Setting
Clamence often speaks of his love for high, open places — everything from mountain peaks to the top decks of boats. "I have never felt comfortable," he explains, "except in lofty surroundings. Even in the details of daily life, I need to feel above" (Camus 288). Then it is paradoxical that Clamence leads his cher ami away from the man-made symmetries of a picturesque town to sit on a level, seaside expanse. The location of Amsterdam, as a city below sea-level, therefore assumes particular significance in relation to the narrator. Moreover, Amsterdam is generally described in The Fall as a cold, wet place where a thick blanket of fog constantly hangs over the crowded, neon-light-lined streets. Beside the atmosphere (which could be established almost anywhere else) the city was also chosen by Camus for a more peculiar reason. In the opening pages Clamence casually remarks,
| “ | Have you noticed that Amsterdam's concentric canals resemble the circles of hell? The middle-class hell, of course, peopled with bad dreams. When one comes from the outside, as one gradually goes through those circles, life — and hence its crimes — becomes denser, darker. Here, we are in the last circle. (Camus 23) | ” |
The canals of Amsterdam, when seen from the air, appear as a series of concentric circles emerging from the city centre, which led Camus to liken them to the circles of Hell.
The "last circle of hell" is the site of Amsterdam's red-light district and the location of a bar named Mexico City, which Clamence frequents night after night and where the bulk of his narrative gradually unfolds. (Mexico City actually existed in Amsterdam.) The setting thus serves to illustrate, literally and metaphorically, Clamence's fall from the heights of high-class Paris society to the dark, dreary, Dantesque underworld of Amsterdam, where tortured souls wander aimlessly among each other. Indeed, critics have explored at length the parallels between Clamence's fall and Dante's descent through Hell in the Inferno (see Galpin, King).
It is also significant, particularly as Camus develops his philosophical ideas, that the story develops against the backdrop of the Second World War and the Holocaust. Clamence tells us that he lives only a short distance from Mexico City, in what was — formerly — the Jewish Quarter, "until our Hitlerian brethren spaced it out a bit. ... I am living on the site of one of the greatest crimes in history" (Camus 281). The naming of the bar also recalls the destruction of the Aztec civilization whose ruined capital has been supplanted by modern Mexico City. Among other things, The Fall is an attempt to explain how humankind could be capable of such evils.
Read more about this topic: The Fall (Albert Camus novel)
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