Albert Camus - The Fall

Preface
Albert Camus' writing style is one of which persuades your imagination to think of the big picture by making you realize that every person has a motive behind what is done in a person's day to day life. The novel has settings which are relevant to frame of mind or mode of thinking. The purpose of this book is to provide an awakening or come to the realization that people are self motivated. The story is not difficult to grasp but there is some words that are not too commonly used so you may want to have a dictionary handy; plus keep in mind that the words Clamence uses contain at least two meanings usually. I found the book as quite a pleasant read because it leaves you thinking to draw your own conclusions. I think everyone should read this book or a book which explores and explains the human mind to a modest degree.

Main Issue
The novel "The Fall" is full of many details about everyday life problems to more serious oriented. Clamence says that everything that is done by humans is motivated by greed and Clamence shows that he is self motivated for greed alone. He supports this by showing examples and speaking of actions where he goes out of his way to provide assistance to another person and the proof that he is self motivated is that he reaches happiness in a day and he loses happiness while sleeping. He claims that he is not boasting of his deeds he did for people but merely he is riding the line of boasting (that is a one liner that strikes me deeply).

About Clamence...
He has been rich, worked as a lawyer, and a judge pentient. He is motivated by his own desires to become happy. He does things for others to be happy but mentions about obligation and it comes around to me that he likes to remain free of debt. This man seems to be doing this all of this for himself to gain power over others.


Trust Clamence?
Clamence takes great care to be very detailed in explaining his way of thinking to generate the lens which perceives life with, but everything he says has some sort of contradiction towards what he has previously stated. And it is from the twisting and further manipulation of his ideas he explains that provokes this question the most 'Can anyone trust this man?' and he further says he only helps those whom will benefit himself; and that he never is doing good because he is not good-natured or in spirit of the current moment but in full comprehension where life is just practically a chess match for total domination. When Clamence said,

"The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and ruling over society by force alone."

he was speaking it as a universal truth. Would you trust someone who was so honest with you and made a statement as such as the previous? I would trust this individual Clamence to tell me the truth but I would think twice before ever entrusting him with saving my life.


Conclusion?
Clamence is very honest to person whom he is talking nor does he lie to himself. The ending which is not very shocking since once something is done it can not be reversed and even if you did know what would be the consequence before you made a decision you would not do anything different. The deliberation of all this talking is that he was disturbed by letting a woman jump to her death from a bridge and it is admittance he would do nothing different at all that is the source of realization.


CritiQue of Clamence
Clamence is on the edge of being schizophrenic but yet he has an intact conscious. I think that his conscious was warped from the lies he told. Clamence is falling apart at his own seams from all his actions which he calls self-serving actions; drinking booze, dating many women, and being non critical upon others when needed. Clamence would much rather lie to a friend and be lied to from a friend in regards to appearance or habit which should be changed for a better lived life.


Comparable?
This book is not similar to other books because most books these days are not discussing or exploring the human psyche.

Recommended Authors
Ayn Rand, Albert Camus, and Ray Bradbury

Recommended Books:

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Anthem by Ayn Rand

Thank you,
for reading my opinion on Albert Camus' "The Fall".