Ausn Lalko
Eng 100
Susan Beckwith
4-8-2013
1)
Albert Camus’s story “The Fall“, the reader will experience the motif of ‘double’ multiple times
throughout the story. The first type of duplicity is the double between Judgment and Penitents. The
character speaking to you is named Jean-Baptiste Clamence. Clamence tells you he is a judge penitent,
meaning he will tell you his wrong doings however will judge you for your own wrong doings. He seems
to obtain a sense of power, that makes him feel above those whom he judges. He describes how he likes
to perform certain tasks that make him look nice in front of crowds of people so they view him as a ‘good’
individual, and he is able to judge those who seen him as less superior than him because he has done
something nice and they have witnessed it. However while mentioning this he starts to judge himself and
realizes that he is doing these nice things for the wrong reasons. This leads us to the other half of this
double which is penitents. We soon realize that everything Jean-Baptiste is telling us is part of a personal
confession or penitents about his sins and wrong doings. He realizes what he was doing when he would
do nice things for others, was only for the positive judgment of others, was hypocritical in the sense that
the underlying reason of doing something nice wasn’t because he was a nice person, but instead for the
judgment of others. He gives a good example of this, when he tells the story of when he’s walking at
night and hears a woman drowning in the water, but since no one is around to see him save the one he
continues his walk through the dark night, which later begins to eat at him and he beings to think
everyone is judging him for his actions which makes him eerie. This sense of duplicity can relate back to
the theme of “how do we treat and recognize others?” The reason being, we should treat people well and
recognize them for the things they do, and not always the reasons why they do them, considering
everyone wants people to see their good deeds to give them the positive recognition for doing it.
However keep in mind this shouldn’t be the only reason we do something good for others.
Another duplicity to be recognized is that of Blame and Guilt. In the story, blame is used quite
