47 pages • 1 hour read
Albert CamusThe Fall
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1956A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Clamence and his cher ami visit Marken, an island off the coast of Amsterdam. The two contemplate the ocean as Clamence talks. Clamence’s fatigue worsens, and he becomes less lucid. He admits he has no friends but calls all of humanity his “accomplices.” Clamence thought of attempting suicide to spite the people he knew in Paris but could not bring himself to do it because he wouldn’t be present to see their reactions.
Clamence declares that the purpose of life is to avoid judgment while judging others. The “bleeding” he suffered from the traffic incident and the drowning woman made him paranoid. He believed that his colleagues would “devour” him, and he began to feel vulnerable and no longer above judgment. He believed people were secretly laughing at him or judging his actions. Clamence blames this on his success and reasons that people hated him because he was a better person than them. The drowning woman woke him up and made him aware of the judgment and mockery heaped on him. Clamence believes that the desire to be innocent is the core of human nature and that humans can only believe themselves innocent by declaring others guilty. Clamence calls Earth the vestibule of hell, or Limbo, where the angels who sided with neither God nor Satan reside; people are too boring and weak to be good or evil.
Clamence is haunted by the imagined laughter of the drowning woman and others mocking him. Clamence realizes that he used his virtue to oppress, dominate, and get what he wanted; his “humility” was used to “conquer” (84). The mask that he wore was confused for kindness by the people around him. Clamence could no longer take life seriously and distrusted people who did. The contradictions between Clamence’s inner desires and his outer life began to break him.
Clamence contemplated suicide often. The thought that his fake, virtuous persona would be preserved stopped him from taking his life. Clamence fantasized about harming blind people and began writing a manifesto to declare that the oppressed were actually oppressing “decent people” (92). Clamence began to love police and state-sanctioned executions. He made unsettling remarks to his colleagues and made them seem as guilty as the murderers they defended. Clamence considered upsetting “the game” and destroying his reputation as waking up from a dream. However, he had not succeeded as much as he wanted. Clamence was not satisfied and had not found a way to absolve his guilt and feelings of inadequacy. Before Clamence can explain his solution to these problems, he wants to talk to his cher ami about debauchery and the “little-ease,” a fabled torture cell.
Chapter 4 Analysis
Chapter 4 depicts Clamence’s embrace of his true self. He cannot handle the contradictions in his life revealed by the drowning woman’s death—the difference between his good reputation and his allowing someone to die in front of him. He was never a religious man and, due to the crisis of nihilism, did not have a sturdy base of morality to hold on to. Camus implies his alienation from the world around him causes him to worship brutality and dominance. He compares living life to playing a role in the “frivolity of seriousness” (88). “Clamence” is not so much a person as a role he plays as a successful and esteemed lawyer. This life only allows for an “indifference that spoiled everything,” and Clamence feels “forced” to “seek an escape” (88-89). Due to this alienation, Clamence’s kindness and generosity are not genuine but performed to advance his position in society. The “less imposing reverse side” of his virtues—success, career advancement, reputation—seem to him to be the true goals of virtue. The suicide rattles Clamence to his core, and the self-serving interests underneath his virtues are all that seemed real to him. Relating to the theme of Morality in an Absurd World, he begins to pursue these self-interested benefits without the veneer of goodness.
Clamence embraces his brutality and turns it on the people he once helped. He begins defending murderers not to make them noble, but to “crush” honest men (94). Clamence wants to embrace the dark underbelly of his actions as what’s “real,” but he cannot escape his guilt over the drowned woman. When he explains his stance “very clearly” to fledgling lawyers and his peers, he does so by explaining that he feels he has committed murder. In his speech to the assembled lawyers, he states, “I haven’t killed anyone? Not yet, to be sure! But have I not let deserving creatures die? Maybe” (95). Clamence equates himself to the murderer he is defending and struggles with the guilt that he is free while the murderer is not. Clamence’s “maybe” is an admission of this guilt that drives his new morality. However, this morality is already flawed based on the context; Clamence’s new point of view is motivated by his inescapable guilt, which worsens rather than gets better as he adopts this new lifestyle. If his debauchery were a moral salve, Clamence’s guilt would ease. Instead, he devolves further, finding new and more elaborate ways to torture himself and manifest his guilt physically.
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By Albert Camus
