Set in Amsterdam, The Fall consists of a series of dramatic monologues by the self-proclaimed "judge-penitent" Jean-Baptiste Clamence, as he reflects upon his life to a stranger.

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.

(Camus 23)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 nightly, and where the bulk of his narrative gradually unfolds.

)[2] 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.

[citation needed] The novel opens with Clamence sitting in the bar Mexico City casually talking to a stranger (potentially meant as a stand in for the reader) about the proper way to order a drink; for here, despite the cosmopolitan nature of Amsterdam, the bartender refuses to respond to anything other than Dutch.

Thus, Clamence serves as interpreter and he and the stranger, having discovered that they are fellow compatriots who, moreover, both hail from Paris, begin discussing more substantive matters.

The vast majority of his work centred around "widow and orphan" cases, that is, the poor and disenfranchised who otherwise would be unable to provide themselves with a proper defence before the law.

In short, Clamence conceived of himself as living purely for the sake of others and "achieving more than the vulgar ambitious man and rising to that supreme summit where virtue is its own reward" (Camus 288).

Late one night when crossing the Pont Royal on his way home from his "mistress", however, Clamence comes across a woman dressed in black leaning over the edge of the bridge.

Several years after the apparent suicide of the woman off the Pont Royal — and an evidently successful effort to purge the entire event from his memory — Clamence is on his way home one autumn evening after a particularly pleasing day of work.

The day had been good: a blind man, the reduced sentence I had hoped for, a cordial handclasp from my client, a few generous actions and, in the afternoon, a brilliant improvisation in the company of several friends on the hard-handedness of our governing class and the hypocrisy of our leaders.

That evening on the Pont des Arts represents, for Clamence, the collision of his true self with his inflated self-image, and the final realization of his own hypocrisy becomes painfully obvious.

One day while waiting at a stoplight, Clamence finds that he is trapped behind a motorcycle which has stalled ahead of him and is unable to proceed once the light changes to green as a result.

This realization precipitates an emotional and intellectual crisis for Clamence which, moreover, he is unable to avoid, having now discovered it; the sound of laughter that first struck him on the Pont des Arts slowly begins to permeate his entire existence.

Clamence proceeds to "destroy that flattering reputation" (Camus 326) primarily by making public comments that he knows will be received as objectionable: telling beggars that they are "embarrassing people," declaring his regret at not being able to hold serfs and beat them at his whim, and announcing the publication of a "manifesto exposing the oppression that the oppressed inflict on decent people."

In fact, Clamence even goes so far as to consider jostling the blind on the street; and from the secret, unexpected joy this gave me I recognized how much a part of my soul loathed them; I planned to puncture the tyres of wheelchairs, to go and shout 'lousy proletarian' under the scaffoldings on which labourers were working, to smack infants in the subway.

(Camus 325)To Clamence's frustration and dismay, however, his efforts in this regard are ineffective, generally because many of the people around him refuse to take him seriously; they find it inconceivable that a man of his reputation could ever say such things and not be joking.

Debauchery (women and alcohol) does prove a temporarily effective means of silencing the laughter—the biting sense of his own hypocrisy—because, as he explains, it thoroughly dulls his wits.

Unfortunately, he finds himself unable to maintain this lifestyle due to personal failings that he describes as follows: "...my liver and an exhaustion so terrible that it still has not left me (?)"

The last of Clamence's monologues takes place in his apartment in the (former) Jewish Quarter, and recounts more specifically the events which shaped his current outlook; in this regard his experiences during the Second World War are crucial.

But after the Allies land in Africa, Clamence is arrested by the Germans and thrown into a concentration camp — "chiefly [as] a security measure," he assures himself (Camus 343).

While interned, Clamence meets a comrade, introduced to the reader only as "Du Guesclin", who had fought in the Spanish Civil War, was captured by "the Catholic general", and now found himself in the hands of the Germans in Africa.

These experiences subsequently caused the man to lose his faith in the Catholic Church (and perhaps in God as well); as a form of protest Du Guesclin announces the need for a new Pope — one who will "agree to keep alive, in himself and in others, the community of our sufferings" — to be chosen from among the prisoners in the camp.

As a result of being selected to lead a group of prisoners as "Pope," Clamence is afforded certain powers over them, such as how to distribute food and water and deciding who will do what kind of work.

This essentially espouses a doctrine of relinquished freedom as a method of enduring the suffering imposed on us by virtue of living in a world without objective truth and one that is therefore, ultimately meaningless.

The novel ends on a sinister note: "Pronounce to yourself the words that years later haven't ceased to resound through my nights, and which I will speak at last through your mouth: "O young girl, throw yourself again into the water so that I might have a second time the chance to save the two of us!"