in first-person direct address. Clamence narrates his story using first-person nouns to his friend, addressed as “you.” Many of the events of the narrative have already happened, and Clamence is recounting them to a stranger. Camus chooses to deliver Clamence’s story in this way because it reflects Clamence’s need to dominate others. Clamence’s worldview revolves around domination, and he states that he engages in debauchery because it allows “the mind [to dominate] the whole past” (102). Clamence’s need to dominate the past is reflected in the style of narration because he has total control over how his story is told.
Clamence secures his hold over the past by narrating events that have already happened to a character who has no other source of information on these events. Clamence’s friend cannot verify Clamence’s information by asking anybody else. As such, Clamence sets himself up as the sole authority on the past events that have led to his revelations. Without a narrator to contradict him or other characters with different perspectives on the events, Clamence is allowed to control the presentation of everybody in his past. For example, the audience has no insight into who the concierge’s wife was or why she “shacked up” with a man who beat her after her husband’s death. Clamence uses this to prove that “nothing proves that they were not in love” (36). Clamence does not consider alternatives, such as the widow needing financial support after the death of her breadwinning husband, and the widow is not able to explain herself.
Clamence is the only named character within the novel. Clamence refers to others by descriptors: “friend,” “ape,” “blind man,” “yokel,” etc. Clamence does not name other characters because it would make them people instead of a supporting cast for his own story. Depriving the people in his story of their names allows Clamence to exist as the only person of importance. However, the lack of proper names presents Clamence’s experience as a lonely one. Even his friend in Amsterdam doesn’t have a name: He is only a “client” to Clamence in the end (141). Camus’s choice of narrative style, therefore, highlights Clamence’s egotistical outlook and alienation.
Related Titles
By Albert Camus
