The Verdict on Albert Camus’s The Fall Essay - 2711 Words

The Verdict on Albert Camus’s The Fall As if to mock the crumbling principles of a fallen era, â€Å"The Just Judges† preside over a solemn dumping ground of earthly hell. This flimsy legion of justice, like the omnipresent eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, casts a shadow of pseudo-morality over a land spiraling towards pathos. But Albert Camus’s The Fall unfolds amidst the seedy Amsterdam underground--a larger, more sinister prison than the Valley of Ashes, whose center is Mexico City, a neighborhood bar and Mecca for the world’s refuse. The narrator and self-proclaimed judge-penitent, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, presides over his subjects every night to â€Å"offer his services,† although partially†¦show more content†¦He is Milton’s Satan, who continues his â€Å"chute† throughout the novel and disturbingly forfeits his particular paradise to plunge into the depths and horror of human existence. A â€Å"false prophet† w hose pulpit is the brothel, the bar, the prison cell, and whose parishioners are his accomplices, Clamence takes his place among his fellow fallen and â€Å"human ants.† He preaches in Mexico City to pimps, thieves and criminals who flock to him like lost sheep. The doves will never reach Amsterdam, for they fly too high above the vestibule of Hell, Dante’s land of â€Å"neutral angels.† Yet there was a time when Jean-Baptiste Clamence had â€Å"the look of success†Ã¢â‚¬â€he was the architect of a thriving law practice in Paris, the city of salvation, light and hope. He championed the causes of the poor and the persecuted, always giving and asking nothing in return, metaphorically sleeping with justice every night. But it was a sham, a farce of grand proportions—he really lived only for himself: â€Å"I enjoyed that part of my nature which reacted so appropriately to the widow and orphan that eventually through exercise, it came to dominate my whole life† (20). Clamence played the part perfectly, like a seasoned actor—people considered him generous and so he was. His fraud was that he lived for the Other rather than for