The Fall

Main Ideas

• The issue of guilt and responsibility: the main character, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, acknowledges his guilt and responsibility for his actions and inaction.
• Critique of hypocrisy and complacency: Clamence exposes his own hypocrisy and complacency, as well as the hypocrisy of society as a whole.
• The idea of fall and moral decline: the title of the book symbolizes the moral fall of the protagonist and his realization of his own insignificance.
• Existential crisis: Clamence undergoes a profound existential crisis, realizing the futility of his previous beliefs and actions.
• Judgment and condemnation: the theme of judgment and condemnation runs throughout the novel as a metaphor for the internal trial the protagonist conducts on himself.