The Fall

In The Fall Albert Camus, who is marked as an existentialist, expresses a nearly nihilistic view that there is no such thing as an action of pure intention, and that there is no such thing as true happiness. He asserts this through his main character, who speaks to the reader conversationally throughout the text. Jean-Baptiste has spent his life floating on clouds and living free of judgment, all the while judging others. At the pivotal moment in the novel, Jean-Baptiste bears witness to a woman jumping from a bridge in Paris to her death in the river below. He cannot bring himself to save her, even though he tries to live his life generously and prestigiously. This ineptitude of his slowly brings him to his knees, as he increasingly is forced to judge his own morality and verify whether he truly resides above the mass of the human race. The book is filled with the hypocrisies of the man, and his own personal judgments of himself. With each example the reader is intended to (and does) think about their own life, and all the hypocrisies within it. They judge themselves as Jean-Baptiste judges himself. The novel culminates with Jean-Baptiste describing the profession he works, that he named at the beginning of the novel and for which the story of his life is supposedly a necessary anecdote, as a judge-penitent. As he describes his profession as one where he passes judgment on those he chooses by judging himself, and so painting a mask of all and yet no one, truly a mirror to hold before his subject (the reader) and encourage self-judgment. He professes that as he judges himself he gains the right to judge another more thoroughly, and prides himself in his ability to do so. He holds himself above humanity even as he has their faults, simply because he knows that he has their faults and that their faults are shared, and that humanity does not know this. He holds that there is no human action that is not double in nature, that no action has no ulterior motive, and that there is no true happiness, but that he has found happiness in embracing both sides of every action, his good and bad motivations. It becomes clear that the reader is his chosen subject, and that he has just passed judgment on the reader simply by passing judgment on himself. Is there no true happiness? Can there be no simple human action? Is Albert Camus correct in his views?