The Fall Themes

Much of The Fall has to do with the human fear of being judged by others, along with the human tendency to judge everyone, including the self. The narrator of this fictional "confession" claims tha...

The Fall operates on the premise that all are guilty. This is indeed a classic argument for Camus, but the narrator of this novel goes so far as to suggest that all men are murderers, even if only...

In the world of The Fall, God is dead. The narrator argues that, since we no longer have a God to tell us what to do, we need to find another "master" to replace him. Men have basically taken the p...

The Fall features a man steeped in isolation, in part because he finds all relationships to be confining. The problem is one of responsibility: if you interact with others, you’re confined no...

Innocence doesn’t really exist in The Fall. In the world of this novel, everyone is guilty – even Jesus Christ. The narrator’s philosophy consists of declaring your own guilt (in...

The Fall claims that power and subjugation are necessary in the world. Only authority can absolutely determine truth in an uncertain world. In the case of the novel’s narrator, power is deriv...

The Fall explores Camus’s philosophy of the absurd. Most prominently, we see an illustration of Camus’s claim that all men are guilty of something. We are guilty not only by our actions...

The Fall explores one’s man transformation from the blissful ignorance of self-serving hypocrisy to the internal angst of self-judgment and awareness. This transformation has less to do with...

The Fall reflects the existentialist claim that there is no objective truth. What we think of as fact is a set of beliefs. In fact, that novel’s main conflict arises from those beliefs being...

The pursuit of immortality drives much of the conflict in The Fall. The narrator is admittedly in love with himself, and the thought of his own death torments him. He finds himself struggling to de...