The Verdict on Albert Camus’s The Fall Essay example -- Literature The

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 dissembled and highly suspect, to any who will listen. More artfully than a black widow preying on her unsuspecting mate, he traps us in his confessional monologue, weaving a web so intricate and complete that no one can escape its clutches. Clamence points out that â€Å"Holland is a dream†¦of gold and smoke† whose residents are â€Å"somnambulists in the fog’s gilded incense† who â€Å" have ceased to be† (13-14). Peopled by the living dead, where â€Å"hundreds of millions of men†¦painfully slip out of bed, a bitter taste in their mouths, to go to a joyless work,† â€Å"Amsterdam’s concentric canals resemble the circles of hell,† as in Dante’s Inferno (144, 14). Holland’s lost souls are the forsaken ones, machines who go through the motions of life but never really live, the modern men, who fornicate and read the papers, with good intentions and bourgeois dreams never realized. These are the men capable of tolerating the â€Å"Liebestod† and the Holocaust in the same breath, who wait for something to happen, â€Å"even loveless sla... ...risk your life. You yourself utter the words that for years have never ceased echoing through my nights and that I shall at last say though your mouth: â€Å"O young woman, throw yourself into the water again so that I may a second time have the chance of saving us both!† (147) For Clamence it was too late, will always be †(t)oo late, too far† for him (70). But we are not he. We do not need to suffer from the paralysis of inaction. We need not relive unlucky Hamlet’s indecision each and every day nor question whether to dare disturb the universe. We have a choice—we will always have a choice. It is never too late for us, for we are endowed with freedom, and more importantly, a responsibility to be free. By all means, â€Å"Do not go gentle into that good night,/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light† (Dylan Thomas). Works Cited: Camus, Albert. The Fall.