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Albert Camus ' The Fall

Decent Essays

Albert Camus is known all over the world as a French philosopher who contributed to the ideas of absurdism. He is also known for his philosophical literature. More specifically I want to focus my attention to what some people may call a book that influenced many generations. This name of the book is called “The Fall”. In this book, the reader views a different perspective of life from a character called monsieur Jean-Baptiste Clamence. Through this character Camus challenges the reader to look through this lenses to see aspects of our culture that exemplify Clamence’s observations. These observations project back to the reader alienation from culture, conflictions, needs and wants. This could also lead back to Camus’s absurdist ideas because it represents a balancing of our pleasure and guilt. We can feel on top of the world with our privileged lives but how could we be happy when we know that others in the world are less fortunate? To go even further, Camus’s ideas through monsieur Clamence concludes that goodness is impossible to preserve, and in the absence of an objective truth or law, self-satisfaction is the primary driver behind our illusory happiness. In the novel, Clamence repeatedly claims that he likes to be above and in control of the people and the situations he finds himself in. So he moved to a place in the lowlands of Holland, humanity’s animalistic and primitive instincts are let loose. This is the place where Clamence finds his truth, by revealing the

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