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

The Verdict on Albert Camuss The FallAs if to mock the crumbling principles of a fallen era, The arrestely Judges preside over a solemn dumping dry toss off of earthly hell. This flimsy legion of justice, like the omnipresent eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg in F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby, casts a shadow of pseudo-morality over a land spiraling towards pathos. only Albert Camuss The Fall unfolds amidst the seedy Amsterdam underground--a larger, to a greater extent sinister prison than the Valley of Ashes, whose center is Mexico City, a neighborhood bar and Mecca for the worlds refuse. The narrator and self-proclaimed judge-penitent, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, presides over his subjects every night to stick out 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 cl utches.Clamence points out that Holland is a dreamof metal(prenominal) and smoke whose residents are somnambulists in the fogs gilded scent who reach ceased to be (13-14). Peopled by the living dead, where hundreds of millions of menpainfully slip out of bed, a bitter taste in their mouths, to go to a joyless work, Amsterdams concentric canals resemble the circles of hell, as in Dantes Inferno (144, 14). Hollands lost souls are the forsaken ones, machines who go through the motions of life but never really live, the modern men, who bang and read the papers, with good intentions and bourgeois dreams never realized. These are the men subject of tolerating the Liebestod and the Holocaust in the same breath, who wait for something to happen, even loveless sla... ...risk your life. You yourself evince the words that for years have never ceased echoing through my nights and that I shall at last say though your mouth O boyish woman, throw yourself into the water again so that I may a second time have the chance of saving us two (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 palsy of inaction. We need not relive unlucky Hamlets irresoluteness each and every day nor question whether to dare disturb the universe. We have a choicewe will always have a choice. It is never too late for us, for we are endowed with freedom, and more importantly, a certificate of indebtedness to be free. By all means, Do not go gruntle into that good night,/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light (Dylan Thomas).Works CitedCamus, Albert. The Fall.