It can be said that one of the trademarks of twentieth century philosophy and literature is the abandonment of the strict ethical forms of previous centuries. Human nature has come to be seen as more broad in definition than simply good or evil, right or wrong, and true or false. A more vivid and accurate account of mortality lies in the spectrum between these extremes, and is indeed a combination of them. While such a fluid moral stance can be seen in older works— Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is an immediate example—it was not until this century that the idea of ambiguous morality became widespread. Indeed, such events as the first World War, which did not have a distinct moral centre as atrocities were exhibited by both sides, forced intellectuals to re-evaluate man’s moral stance in such a world. The primary concern was how humanity was to exist in an absurd universe. Previously in the nineteenth century, Nietzsche had proposed that man became alienated by attempting to conform to the polar morality of good or evil. His philosophy in particular was of great influence to both Albert Camus and Franz Kafka. Pressed into an absurd world the main characters of The Fall and The Trial, Clamence and Joseph K. respectively, attempt to orient their moral compasses, and consequently determine the purpose of their existence. Their feeling of estrangement is closely tied with feelings of guilt, the sense that the hardships that each of the characters endures is in a manner deserved. In both cases this guilty conscience is reflected in and created by the protagonists. Clamence faces his own culpability when he remains inanimate as a young woman kills herself and he is compelled to question the integrity he once cherished. He concludes with the belief that no such concept as innocence should be applied to the human condition; every man in inherently guilty. Similarly, through his rejection of the judiciary processes in which he is engrossed, Joseph K. is the architect of his own guilt and consequent judgement in view of the presiding authority. In this sense, both Clamence and Joseph K. can be seen to have authored their own degeneration. A second facet relates the two characters, summed up by a quote from The Fall: “the keenest of human torments is to be judged without a law” (Camus, 117). Neither character has a reference point with which he can gauge his guilt or innocence, and thus each is left, alone and alienated, to question his own existence in a world of absurdities.
An absurd world is indeed to be found in The Fall. Yet in the novel, ‘the absurd’ does not signify an implausible or even an illogical setting for the characters. Another meaning of the word is intended: the world in which Clamence exists is entirely real and understandable, yet it is fallacious. Initially, ‘the absurd’ applies to Clamence himself, as the reader is to question the authenticity of his character. Over the course of his monologue, the reader begins to understand Clamence’s moral ambiguity. He initially states that he was considered a good man, a respected lawyer, who earned praise for his compassionate deeds. By the end of the text, however, the reader has learned the subconscious purpose of his benevolence. It is merely a public display, an act to appease his vanity and endear him to the masses. Indeed, he admits himself to be an actor: his is “a double face, a charming Janus...Don’t rely on it” and “After playing my part, I would take the bow” (Camus, 47). Though he would gladly aid a blind man to cross a busy street—indeed, he yearned for the opportunity to display his altruism—he could not aid a person who in fact needed to be rescued. When he does not attempt to save the woman who threw herself from the Pont Royal, an incident which did not allow him to demonstrate his nobility to an audience, Clamence proves the duplicity inherent in his nature. All of his moral self-satisfaction is shattered by this event. Yet, while he could not jump into the river to save the woman, the excuse he provides for not doing so is natural and even universal:
I was trembling, I believe from cold and shock. I told myself that I
had to be quick and I felt an irresistible weakness steal over me. I have
forgotten what I thought then. “Too late too far...” or something
of the sort. (Camus, 70).
This incident of cowardice periodically haunts Clamence in the guise of disembodied laughter; the world is now mocking his supposed innocence. He changes from living in a state of judging others, of being a lawyer, to repenting the guilt he feels for the artifice of his character and becoming the penitent. Stifled by the guilt that weighed down on his conscience, he wanted to remove the mask that he had been wearing, to “reveal to all eyes what he was made of...[and] break open the handsome wax-figure I presented everywhere” (Camus, 94). This feeling of liability had alienated him from others, and to alleviate his estrangement he attempted to implicate and deride himself: “I wanted to put the laughers on my side, or at least to put myself on their side” (Camus, 91). Unsuccessful, he reverted to his past ways of consuming women and alcohol, although this time he recognized his faults. Indeed, he soon came to the conclusion that he had found a way out of this circle of moral duplicity: acceptance of falsehoods.
It is at this point that Camus implicitly explains the meaning of the novel’s title. Clamence becomes the confessor not to absolve his past sins, but instead in order to repeat them:
I permit myself everything again, and without the laughter this time.
I haven’t changed my way of life; I continue to love myself and make
use of others. Only, the confession of my crimes allows me to begin
again lighter in heart and to taste a double enjoyment, first of my
nature and secondly of a charming repentance. (Camus, 141-2)
As he judges himself, thus he is able to judge others and to call himself a “judge-penitent”. Thus, he remains true to his nature at night, a deceptive man who requires supremacy over others, and in his mind ‘preside’ over the patrons at the Mexico City. Indeed, it is only in these immoral experiences that he finds truth: “No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures” (Camus, 66). It is in fact through the act of confession that Clamence tries to implicate others in his own guilt and thus vindicate his own character. Thus, after his debaucheries, the fall from which the novel takes its name occurs. The fall is in effect a vindication of a guilty conscience. Clamence does so by stating that no one is in fact innocent; every person, even Christ, feels guilt. This guilt does not derive from original sin—the Fall is not the Fall from Eden—but instead has its origins in freedom. Freedom allows no innocent actions, as Clamence learned when he allowed the young woman to die—“on the bridges of Paris I, too, learned that I was afraid of freedom” (Camus, 136)—and is thus just as guilty as a murderer: “I haven’t killed anyone? Not yet, to be sure! But have I not let deserving creatures die? Maybe. And maybe I am ready to do so again” (Camus, 95). Freedom condemns the free because it allows them to be judged; Clamence can be proclaimed guilty. The only way to avoid judgement, Clamence quickly learns, is to incriminate everyone else. Man becomes the Last Judgement for himself as “every man testifies to the crime of all others” (Camus, 110).
Religion recognized the dangers of freedom: “since they don’t want freedom or its judgements, they ask to be rapped on the knuckles, they invent dreadful rules, they rush out to build piles of faggots to replace churches” (Camus, 135). Conversely, while Clamence does not have a belief in a god or higher authority, he does in fact desire one to control him. He has no reference point to which he can gauge his guilt or innocence, no higher authority telling him how to act, and therefore in his mind his reaction on the Pont Royal seems justified. Thus Clamence praises the bonds of slavery, and indeed the circular nature of his debauchery-and-repentance lifestyle has placed him in chains. At the same time, by implicating all of humanity along with himself Clamence relieves the alienation he had felt when he believed himself to be guilty as others were innocent. He feared death, which is “solitary, whereas slavery is collective. The others get their too, and at the same time as we—that’s what counts” (Camus, 136). Confession is a dialogue, an act of inclusion, and by engaging in it Clamence feels part of a whole. Yet, he places his experiences above himself; they become representative of the whole of humanity. Again deception is apparent, as Clamence states that he adjusts his story to represent the listener as well as himself:
I choose the features we have in common, the experiences we have
endured together, the failings we share...[to] construct a portrait which
is the image of all and of no one...the portrait I hold out to my
contemporaries becomes a mirror. (Camus, 139-40)
The irony of this statement may not be lost on him however; he may not view himself in fact with such high esteem. Even though he frequently proclaims his life as judge-penitent to be superior to the false masks worn by most people in their lives, and that “false judges are held up to the world’s admiration and I alone know the true ones” (Camus, 130), by the end of his confession he states that he is in fact a “false prophet” (Camus, 147). When he says “I feel at last that I am being adored” (Camus, 143), the reader has to question the sincerity of his confession; indeed, as he stated before, he may be “about to dress the corpse” (Camus, 120). This conclusion leaves the reader to contemplate the moral ambiguity and perhaps even hopelessness of the vicious circle of sin-and-absolution in which Clamence finds himself.
Joseph K. finds himself ensnared in a similar cycle. The world that he had created for himself was one of meticulous order and a strict adherence to his established routine. Such an artificial construct ostensibly granted him control over the world outside of his own; K. is terrified of losing control of his environment. Nevertheless, such occurs when the door to his apartment is forced open and he is arrested by the Court. He is promptly condemned as a guilty man, yet no evident laws or authorities govern this conviction. Thus he becomes extremely disillusioned as the anarchy and apparent lawlessness of the Court is forced into his reality and he is compelled to endure its labyrinthine operations. Yet, unlike Clamence, Joseph K. never acknowledges his guilt. In the very first line of the text K. proclaims himself innocent: “Someone must have been telling lies about [me], for without having done anything wrong [I] was arrested one fine morning” (Kafka, 1). For the remainder of the novel he fights the judgement brought against him. These efforts only prove to escalate his guilty status and intensify the proceedings in which he finds himself circumscribed. The first such escalation occurs when K. is told to attend his trial, yet never having been given directions about the location or schedule of the offices he arrives to find himself in contempt of the Examining Magistrate for tardiness. Subsequently, he attempts to determine the underlying structure and methodology of the Court and to accord it with his own rational system of thought. Yet the Court does not adhere to his logically organized world. Thus he cannot function within its framework, and to the end of the text remains impotent to act against it. This is confirmed when K. traverses the court offices only to find himself oppressed by the climate therein. Indeed, this episode is a microcosm of his intercourse with the Court: as K. became increasingly ill at the offices—”the farther he went the worse it [became] for him” (Kafka, 68)—his physical condition correspondingly worsens as the narrative continues.
In order to escape from the machinations of the Court, K. needed to recognize that he is indeed guilty. Yet, while he proclaims himself innocent, the mere fact that he has been condemned by the Court proves his guilt. Through his mere existence he has condemned himself and is guilty, as are all men. The Court eventually condemns all men who do not acknowledge the guilt inherent in their existence. This fact is confirmed in a conversation between K. and the clergyman:
“I am not guilty,” said K.; “it’s a mistake. And if it comes to that,
how can any man be called guilty? We are all simply men here,
one as much as the other.” “That is true,” said the priest, “but
that’s how all guilty men talk.” (Kafka, 210)
Indeed, as Clamence had stated, every man becomes a judge of all the others and similarly in The Trial there is a Court under every roof in the city. To understand Joseph K.’s predicament, it is necessary to apply the metaphor of the ‘little-ease’ found in The Fall. Like the operations of the Court, the confining walls of the little-ease—an oubliette of sorts—do not allow the prisoner to live comfortably or function properly. Life inside is in direct opposition of life outside: “one had to take on an awkward manner and live on the diagonal; sleep was a collapse, and waking a squatting” (Camus, 109). Similarly, the operations of the Court were contrary to K.’s ideologies and he was unable to function within its context. The analogy becomes even more explicit when Clamence states that the prisoner experiences an “unchanging restriction that stiffened his body” (Camus, 109). K. did indeed experience a stiffening of his body as has been stated, and more significantly he likewise felt his freedom curtailed. The Court repeatedly emphasized that he was free to live his life as he had before his arrest, yet when he deals with the clergyman, who is a representative of the Court, he feels compelled to remain in its presence. The conversation is abbreviated as follows:
K: “I must go.” “Well,” said the priest, “then go.” The priest had
already taken a step or two away from him, but K. cried out in
a loud voice, “Please wait a moment...Don’t you want anything
more from me?” “No,” said the priest...”But you have to leave
now”. “Well, yes,” said K., “you must see that I can’t help it.”
(Kafka, 221)
From this incident, it is possible to infer that K. had in fact recognized the authority of the Court despite his remarks otherwise. Yet, unlike the prisoner mentioned by Clamence, he never “learned that he was guilty and that innocence consists in stretching joyously” (Camus, 109-10). K. adamantly proclaims his innocence even after he had been sentenced and was being executed. His defiance can be explained by the lack of an external reference by which he can calibrate his guilt. The Court officials act apathetically to him and his questions remain unanswered. Similarly, there are no concrete references in the Law itself to measure K’s guilt: the books of the Examining Magistrate prove to be filled not with law codes and precedents but with pornographic pictures. Despite a similar lack of external reference point for guilt, however, Clamence had accepted his guilt; indeed he had revelled in it. Yet, Joseph K. could not do the same. He continued to press his innocence and thus was found ever more guilty. Indeed, like the prisoner in the little-ease, the proceedings for K. did “gradually merge into the verdict” (Kafka, 211).
The issue of a guilty existence permeates the entire texts of both The Fall and The Trial. Indeed, in each of the two novels guilt is a direct consequence of existence. “Man is seen more as continually falling than fallen.” This fall originates in freedom, mainly the freedom to judge and be judged. For both Jean-Baptiste Clamence and Joseph K., a guilty conscience becomes all consuming. Clamence accepts his liability almost passionately, and through his confessions attempts to convert others to his ‘new-found religion’. Conversely, Joseph K. refuses to acknowledge his guilty status even as he accedes to the proceedings of the Court. This renunciation proves to be his downfall. Yet, arguably the reader is in disagreement with the narrators of the two texts. By the end of The Fall, Clamence is seen to be a somewhat repulsive character whose sincerity is never entirely believed. Alternately, Joseph K. is held in high regard; to the modern reader his defiance and perseverance are commendable. Perhaps the universal guilt espoused in each of the texts remains unacceptable and even odious to the modern conscience; both Clamence and the Court would proclaim the reader guilty.
Bibliography
Camus, Albert. The Fall. Trans. Justin O’Brien. New York: Vintage International, 1991.
Kafka, Franz. The Trial. Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. New York: Schocken Books, 1995.
Supplementary:
Amoia, Alba. Albert Camus. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1989.
Cruikshank, John. Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1966.
McBride, Joseph. Albert Camus: Philosopher and Littérateur. New York: St. Martin, 1992.
Rhein, Phillip A. Albert Camus. Revised edition. Boston, USA: Twayne Publishers, 1989.
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