On the Loss of Innocence and Religious Judgement: Albert Camus' 'The Fall'

Within the pages of Albert Camus’ The Fall (La Chute, 1956), I come face to face with some of the philosophical issues that have kept me intrigued for a number of years: the meaning of innocence, the judgemental God, among other things. Composed as an unbroken internal monologue in typically opaque Camus style, The Fall is an inscrutable read even for the most seasoned of Camus readers. The challenge is to figure out what innocence has to do with it all.

The narrator Clamence “speaks” to us from a bar in the seedy old heart of Amsterdam, where its “concentric canals resemble the circles of hell” (10). Clamence, a down-and-out ex-lawyer from Paris, tells us we are in the last circle of hell. Dante’s last circle of hell is reserved for traitors and betrayers. The reader is thus effectively reminded of treachery; he is literally seated in the heart of evil. Clamence’s references to the erstwhile Jewish quarter make it clear that Camus wants the reader to dredge up memories of the Holocaust, when Man lost the last vestiges of his innocence. Clamence is a penitent; he regrets the debauched life he has led and is looking for a sympathetic ear. The Fall therefore functions like a Christian confession, where the sinner pours his heart out, hoping for redemption. Clamence repeatedly refers to himself as a “judge-penitent,” an oxymoronic term coined by Camus to mean one who judges others and confesses his own sins. This is one of the first clues that Clamence’s confession is anything but sincere. Throughout the novella, Clamence encourages the reader/listener to doubt him: “Mine is a double job, that’s all, just as humans are double” (7). Later on, the self-proclaimed Janus even praises his own ability to charm: “…I inspire confidence, don’t I? I have a fine, open laugh and a firm handshake: those are advantages” (26). Rightfully, the reader should take his advice, but Clamence’s account of his time in Paris is so identifiable an existential crisis that the reader withholds his doubt.

The Parisian years saw Clamence on top of the world. Professionally he was a success, admired and respected by many. He says he “relished life and [his] own superiority” and “lived with impunity” (17). In Nietzschean language, he describes how he was far and above everyone else – morally – including the judge he was working for. Just when it seemed like he could spend the rest of his life in the rarefied air of complacency, cracks began to appear: “Life got harder for me: when the body is sad, the heart languishes. I felt as though I was partly unlearning what I had never learned and yet knew so well: I mean, how to live” (27). Many of us live as Clamence did, assuming we know the tricks, unaware that along the way there are unexpected snares. One of these snares, in the form of a girl who committed suicide by leaping into the Seine, caught Clamence by surprise one dreary night. He was crossing a bridge when the girl jumped, and to his surprise and dismay, he did not and could not do anything to save her. This was the pivotal moment when he lost his “innocence,” something he had perhaps not possessed to begin with. The disconcerting incident caused him to doubt his own sense of self, to the extent where he lost all faith in himself, life, and humankind. Whereas before he had lived with the idea that the universe was a place of perfect harmony and order, he now realised he “had long lived under the illusion of universal accord, while in reality criticism, jibes and scorn rained down upon [him]” (50). The shattering of this illusion meant the dissolution of his “innocence,” and with the loss of innocence came the loss of freedom. (Freedom is only possible for the innocent.) Clamence became both the judge and the judged.

The second half of the novella is dominated by the theme of religious judgement. Now that Clamence has tasted the bitterness of being judged, he concludes that religions operate on a false basis:

Religions are wrong when they start to moralize and sound off with their commandments. We have no need of God to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men are enough, with our help. You speak about the Last Judgement … I am awaiting it resolutely: I have known the worst it can offer, which is the judgement of men. For them, there are no extenuating circumstances and even good intentions are attributed to criminal ones. (69)

Religious judgement is therefore superfluous, as men are more than capable of judging one another. What is also ironic is that judgement is almost never rational; it is a subjective matter, its gravity solely prescribed by the ones doing the judging. This claim has to be placed in the context of the Holocaust, when the act of judging was rampant and barbarically carried out. Clamence goes on to describe a particular inhumane form of punishment men have devised, adding that we do not need God to “dream up that little masterpiece” (69). The passage is noteworthy in that it underscores the impotence of organised religion when it comes to judgement and the definitions of innocence and evil. According to Clamence, no man is entirely innocent, not even Jesus himself:

Now, do you know why they crucified him, the other fellow … The real reason is that he knew, himself, that he was not entirely innocent. While he might not have carried the burden of the sin of which he was accused, he had committed others, even if he did not know what they were … Knowing what he did, understanding everything about mankind … confronted day and night by his innocent crime, it became too hard for him to sustain himself and carry on. (70)

Jesus did die for mankind, but not out of magnanimity; his death was self-preservation. Furthermore, his death did not save Man from himself. More than two thousand years later, he is still floundering in the sea of sins. Clamence proposes a solution of sorts to this religio-philosophical conundrum:

The main idea is not to be free any longer, but to repent and obey a greater knave than you are. When we are all guilty, that will be democracy. Not to mention the fact that we must be revenged for having to die alone. Death is solitary while servitude is collective … In short, all united, but on our knees, head bowed. (85)

Even this supposed solution cannot be taken at face value. It is laced with too much irony to be digested wholly. The purpose of such a proclamation is to compel the reader to re-examine his (religious) stance, not to offer a convenient spiritual cure-all. Clamence has made it clear from the start he wants us to think about our own lives, so that we “may perhaps find a similar story” (41). At the end of his soliloquy, he says: “The more I accuse myself, the more I have the right to judge you. Better still, I incite you to judge yourself, which relieves me by that much more … Try it. You may be sure I will listen your own confession, with a great feeling of fraternity” (88). Clamence knows the reader is as guilty a sinner as he is, and by sharing we may all finally achieve some kind of understanding. Through this understanding, we may come to realise how we have been misled by false beliefs and conceptions of ourselves.

Camus, Albert. The Fall. London: Penguin Books, 2006.