47 pages • 1 hour read
The Fall
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Dante’s Hell
Dante’s Inferno is a 14th-century poem by Italian writer Dante Alighieri. It is the first part of the three-part epic poem, Divine Comedy. Inferno follows Dante as he becomes lost in the woods and is rescued by the ghost of the Roman poet Virgil. Virgil leads Dante through hell in an allegory for the human soul’s journey through the temptations of sin. Dante divides hell into nine rings. The closer Dante travels to the central ring, the greater the sins of the residents he encounters. The innermost ninth circle is for treacherous sinners, people who betrayed family, community, or their lords. Dante’s Inferno is an important work in Western literature as the poem is frequently cited, used as inspiration, or reimagined. Camus sets his story in Amsterdam so he can invoke the rings of Dante’s hell through Amsterdam’s ring-like canals. Clamence declares that he, his friend, and Mexico City are in the “last circle” named Cocytus (14). Camus situates his novel in the ninth circle of hell to complicate Europe’s history and Clamence’s story.
Amsterdam’s wealth was directly built on profits from the slave trade between the 17th and early 19th centuries. When the Dutch government outlawed the practice in 1814, the city declined. In the narrative, Clamence comments on a “charming house” that belonged to an enslaver with an old shop sign still attached featuring the heads of enslaved people. Clamence’s home in the Jewish Quarter was also emptied of its original Jewish inhabitants during the Holocaust. Camus’s inclusion of these features suggests they are part of why Clamence, an allegorical figure for humanity’s ills, resides in the ninth circle of hell. The ethnic cleansing of the Holocaust and the destruction of African communities by the slave trade represent a betrayal of humanity.
Clamence lives in the ninth circle, indicating that he is also a traitor. Clamence loves slavery and wrote a manifesto to expose “the oppression that the oppressed inflict on decent people” (92). Clamence declares that people want “power and the whip” (135). The whip is a symbol associated with chattel slavery. Clamence’s love of slavery creates a parallel between him and the city, which Camus uses to condemn both of them to the lowest circle of hell for treachery against humanity.
The Fall of Man
The Fall of Man is a fundamental doctrine of Christianity that states that humanity fell from perfect innocence to a state of permanent guilt by disobeying God. In Christian theology, Adam and Eve were the first humans and lived in the perfect Garden of Eden. They were tempted by a serpent to eat fruit from a tree that God had forbidden them from touching: the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge they gain shames them, and God casts them out of the Garden of Eden. The Fall is thought to have introduced sin to the world and corrupted human nature permanently.
The Fall is a direct reference to this doctrine. Clamence’s story mirrors the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden in secular terms. He lived a superficial and successful life in a metaphorical Garden of Eden with a career and social life before witnessing a woman drown herself. The woman’s death and his cowardly inability to help her unsettle him and give him new knowledge about life. Suddenly, his career success, money, and social prestige become shams. Clamence eats from a metaphorical tree of knowledge by witnessing a suicide. Clamence cannot cope and descends into a metaphorical hell as he realizes the world around him is hollow. The Fall of Man symbolizes Clamence’s descent into a treacherous state of being. Camus’s contemporary readers would be familiar with the Fall of Man and would be primed to read Clamence’s story as a descent into sin.
Judges
Judges and judgment feature prominently in The Fall. Judges act as a symbol of power without morality and a source of Clamence’s sin. Before Clamence fell from grace, he was a lawyer, which made him an auxiliary attachment to a judge’s court. He would argue cases before a judge who had the final verdict, and he hated judges deeply. Before spiraling into sin, Clamence viewed judges as “locusts,” a destructive swarming insect that appears in the Bible as a punishment from God. After his fall, Clamence views himself as the appointed judge of all of humanity. This is symbolized by the stolen painting, The Just Judges, which Clamence keeps hidden in his cupboard. The “righteousness” of the figures in the painting contradicts and highlights Clamence’s corruption.
Clamence becomes a judge of others because he cannot escape judging himself. His inability to subject himself to danger to save the drowning woman exposes his charity toward others as self-serving flattery. Clamence feels judged by the drowning woman, which is why he originally remembers the incident as hearing a disembodied and mysterious “laugh.” Clamence corrupts judgment by wishing to judge others to lessen his own guilt; if everybody is guilty, then he can feel less guilty. Judgment is a symbol for two extremes: a hypothetical, righteous judgment that is not displayed in the novel, and a means of exerting power and excusing one’s own sinfulness, embodied by Clamence.
Unlock all 47 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Albert Camus
