The problem he is struggling with, is to find an answer to this: - What is left, what remains when everything is denied?Ĭlamence has problems with his conscience and is also very preoccupied with his relationship to other humans. Then came human beings they wanted to cling, but there was nothing to cling to, and that was unfortunate - for them. All those books barely read, those friends barely loved, those cities barely visited, those women barely possessed! I went through the gestures out of boredom or absentmindedness. Thus I progressed on the surface of life, in the realm of words as it were, never in reality. From day to day women, from day to day virtue or vice, from day to day, like dogs - but every day myself secure at my post. I lived consequently without any other continuity than that, from day to day, of I, I, I. He turns to debauchery (women and alcohol) as a temporarily effective means of silencing the laughter: He is haunted and tormented by laughter behind his back. His suffering is closely connected to that he has been losing faith, losing his beliefs, losing illusions. In The Fall Clamence speaks about the world being cheated, being fooled. He even looses contact with his inner self, and he practisises self-derision. He looses contact with himself in his life, and he isolates himself from other people. The Fall shows what can happen when a man slips and fails to find his way back to step on solid ground. He closes his law practice in Paris, avoids his former colleagues in particular and people in general, and throws himself into debauchery. Clamence, the main character and narrator in Camus’ novel, responds to his emotional-intellectual crisis by withdrawing from the world. The Fall is a series of monologues spoken to an invisible listener.

The Fall by Albert Camus