Albert Camus’ The Fall.
Getting on and off a Guilt-Trip:
Morality in an Amoral Universe.
Burton Weltman
“It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth
– in other words, to silence”
Albert Camus.
Precis: Making a Longish Story Short.
Albert Camus’ novel The Fall is a book about guilt, shame, responsibility, and whether it is possible to live a moral life in what is arguably an amoral universe. First published in 1956, the book focuses on one of the most difficult of moral problems: The harm that we unintentionally do to others, either out of indifference or in the name of helping them. Not viciousness but callousness. Not maliciousness but self-righteousness. And despite our best intentions, selfishness and self-interest are at the root of most evil. The book contains a message about the dangers of nihilism and authoritarianism, the importance of distinguishing guilt and responsibility, and the virtues of empathy, solidarity and responsibility, that is very relevant to our times.
The Fall dramatizes some of the moral consequences of Camus’ philosophy of the absurd that he articulated in philosophical treatises The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) and The Rebel (1951). The absurd,” Camus explained “is born of the confrontation between the human need [for reason and meaning] and the unreasonable silence of the world.”[1] It is absurd, he claimed, to look for meaning in the universe but that doesn’t stop us from trying. We can’t help it. We are made that way. Humans are reasoning beings who cannot help but try to find meaning in the universe. But that does not mean that meaning is really there to be found. In this context, Camus contends that traditional moral philosophies which vainly try to find eternal moral truths through reasoning are exercises in absurdity. So, what is a person to do?
Enmeshed in absurdity, Camus proposes that human life is valuable to the extent that we continually rebel against both meaninglessness and meaning, and is moral to the extent that we act in solidarity with each other. The honest person, what Camus calls the “absurd man,” sees through the meanings he finds and rejects them one by one as meaningless, even as he finds more. It is a Sisyphean enterprise.
Meaning and meaninglessness, solidarity and self-centeredness, are in constant contradiction in ourselves and in our world, and we must live with this tension if we don’t want to fall into a fatalistic nihilism – all is selfishness and anything goes – that could descend into an oppressive totalitarianism – all must do what they are told in the name of law and order. Nihilism and totalitarianism are the extremes that Camus rejects in favor of a moral practice based on empathy, responsibility, solidarity, and a militantly modest and moderate permanent rebellion.[2]
There are two characters in The Fall, a main character who goes by the name of Jean Baptist Clamence and who does all the talking, and a second unnamed character (hereafter the Listener) who is totally silent and just listens to Clamence. In a prolonged diatribe, Clamence insists that we live in a fallen universe embedded with evil, and that humans are fallen and inherently immoral beings. He is a self-styled prophet of universal guilt – that is, that we are all of us guilty all of the time. Moral codes, he claims, are a sham and when people claim to follow a moral code, they are invariably hypocritical.
Clamence contends that self-interest and selfishness prevail everywhere, and harm is inevitably done to others out of inattention, inaction and indifference even when it is not done intentionally. He makes no difference between intentional harm and unintentional harm. They are both evil. And given the interconnectedness of everyone and everything, Clamence insists, it is impossible to live without harming others and so, he contends, we are all of us inveterate evil-doers whether we intend it or not. Nihilism, Clamence concludes, is the logical illogic of reality. In a meaningless universe, anything goes, and usually goes wrong.
Most interpreters claim that Clamence is speaking for Camus. They contend that he represents Camus’ absurdist philosophy as it is articulated in The Myth of Sisyphus. That book deals for the most part with the effect of absurdity on the individual person, and whether there is any reason to live. The book opens with the famous line “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”[3] Camus essentially resolves that problem by concluding that if there is no reason to live, there is also no reason to die, so we might as well live on. That is essentially Clamence’s view but he also adds to it that life is one long guilt trip, and that we are and should feel guilty all of the time, a view that most interpreters of The Fall attribute to Camus. I don’t agree.
Most interpreters of The Fall also claim that Clamence is the central character in the book since he does all the talking. And most of them also imply that even though there is a second, albeit silent, character in the story, Clamence is somehow speaking directly to us, the readers. We are supposedly his audience. Again, I don’t agree.
I think that The Fall is better seen as a dramatization of some of the main themes in The Rebel. Suicide is the central problem in The Myth of Sisyphus. Murder is the central problem in The Rebel. In a meaningless universe, how can we live together and how can we combat evil without murdering each other? Empathy, solidarity, and responsibility are essentially Camus’ answer.
Contrary to Clamence, Camus sees the universe as amoral and not immoral. He contends that while in the absence of an authoritative God everything is permitted, that doesn’t mean nothing is prohibited and that there is no morality. Morality is what we humans make of it, with an emphasis on “we” as the starting point. Whereas Clamence is an individualist and is obsessed with his own private vendetta against humanity and the universe, Camus’ emphasis is socialistic. “I rebel therefore we exist,” he insists. Human solidarity is the source of value in life and a way to overcome self-centered selfishness. Given Clamence’s professed nihilism, rather than speaking for Camus, I think that Clamence is an example of the extremism that Camus rejects.
Clamence is on a guilt trip that he wants everyone to join. It is the sort of thing that Camus repeatedly rejected. Camus promoted the idea of universal responsibility, which means that we are all responsible all of the time, individually and jointly, but not guilty. Camus repeatedly insisted that “There may be responsible persons, but there are no guilty ones.” Guilt is remorse over a past act that is over and done with and about which nothing can be done except feel bad. Responsibility is an ongoing process that extends action from the past into the present and projects itself into the future. If what we have done has been wrong, we must try to fix it. We must do what we can whenever we can, but not feel guilty if we can’t do everything.[4]
I agree with the reviewer who described The Fall as follows: “the thesis of this philosophical novel in one sentence: We are all responsible for everything.” I disagree, however, with that reviewer’s claim that Clamence represents this thesis in what he says and says he has done.[5] I contend that it is the behavior of the Listener, who sympathetically listens to Clamence’s diatribe – his litany of harms that he has unintentionally done to others for the most part out of indifference – that represents Camus’ idea of responsibility.
The Listener accepts responsibility for Clamence’s anguish with a sympathetic silence, demonstrating to Clamence a form of clemency, even though he does not express agreement with Clamence’s nihilism. For these reasons, I contend that while Clemence is the main character in the book, the Listener is the central character around whom everything revolves and who speaks for Camus in his silence.
In sum, I think that Camus’ answer to Clamence’s challenge as to how one can be moral in an amoral or even immoral world is empathy. The Listener personifies empathy, an empathy that comes from the recognition that we are all responsible for everything and that genuine confession is a matter of assuming responsibility and not guilt.
Prologue: A Moral Morass.
The title of The Fall (La Chute in French) is a multiple-entendre, referring, among other things, to Satan’s fall from heaven, Adam’s fall from the Garden of Eden, and the fall of Clamence from a position of high repute and professional success to a life of shame and dissolution. It also refers to a woman falling from a bridge into the Seine River, which event seemingly precipitated a moral crisis in Clamence and led to his own descent. The French word “chute” means fall but also downfall. Falling and downfalling are central metaphors in the book.
The Fall is an intriguing book and, for a philosophical novel, a page-turner. The book tells the story of a retired lawyer who calls himself Jean-Baptist Clamence. Clamence is a self-described fallen man who has seemingly done something so bad that it has ruined his life. The book consists of Clamence’s recounting of his life story with a host of philosophical implications. The Fall is a highly regarded book in the canon of Camus’ works. It has been heralded as “Camus’ chef d’oeuvre” and described by Jean-Paul Sartre as Camus’ “most beautiful” book. But it is also, according to Sartre, “the least understood” of Camus’ works.[6]
The Fall is a sparse book. It has only two characters and no action. It is all talking and Clamence does all the talking. The other character, an unnamed man whom Clamence meets by chance in a bar, and whom I call the Listener, does virtually nothing. Over the course some one hundred fifty pages, Clamence holds forth in a monologue to the Listener who utters not one word. A difficulty of The Fall arises, I think, in large part from its unusual format – a monologue overheard by the reader in which one character, Clamence, speaks to another character, the Listener, who never speaks at all. Many readers misinterpret the monologue as being addressed to the readers, instead of to the Listener. Another difficulty of the book is the complex moral questions it poses. These are, at the same time, its most interesting features.
Clamence tells a highly emotional story, and in telling it and pleading with the Listener for understanding, he professes a negativistic philosophy of life and nihilistic view of morality. His negativism is based on his contention that we are all of us guilty of immorality all of the time. Citing his own life as an example, Clamence insists that philosophies and pretenses of morality are merely covers for immorality, and that the idea of a moral life is a contradiction in terms.
Clamence’s diatribe is complicated and convoluted. Cutting through his overwrought rhetoric, I think that at least two key moral questions arise out of Clamence’s narrative. The first is whether and how one can live a moral life in a universe full of evil. We live in a world in which evil doers routinely inflict unmerited suffering and death on people. As Clamence poses the problem, if we want to live moral lives, we must do all we can to eliminate evil. Morality requires zero tolerance for the suffering of others. We must not only not profit from others’ suffering, we must not tolerate it. We must not live at ease while others are suffering and dying.
In this context, Clamence contends, inaction is itself evil. We are effectively accomplices in any evil that occurs anywhere and anytime if we have not given our all toward eliminating it. And giving your all means dying for the cause. Dying for the cause is the only moral act. If we are alive and well, we are, in effect, guilty of at least tolerating the suffering and death of others. We are also almost certainly contributing to evil in the world because of the interrelatedness of all things. Only by dying can we demonstrate our moral commitment to eliminating evil and, thereby, also eliminate the evil we inevitably inflict on others just by living. Living, in Clamence’s telling, is inherently immoral, and a moral life is seemingly impossible.
The second question is whether and how one can live a moral life when self-interest seems to permeate everything we do. Clamence claims that everything we choose to do is a function of self-interest. If we chose to do a thing, that thing is, by definition, something in which we are interested, which is why we choosing it. Selfishness and self-interest underlie even the most seemingly selfless acts if we have chosen to do those acts, because then we are only doing what we ourselves want to do. Slavery, Clamence contends, which means doing only what others make you do, is the only way to avoid selfishness. In Clamence’s telling, selflessness is a contradiction in terms, selfishness pervades everything, and a moral life is seemingly impossible.
These are tough questions and the format of The Fall adds to the difficulty of fathoming them. The format may itself also be a source of misunderstanding to readers. In this book, unlike in most monologues, the speaker is talking to someone else in the story and not directly to us, the readers. This makes the book different than Camus’ earlier novel The Stranger (1942), which is a sustained monologue in which the speaker addresses the reader.
In The Stranger, the main character, Merseault, is talking directly to us, the readers. In The Fall, the main character, Clamence, is talking to a second person, the unnamed and unheard Listener. We readers are overhearing their conversation. In most interpretations of the book, Clamence is seen as the central character and a spokesperson for Camus’ existentialist and absurdist philosophy. I disagree. And I think this conventional interpretation is a misreading that is in part based on a misunderstanding of the book’s format.
Most interpretations of The Fall ignore or dismiss the role of the Listener and assume that Clamence is effectively talking to us, the readers.[7] But Clamence is not talking to us and it makes a difference. Camus knew how to write a monologue addressed to the reader. He did it in The Stranger. So, he must have had something in mind by inserting into The Fall a second person with whom the main character is talking and pleading.
I suggest that what Camus had in mind was that the Listener is the central character in the book and that his silence suggests a nuanced answer to the moral questions posed by the book, an answer very different than the extreme negativism promoted by Clamence. In short, the Listener does not fall for the nihilistic arguments of Clamence and his empathetic silence, unlike the silent indifference of the universe, is telling.
Camus and Silence: Ivan Karamazov and the Grand Inquisitor.
Silence plays a big part in many of Camus’ works. Camus’ father died during World War I when Camus was just a child and his mother was deaf. As a result, Camus lived most of his youth surrounded by the sounds of silence. There are many different kinds of silence. There is the silence of ignorance. The silence of indifference. Silence as assent. Silence as dissent. Scornful silence. Supercilious silence. And, silence of support. Camus used all of these in his writings. The silence of the Listener in The Fall parallels the silence of Jesus in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov. It is a book that Camus repeatedly returned to in his writings, particularly to both the character Ivan Karamazov, whom Camus considered a pioneer of absurdist philosophy, and a chapter in the book called the “Grand Inquisitor.”
In the chapter on the “Grand Inquisitor,” Ivan Karamazov recounts to his younger brother Alyosha a parable about Jesus returning to earth in the midst of the medieval Spanish Inquisition. Ivan is an atheistic intellectual who is looking for rhyme and reason in the universe, but finding only meaningless brutality. Alyosha is a novice and naïve monk. In Ivan’s story, Jesus wanders about preaching His message of salvation through faith and love, and performing a few miracles. Jesus is duly arrested for disturbing the peace and taken to be interrogated by the Grand Inquisitor. The chapter consists of a long monologue on the part of the Inquisitor, during which Jesus says nothing despite being asked to respond and encouraged to admit His failings. Jesus’ failing, according to the Grand Inquisitor, is his inveterate humility.
The Inquisitor chastises Jesus for rejecting the three temptations to earthly power that he had been offered by Satan in the desert. If He had accepted them, He could have become the dictator of the world, which is what the Catholic Church had been attempting to do ever since. Alluding to the original sin of Adam, The Inquisitor complains that “Man was made a rebel; but can rebels be happy?” The answer, he insists, is “No” and, therefore, people must be enslaved, while thinking that they are free, in order to relieve them of the responsibility for making moral choices. Responsibility is a burden. Freedom from responsibility will make people happy.
The Inquisitor explains that enslaving people and relieving them of moral choices is what the Church has been attempting to do in Jesus’ name since His death, even though Jesus preached and practiced just the opposite. And that is why the Inquisitor wants Jesus to leave and never come back again. When the Inquisitor finishes, Jesus continues his silence, but then kisses the Inquisitor and leaves. And, Ivan concludes, He hasn’t been heard from since.[8] Ivan’s response to the silence of Jesus is scornful, but I think one can also see His silence as empathetic and understanding of the Inquisitor, even if He disagrees with him. It is the same, I think, with the Listener in The Fall.
The theories and practices of the Inquisitor represented for Camus the epitome of that which he opposed. Camus inveighed against “would be Caesars” who espoused a “despairing nihilism” and took advantage of people’s weaknesses to control them. Referring to Dostoevsky’s novel, Camus complained that “These are the Grand Inquisitor who imprisons Christ and tells Him that His method [of love] is not correct, that universal happiness cannot be achieved by the freedom of choosing between good and evil, but by the domination and unification of the world.”[9]
In The Fall, Clamence represents the nihilism and will-to-power over others that Camus abhors. At the same time, Camus portrays in the story an empathetic Listener whose silence compares with that of Jesus in Dostoevsky’s chapter on the Grand Inquisitor. Just as in The Fall, Dostoevsky raises questions in his novel about whether and how one can be moral in a world steeped in evil. Dostoevsky was a devout Christian and apparently found answers to these questions in God. Camus was a non-believer who found solace in human solidarity.
The Plot(s): Circles Within Circles.
There is virtually no action in The Fall. The story takes place over five days during which the characters meet in a bar in the red-light district of Amsterdam and elsewhere in and around the city. In the course of the book, Clamence regales the Listener with tales of his fall from grace to damnation. The “action” consists of Clamence talking, telling what he claims is his life story, with the Listener seemingly making an occasional gesture, and possibly uttering an occasional word that is not recorded in the book, to which Clamence reacts in the course of his monologue. That’s the plot of Camus’s story.
The plot of Clamence’s story is in the form of a confession of all the immoral things he has done and of which he is supposedly ashamed. They are not intentional harms that he has inflicted on others but unintentional byproducts of acting selfishly. His story is a sustained guilt trip of selfishness. The plot or plan which underlies Clamence’s story consists of his effort to get the Listener to join him on his guilt trip. It is important to distinguish between Clamence’s life story, which he strategically reveals in bits and pieces over the course of the five days, and Clamence’s plot, which is to seduce the silent Listener into admitting his own guilt. Clamence’s goal is for the Listener to come to see himself as an evil person, be ashamed of himself, and admit it. That way, Clamence later admits, Clamence can feel superior to the Listener and less ashamed of himself. He wants most of all to avoid being judged, and so he wants to be able to judge others instead. That’s his plan.
Clamence’s life story is strategically told to induce the Listener to admit to a guilty conscience. The story proceeds in stages, some of which are not consistent with each other except in their intent to sway the Listener. Clamence says that he is a lawyer and that seems evident in his adopting a shifty defense lawyer’s tactic of saying whatever might be convincing at any point in time even if it is inconsistent with what he has said before. Many interpreters of the book take what Clamence says at face value as what actually occurred in his life.[10] But his repeated admission that he is an unreliable narrator prevent both the Listener and we readers from knowing whether anything Clamence says happened actually did happen.
Clamence admits that “It’s very hard to disentangle the true from the false in what I am saying.” But it doesn’t matter, he claims, because “Lies eventually lead to the truth…So what does it matter whether they are true or false?”[11] That’s Clamence’s plot: to say whatever he must in order to get at what he thinks is the truth of the Listener’s sins, and get the Listener to admit it. Everything Clamence says is centered around persuading the Listener, who is thereby the central character in the book. But Clamence’s plot fails. The Listener patiently listens for five days, seemingly sympathetic and even empathetic with Clamence’s anguish, but he leaves unpersuaded, undaunted and unbowed. And that’s why I think he is the hero of the book.
Clamence’s Story: What a Tangled Web.
As Clamence tells it, his life story is of a seemingly virtuous and successful man who does a very bad thing which leads to his downfall. For the first half of the book, Clamence hedges around what this bad thing is, but then, exactly half-way through the book, he describes the event. He says that he was walking one evening across a bridge over the Seine River in Paris. “On the bridge I passed behind a figure leaning over the railing and seeming to stare at the river.” When he had walked on for another fifty yards, he heard the loud splash of a body hitting the water and then “a cry repeated several times.” He thought “Too late, too far” and went on home, informing no one and avoiding the newspapers for several days thereafter.[12]
Clamence’s failure to act, even though it is not clear that he could have done anything to save the woman or even that the woman actually drowned, is the turning point in his life, leading him to question and disparage everything he has done or thought before. It is seemingly not so much what he could have done as what he felt at the time that most bothers him. He was apparently feeling tired and didn’t want to be bothered, let alone take some risk in trying to get the woman out of the river. Callous and cowardly seems to be his judgment of himself. He says that he has never stopped feeling shame for apparently letting that woman drown when he might possibly have saved her. And it is seemingly on the basis of this event that he eventually comes to the conclusion that all and everyone is evil in the world, whatever the pretenses.
Clamence’s name is symbolically ironic. He says that it is Jean-Baptist Clamence, though he admits at one point in his story that he has gone by other names as well.[13] Clamence is one letter off from “clemence,” which is the French word for clemency. Jean-Baptist is French for John the Baptist, the Biblical saint who dispensed clemency through the cleansing process of baptism. Clamence is not dispensing clemency. To the contrary, he is engaged in trying to convince the Listener and probably many similar listeners before him of their guilt and shame.
At the end of the book, Clamence describes his strategy: “I accuse myself up and down…I adapt my words to my listener and lead him to go me one better.”[14] Clamence seems to be like the Ancient Mariner who is compulsively compelled to repeat his tale of woe, albeit instead of carrying a dead albatross on his shoulders, Clamence carries a dead woman in his conscience. He says that getting others to admit their sins makes him feel better about his own.
In his fulmination against himself and humanity, Clamence effectively makes a mockery of the three main traditions of Western moral philosophy – deontology, virtue ethics, and utilitarianism. His arguments and examples undermine their underpinnings. Deontology is a rule-based moral tradition. It insists that people follow a set of moral rules such as the Old Testament’s Ten Commandments, the New Testament’s command to give your wealth to the poor, or Kant’s Categorical Imperative to do only what you would have everyone do.
Virtue ethics is a character-based moral doctrine. It promotes the cultivation of moral character traits such as truthfulness, selflessness, sincerity, and generosity, and is associated with Aristotle. Utilitarianism is a result-based moral precept. It contends that one should do that which will result in the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Jeremy Bentham was a leading utilitarian. Implicit in Clamence’s narrative is a rejection of each of these moral traditions. Implicit in the Listener’s silence is, I believe, sympathy with Clamence’s rejection of traditional moral philosophy, which reflects Camus’ views, but not an acceptance of Clamence’s nihilism.
The Stages of Clamence’s Descent and Lament.
Clamence’s attempted seduction of the Listener proceeds in what can be seen as six stages over the five days of the story, with each stage more vehement and pathetic than the last. His diatribe constitutes a series of guilt-trips, ego-trips, power-trips, shaming, and shamming in an ultimately fruitless effort to get the Listener to spill his own guts and open up his own bag of sins.
In the first stage, shortly after they have met, Clamence tries a simple shaming technique on the Listener by asking him whether the Listener has given up all his possessions to the poor, claiming that he has done so himself. The implication is that a good man would follow Jesus’ command to sacrifice oneself for others. “I possess nothing,” Clamence proclaims.[15] This is a lie, as we later find out that Clamence has a nice home and lots of nice things. But it is an example of the mind games that Clamence intends to play on the Listener, and a lie that Clamence would contend is in pursuit of the truth and is, therefore, acceptable. In any case, the Listener apparently shakes his head “No,” meaning that he hasn’t given his all to the poor, but he does not rise to the bait of either condemning or defending himself.
This leads to the second stage of Clamence’s attempted seduction on the same day. In this stage, he portrays himself as someone who has inconspicuously practiced every virtue. As a lawyer, “I never charged the poor a fee and never boasted of it,” he claims. “I loved to help blind people cross streets,” he says, because they could not see who was helping them so that he was an anonymous do-gooder.[16]
But then Clamence turns the argument against himself, claiming that his virtuous behavior was really an ego-trip. “I needed to feel above” everyone else, and doing anonymous acts of supposed virtue gave him this feeling of superiority. Everyone looked up to him and “I looked upon myself as something of a superman.”[17] He concludes this argument with the contention that you “can’t love without self-love,” that selflessness is really selfishness. Having tainted virtue with vice, he seemingly hopes to provoke a response and a mea culpa from the Listener, but none comes.[18]
So, the next day, Clamence launches a tirade against virtue as a power-trip, seemingly trying to get the Listener to admit to his own lust for power. Clamence claims that “one can’t get along without domineering or being served. Every man needs slaves as he needs fresh air.”[19] Love is domination, he insists, and virtue a means of control. “When I was concerned with others, I was so out of pure condescension,” he confesses.[20] “Power,” he declaims, “settles everything,”[21] He seems to hope that this will provoke a response from the Listener. It doesn’t and, frustrated with what he calls the Listener’s “polite silence,” Clamence pleads with him “But just think of your life, mon cher compatriot.” To no avail. The Listener says nothing, but he returns the next day.
Shifting tactics somewhat the next day, Clamence tries to induce the Listener into admitting that everyone who pretends to virtue is a hypocrite We are all in the business of judging others, he claims, and “People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.”[22] With respect to their own misdeeds, people want to believe that they were the result of “unfortunate circumstances” and not their own character flaws or selfish choices.[23]
In his own case, Clamence claims, “modesty helped me to shame, humility to conquer, and virtue to oppress.” He practiced hypocrisy as a way of life and “brought out the fundamental duplicity of the human being” in others [24] A false and fallen angel himself, he was only doing what everyone does. In the end, Clamence concludes, “I have no more friends: I have nothing but accomplices” in the business of hypocrisy. “And,” he taunts the Listener, “you first of all.”[25] But the Listener does not take the bait. He admits nothing, but again comes back the next day.
The following day, Clamence pulls out what he seems to think is his best argument. This should be the clincher that the Listener cannot ignore. He insists that it is impossible to live a moral life by living as you would have others live because living is itself an immoral act. Living in the face of others’ deaths is inherently immoral and in living, we are effectively guilty of murder. We are, in addition, guilty not only of our own crimes in living but also the crimes of others. “Every man testifies to the crimes of all the others,” Clamence declares, and “we can state with certainty the guilt of all.”[26] The Listener takes this in and seemingly does not disagree, but neither does he agree or denounce himself. And he returns for one more day.
On the last day, Clamence resorts to his most pathetic argument, a warped form of utilitarianism. He describes his experience in a German POW camp during World War II, having been captured while trying to flee France to safety abroad. A self-confessed coward, he describes how he became the informal head of a group of prisoners, the “Pope of the prison camp,” and was given the power to dole out supplies. He admits that he gave himself a larger share of the supplies and even drank the water of a dying man. His rationale for this behavior was that he was needed by the other prisoners and so his first duty was to save himself.[27]
But then Clamence reverses course again, denounces this explanation as a rationalization of his selfishness, and makes his final plea to the Listener. He explains to the Listener how he has been trying to seduce him into confessing his own sins. It’s a method he has apparently used on many others. Describing the method, Clamence says that he starts by “saying ‘I was the lowest of the low.’ Then imperceptibly I pass from the ‘I’ to the ‘we,” and then “I provoke you into judging yourself.”[28] He corrals his listeners into identifying with him and then when he denounces himself, he gets them to denounce themselves. But it hasn’t worked with the Listener.
Clamence closes his monologue with a plaintive plea to the Listener to confess. The Listener remains silent. So, Clamence pleads that the Listener should at least “Admit, however, that you feel less pleased with yourself than you felt five days ago.” The Listener still says nothing. Clamence concludes with a pathetic challenge. “Now I shall wait for you to write me or come back. For you will come back, I am sure.”[29] Still no response. Piteously, Clamence can’t let go. “Say now that you are going to talk to me about yourself,” he whines. No response.
In his final words, Clamence wishes that he could go back to that fateful evening and have once again the choice to try to save the woman. But he no sooner wishes for that opportunity for redemption than he cynically dismisses it. “Brr…!,” he complains as he imagines the scene, “The water’s so cold! But let’s not worry! It’s too late now. It will always be too late. Fortunately!”[30] There is no redemption and Clamence is grateful for that because undergoing redemption would be so hard. He would rather be damned, or so he says.
Confession without Contrition: Universal Guilt v. Universal Responsibility.
Camus was raised as a Catholic and although he left the Church, he operated intellectually to a large extent within a Catholic framework. His interest in confession, which is the form of both The Stranger and The Fall, is an example. However, although Clamence’s monologue is in the form of a confession – he characterizes it as such – it is actually nothing of the sort. He even confides at one point that the “authors of confessions write especially to avoid confessing,” and that seems to go for him too.[31]
For Catholics, confession is the prelude to penance and restitution, and to reconciliation with oneself and the world. Clamence specifically rejects this process. His goal is to admit to anything and everything bad that he can think of in order to put himself out of reach of any penance and reconciliation, and in order to induce others to admit to their guilty actions.
Clamence is mired in what Jean-Paul Sartre would call “bad faith.” He doesn’t want forgiveness from others or from himself because that would leave him in the position of having to make new moral choices. He wants to plead guilty continuously so that he won’t have to face up to those choices and take responsibility for them. In the course of his rantings, Clamence admits to ever more heinous thoughts and actions, amassing an ever-increasing debt of guilt. This leaves an impression with the reader that he may be making most or even all of it up as a means of trying to manipulate the Listener, and Clamence even admits that he is making up at least some of it.[32]
So, it could be that Clamence’s so-called confession is all a lie, but if it is, it is a lie based on an undeniable underlying truth that there is evil in the world, and that most of us ignore most of it most of the time. In proclaiming himself guilty for ostensibly having let a young woman die without trying to help her, Clamence may be just inventing what he conceives of as an extreme example of evil so as to highlight the general problem. But whether he is lying or not, we are still left with the problem of evil in the world, and whether and how we can live moral lives in a world full of evil.
Clamence thinks we can’t. He believes in what could be called “universal guilt,” which is that we are all guilty all of the time. Given our chronic guilt, we must, in turn, live with perpetually guilty consciences and continuous judgments of guilt from others and from ourselves. In this view, the human condition is a piteous situation. Most reviewers seem to take Clamence’s lament at face value as expressing Camus’ views.[33] I disagree.
Camus holds to what could be called “universal responsibility,” which means that we are responsible for everything, which means that we cannot sit around wallowing in guilt like Clamence does when we fail and fall. We must pick ourselves up and get on with the next thing, which is what Dr. Rieux, the hero of Camus’ novel The Plague, does. Faced with an impossible situation, an unstoppable and untreatable plague that is decimating the population, he continues to do what he can to help people. But what comparable does the Listener do in The Fall?
I think the Listener does two important things. First, he comes back every day for five days to hear Clamence out until Clamence is finished. Second, he thereafter leaves and apparently gets on with his life. Whereas Clamence is guilty of “bad faith,” I think the Listener should be credited with good faith as an empathetic listener to Clamence’s tale of woe, and as someone who is then literally ready to get up and get on with things. That he is silent throughout is not an abdication of responsibility. Having encountered Clamence in a bar, the Listener accepts responsibility for emotionally supporting Clamence even if he disagrees with Clamence’s conclusions. The Listener’s actions are an example of the human solidarity that Camus promotes.
The moral and morale support which I think Camus ascribes to the Listener in The Fall is a key to Camus’ moral philosophy. As Camus explains in his treatises The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel, and portrays in his novels The Stranger, The Plague, and, I contend, in The Fall, Camus believes that the indifference of the universe and the hostility of others can be overcome through acts of solidarity with others and a commitment to living with them in what could be called a caring community.
Camus’ Theory of Rebellion and Solidarity: All or Nothing v. All for One and One for All.
Camus’ The Rebel is an exploration of extremism and an exhortation to rebellion as an alternative to nihilism and totalitarianism, and human solidarity as an alternative to the reasonings of moral philosophy. Rebellion is the legitimate response to meaninglessness in the universe, and solidarity is the answer to the question of how to try to be moral in an amoral universe. The Listener in The Fall represents this answer.
Humans are inherently rebellious, Camus claims, and rebellion is “the first piece of evidence” that we exist. Babies cry rebellion against their discomfort, and someone responds. Babies know from then on that they exist. In rebellion, individuals realize they have selves and are separate from other beings. But, at the same time, they find through rebellion that they are not isolated beings. One cannot rebel alone but only in connection with others. If there is no response, there is no rebellion and no self-awareness. “I rebel – therefore we exist.”[34] Selfhood starts with recognition of others and acceptance of them as comrades and equals Rebellion starts with solidarity with others. “Man’s solidarity is founded upon rebellion, and rebellion, in turn, can only find its justification in this solidarity.” [35] In turn, solidarity starts with empathy.
Empathy is the root of rebellion but the antithesis of revolution. Revolution is an all-or-nothing gambit. Camus rejects revolution because it inevitably leads to murder and to the rationalization of murder as necessary for the cause. Revolution also almost inevitably leads to oppressive and authoritarian regimes. The Grand Inquisitor was the leader of such a regime. Revolutions are organized around a theory of “us” versus “them,” and “them” deserve to be repressed. Rebellion, to the contrary, is an incremental approach to social justice that emphasizes people’s commonalities, not their differences, that we are all in this together and that I can accept your disagreement as long as you can accept mine. Rebellion must be militant but modest.
Camus’ answers to the questions posed by Clamence’s diatribe, as to how can one be moral in the midst of evil and how can one overcome selfishness, are empathy and solidarity. Empathy – I feel your pain and your joy – enables you to identify with others and, thereby, define yourself. It is the foundation of morality. Solidarity – we are all in this together, and it’s one for all and all for one – subsumes self-interest and sublimates selfishness. It is the means of reconciling the conflict between the One and the Many. Empathy and solidarity are the antidotes to Clamence’s cynicism and nihilism.
The silence of the Listener is sympathetic and even empathetic. He is seemingly not shocked or dismayed by what Clamence tells him, and he keeps coming back for more until Clamence is finished with his tale and his plea. The Listener seemingly does not judge Clemence. Based on Clamence’s reactions, the Listener seems to feel that “But for the grace of God, there go I,” which is a feeling that Clamence is aiming at. But the Listener does not go from empathy to identity, as Clamence had hoped, and does not condemn himself. Implicit in the Listener’s comradely support of Clamence is the possibility that Clamence will see in the Listener a model for how to get out of the vale of despair in which Clamence is mired. It is not likely. But in any case, the Listener is a model for us, the readers, as to how we might deal with nihilism and negativism in others.
The Listener politely and patiently listens to the whole of Clamence’s diatribe and then seemingly bids him farewell and leaves. That, I contend, is for Camus a way of living morally in an amoral world. It isn’t the only way but it is a legitimate response to the anguish of others. It is the Listener’s empathy with Clamence that is his cardinal virtue, and is one of the cardinal virtues that Camus preached in all of his works. Empathy is the best response to absurdity, and silence can be a legitimate form of empathy. Although we can and should avoid deliberately harming others, we cannot always avoid doing so unintentionally. It’s absurd but true.
We live in a time of guilt-tripping on all sides. On the political right, anti-abortionists try to guilt-trip women who want to terminate their pregnancies by labelling them as baby-killers. On the political left, human rights advocates try to guilt-trip anyone who ever committed any act that could be construed as racist or sexist, no matter if it was unintentional or how long ago. These are only examples of what seems to a plague of ill-will in our society today. Empathy for the difficult positions and different conditions in which people lived in the past and live in the present is scarce. In the midst of the diatribes, denunciations, guilt-tripping and hypocritical rationalizing that engulf us in our world today, the example of the Listener in The Fall can perhaps be a lesson for us.
[1] Albert Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus. New York: Vintage Books, 1955. P.28.
[2] Albert Camus. The Rebel. New York: Vintage Books, 1956.P.302.
[3] Albert Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus. New York: Vintage Books, 1955. P.3.
[4] Albert Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus. New York: Vintage Books, 1955. P.50. Albert Camus. The Rebel. New York: Vintage Books, 1956. P.301.
[5] “Camus: The Fall.” The Philosophy.com
[6] Jacqueline Wallace. “What Albert Camus’ ‘The Fall’ Has to Say About Modern Society.” The Artifice. 3/23/2014.
[7] For example, “The Fall by Albert Camus.” Shmoop. The Teaching Encyclopedia. Jacqueline Wallace. “What Albert Camus’ ‘The Fall’ Has to Say About Modern Society.” The Artifice. 3/23/14. “Camus: The Fall.” The Philosophy.com
[8] Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov. New York: Farrrar, Straus and Giroux,2011. eBook Edition, P.295.
[9] Albert Camus. The Rebel. New York: Vintage Books, 1956. P.60.
[10] Scott Horton. “Camus – The Fall.” Harpers Magazine. 8/8/2009.
[11] Albert Camus. The Fall. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. P.119
[12] The Fall. Pp.68-71
[13] The Fall. P.125.
[14] The Fall. P.139.
[15] The Fall. Pp.9-10.
[16] The Fall. P.20
[17] The Fall. 27-28.
[18] The Fall. 34.
[19] The Fall. 44.
[20] The Fall. 48.
[21] The Fall. 45.
[22] The Fall. 80.
[23] The Fall. 81.
[24] The Fall. 84.
[25] The Fall. 73.
[26] The Fall. 108, 110, 112.
[27] The Fall. 122-123, 126-127.
[28] The Fall. 140.
[29] The Fall. 140.
[30] The Fall. 147.
[31] The Fall. P.120.
[32] The Fall. P.119.
[33] See for example: Patrick Kennedy. “Study Guide for Albert Camus’ ‘The Fall.’” Thoughtco. 5/25/2019.
Jacqueline Wallace. “What Albert Camus’ ‘The Fall’ has to say about Modern Society.” The Artifice. 1/23/2014.
Daniel Just. “From Guilt to Shame: Albert Camus and Literature’s Ethical Response to Politics.” Project Muse. 4/21/2011.
[34] Albert Camus. The Rebel. New York: Vintage Books, 1956. P.22.
[35] Albert Camus. The Rebel. New York: Vintage Books, 1956.P.22.
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