September 16, 2009
The Fall by Albert Camus is a clever, scathing, and chilling one-sided conversation between the reader and the narrator, Clamence, about the notion of justice. For there to be justice, there must be rules. But rules imposed from outside, societal dictates or religious dogma, ignore the individual, force him into a contorted shape, demand of him that he either choose the path of hypocrisy or of repression. Clamence, former lawyer, former respected man about town and man of good works, as well as former libertine and manipulator, chose the path of hypocrisy and was very successful at it, garnering praise and clients and standing. But that path led him to the night when he left a young woman to drown in the Seine. That night was her fall, and his fall, and from then on he began to be haunted by the sounds of laughter and the knowledge of his own self. He meted out his own justice, the exile to Amsterdam and endless self-examination. But can penance be made?
The Fall is a brilliant book about the rules that govern society, rules that are based on an assumption of the Fall of Man; we are born evil and must be contained and restrained. All precepts of what a civilization deems just, of what is allowed and what is banned, are tools used to control people; government and religion use their rules as a method to contain chaos and the ruled-over accept the mandate, because it spares them the trouble of thinking for themselves: "When one has no character, one has to apply a method." But the problem is that the method can be manipulated; a person who adheres to the rules can find, through hypocritical maneuvering (and through the power of money and prestige), that the rules can be bent, that appearances can be re-touched, and the rules imposed by society can be dodged. Once the dodge is begun, all actions become allowable, even walking away from a young lady on a bridge, hearing the sound of her body hit the water and her cries for help, and walking away, ignoring the reality, hiding from the papers and the truth of what has happened to her.
Societal proscriptions and religious rules are like the medieval form of punishment called "little-ease" described by Clamence: a person is placed within a cell that allows neither standing up nor laying down fully reclined; it is a torture that contorts, deforms, and proves guilt. "Every day through the unchanging restriction that stiffened his body, the condemned man learned that he was guilty and that innocence results in stretching joyously." But no one is innocent, or willing to take the responsibility to be so: there is no stretching in Clamence's world and there is no joy. Clamence believes that society constricts because we are guilty; we are enslaved by rules because we deserve to be, we want to be (like everyone else); and we want judgment to fall on those who cannot live by the rules, to boost ourselves but in reality, we are further enslaving ourselves.
Clamence describes himself as the judge-penitent: he has come to the point of understanding that he must determine, from within, the rules to live by, and then do penance -- living in Amsterdam? Spreading the word? Acknowledging his failure to save a life that night on the bridge in Paris? He longs for the night to happen again, to allow himself to do right this time round, but the novel ends with a bitter truth: he would not act differently. There is the rub: a man must not only determine his rules of what is allowable and what is not, but he must take the action to live according to his own determinations.
Clamence's penance and pain is that he knows he would not be strong enough a second time round: "A second time, what a risky suggestion!....We'd have to go through with it. Brr...! The water's so cold! But let's not worry! It's too late now. It will always be too late. Fortunately!" That "fortunately" is ironic and condemning. Man has fallen too far, the choice to take action is too difficult, and so we putter along, contained and deformed by rules that are easier to complain about or dodge than to enlighten and transform.
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