Albert Camus 1913–1960

French-Algerian novelist, dramatist, essayist, short story writer, journalist, and critic.

The following entry presents an overview of Camus's career through 1997. For further information on his life and works, see CLC, Volumes 1, 2, 4, 9, 11, 14, 32, 63, and 69.

INTRODUCTION

A celebrated novelist and postwar intellectual, Albert Camus is considered one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. His short novel L'etranger (1942; The Stranger) and existentialist treatise Le mythe de Sisyphe (1942; The Myth of Sisyphus) are regarded as seminal works of "absurdism," a literary philosophy founded on the belief that human existence is inherently meaningless and futile. The long essay L'homme révolté (1951; The Rebel) and subsequent novels La peste (1947; The Plague) and La chute (1956; The Fall) fortified Camus's reputation as a formidable independent thinker and uncompromising artist. Public and critical interest in his work was renewed by the posthumous publication of his unfinished novel Le premier homme (1994; The First Man). His Nobel prize-winning novels, essays, and plays evince his commitment to social justice and the possibility of moral integrity in the modern world. Once hailed as the conscience of France, Camus is an internationally renowned literary figure whose poignant metaphysical concerns and arresting prose style exert a profound influence on contemporary letters.

Biographical Information

Born in Mondovi, Algeria, a French colony in North Africa until 1962, Camus was raised in poverty by his illiterate Spanish mother. His father, an itinerant laborer of French descent, was fatally wounded in the First World War before Camus reached his first birthday. In 1914 Camus moved with his brother and emotionally detached mother into a small apartment in Algiers which they shared with his uncle and grandmother. The adverse circumstances of his upbringing forged a lasting respect for his hardworking mother and the plight of the underprivileged. With the encouragement of Louis Germain, an elementary school teacher who early recognized Camus's abilities, he won a competitive grant to enter the Grand Lycée in Paris in 1924. At the Grand Lycée, Camus's intellectual mentor was philosophy teacher Jean Grenier, whom he later studied under at the University of Algiers. Shortly before enrolling at the University of Algiers at age sixteen, Camus suffered a near fatal bout with tuberculosis,

Albert Camus 1913–1960

a chronic illness whose physical and emotional effects haunted him for the remainder of his life. After a period of convalescence, he began studies in philosophy and literature at the University of Algiers, from which he graduated in 1936. While still a student, Camus married briefly and divorced; he remarried Francine Faure in 1940. Camus became increasingly involved in political activities during the 1930s. He joined the Communist Party in 1935, though resigned his membership in 1937 over ideological differences. He published his first two books, L'envers et l'endroit (1937; The Right Side and the Wrong Side) and Noces (1937; Nuptials), the same year. He also wrote and abandoned his first novel La morte heureuse (1971; A Happy Death). Between 1935 and 1938, Camus was active as an actor, writer, and producer with Theatre du travail (Labor Theater), renamed Theatre de I'equipe (Team Theater) after he abandoned the Communist Party. During the Second World War, Camus wrote The Myth of Sisyphus and The Stranger while living in France and Algeria. He also wrote for Combat, the clandestine newspaper of the French Resistance, through which he met existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Upon the Allied liberation of Paris in 1944, Camus was awarded the Medal of the Liberation. Acclaim for The Stranger and his contributions to Combat, which he presided over as editor until 1947, quickly established Camus as a foremost French writer and intellectual of the postwar period. Over the next decade he produced The Plague, The Rebel, and dramatic works including Caligula (1944), Le malentendu (1944; The Misunderstanding), L'etat de siege (1948; The State of Siege), and Les justes (1949; The Just Assassins). During the 1950s, Camus's disdain for Soviet communism precipitated his highly publicized estrangement from Sartre and other Left Bank intellectuals. Camus's passivity during the Algerian struggle for independence also drew heavy criticism that damaged his reputation and plunged him into depression and writer's block. Despite such setbacks, he produced The Fall, the collection of essays L'eté (1954; Resistance, Rebellion, and Death), and the volume of short stories L'exil et le royaume (1957; Exile and the Kingdom). Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. Three years later he was killed in an automobile accident near Paris. The manuscript for The First Man was found in his briefcase at the site of the wreck.

Major Works

Camus's fiction, discursive writings, and dramatic works revolve around the central themes of existential alienation, moral dilemma, and revolt. His first novel, A Happy Death, and early autobiographic essays in The Right Side and the Wrong Side and Nuptials adumbrate the lucidity, irony, and lyrical quality of his subsequent works. The Right Side and the Wrong Side, considered a pivotal early text, sheds light on Camus's experience with poverty and his relationship with his silent mother. His most important works are contained in two triptychs, each comprised of a novel, essay, and play. The first grouping, often referred to as the "cycle of the absurd," includes The Myth of Sisyphus, The Stranger, and Caligula. In the philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus examines the fundamental paradoxes of the human condition as evidence of the absurd. The title refers to Sisyphus of Greek legend who was condemned to repeatedly roll a massive stone up a hill only to roll it back down after reaching the crest. Dismissing suicide as a viable response to such futility, Camus suggests that consciousness of the absurd and vigilant resistance to its terms may facilitate the formation of personal identity and value. The Stranger, a novel set in Camus's native Algeria, features protagonist Meursault, a French-Algerian youth who impulsively guns down an Arab man on the beach while overcome by the blinding sun. Arrested, jailed, tried, and sentenced to death, Meursault begins to reflect on his actions and the absurdity of his situation. Emotionless over the recent death of his mother and unrepentant for the murder, Meursault welcomes his fate and resigns himself to his execution in open defiance of society and its imposed morality. In the play Caligula, Camus portrays the eponymous Roman emperor's tyrannical quest for unbridled individual freedom. Stunned at the death of his sister, who is also his lover, Caligula becomes cognizant of the absurdity of life, whereupon he initiates an orgy of random rapes, murders, and punishments to act out his disillusionment. In The Misunderstanding, another significant play from this period, Camus presents a variation of the Oedipus myth in which a man is mistakenly murdered by his mother and sister. Camus's second major triad, unified by the theme of revolt, includes The Plague, The Just Assassins, and The Rebel, The Plague recounts the impact of a fictitious epidemic on the populace of Oran, a city in Algeria. The protagonist and narrator is Dr. Bernard Rieux, a secular physician committed to the systematic treatment of the afflicted. His spiritual foil is Father Paneloux, a Jesuit priest who appeals to divine intervention and the promise of salvation. Though the pestilence is eventually brought under control by a medical, or human, solution, their cooperative effort suggests the importance of fraternity and courage in the face of oppression. Regarded as a allegory of the Nazi Occupation of France during the Second World War, the novel illustrates the imperative of revolt against agents of persecution. The Just Assassins dramatizes the human cost of political violence in the service of ideology or expediency. The play centers upon Kalayiev, an idealistic poet and revolutionary who volunteers to throw a bomb at the Grand Duke in a planned assassination. However, when he notices the Duke's niece and nephew beside him in the carriage, he changes his mind, realizing that for this act he would be a murderer rather than a "just assassin." Camus elucidates the history and varieties of revolution in The Rebel, an extended essay in which he attempts to formulate the ethical conditions for revolt free of murder or malefaction. Opposing the nihilistic, violent tendencies of mass revolutions, Camus concludes that the individual must revolt against injustice by simply refusing to be a part of it. Camus's last novels, though extensions of earlier investigations, reveal a new vitality and theological interest. The novel The Fall presents the enigmatic, hypocritical confessions of Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a successful trial lawyer who, through rambling, self-mocking conversation with an interlocutor, excoriates himself for his perversity and numerous transgressions. The title refers to his guilt at having once failed to rescue a drowning woman. In his unfinished novel The First Man, Camus began to reconstruct the story of his life in the experiences of autobiographic protagonist Jacques Cormery. The existing narrative, a fragmentary account of Jacques's childhood, reveals Camus's deeply personal search for self-identity and connection with his prematurely deceased father.

Critical Reception

Camus is widely recognized as one of the most provocative and enduring literary figures of the postwar period. He is consistently praised for his perceptive evocation of metaphysical despair, the stark intensity and natural imagery of his lyrical prose, and his unequivocal condemnation of political tyranny. A preeminent absurdist writer who captured the moral climate of his generation, Camus defined the philosophical and artistic sensibility of many contemporary authors, especially those affiliated with the Theatre of the Absurd during the 1950s and 1960s. His popular association with existentialism, a classification that he dismissed, is traced to the philosophical legacy of Fydor Dostoyevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Soren Kierkegaard. While The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus are viewed as his greatest accomplishments, Camus is also highly regarded for The Plague, The Fall, and his examination of revolution in The Rebel. Critics note that The First Man, though incomplete, is further evidence of Camus's remarkable sensitivity and narrative gifts. Caligula and The Misunderstanding are generally considered Camus's most effective plays, however, his dramatic works as a whole are typically viewed as secondary to his novels and essays. The Stranger, his best known work and a brilliant study of modern alienation, continues to attract rigorous critical scrutiny directed at the moral and psychological motivations of its protagonist, particularly as informed by Camus's aversion to capital punishment and his relationship with his mother. Critics frequently comment on the significance of Camus's early poverty and the Algerian landscape in this and all his writings. Though Camus enjoyed a mercurial rise, he became the subject of ridicule following his notorious break with Sartre, intensified by his neutrality during the Franco-Algerian war. Camus's detractors, especially those allied with Sartre, cite egregious elements of political naivete, moral intransigence, and philosophical amateurism in his writing. Despite such criticism, Camus's literary reputation rests largely upon the power of his prose, his unshakable commitment to his art, and his compelling effort to fashion meaning out the absurd.

It is hard to say if this sermon had any effect on our townsfolk. M. Othon, the magistrate, assured Dr. Rieux that he had found the preacher's arguments "absolutely irrefutable." But not everybody took so unqualified a view. To some the sermon simply brought home the fact that they had been sentenced, for an unknown crime, to an indeterminate period of punishment. And while a good many people adapted themselves to confinement and carried on their humdrum lives as before, there were others who rebelled and whose one idea now was to break loose from the prison-house.

French writer and thinker; b. Algiers. His belief in the absurdity of the human condition identified him with EXISTENTIALISM, but his courageous humanism distinguished him from that group. The characters in his novels and plays, although keenly aware of the meaninglessness of the human condition, assert their humanity by rebelling against their circumstances. Camus was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in literature.

Camus was a French philosophical novelist and essayist who was also a prose poet and the conscience of his times. He was born and raised in Algeria, and his experiences as a fatherless, tubercular youth, as a young playwright and journalist in Algiers, and later in the anti-German resistance in Paris during World War II informed everything he wrote. His best-known writings are not overtly political; his most famous works, the novel The Stranger (written in 1940, published in 1942) and his book-length essay The Myth of Sisyphus (written in 1941, published in 1943) explore the notion of "the absurd," which Camus alternatively describes as the human condition and as "a widespread sensitivity of our times." The absurd, briefly defined, is the confrontation with ourselves--with our demands for rationality and justice--and an "indifferent universe." Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods to the endless, futile task of rolling a rock up a mountain (whence it would roll back down of its own weight), this becomes an exemplar of the human condition, struggling hopelessly and pointlessly to achieve something. The odd antihero of The Stranger, on the other hand, unconsciously accepts the absurdity of life. He makes no judgments, accepts the most repulsive characters as his freinds and neighbors, and remains unmoved by the death of his mother and his own killing of a man. Facing execution for his crime, he "opens his heart to the benign indifference of the universe."

But such stoic acceptance is not the message of Camus' philosophy. Sisyphus thrives (he is even "happy") by virtue of his scorn and defiance of the gods, and by virtue of a "rebellion" that refuses to give in to despair. This same theme motivates Camus' later novel, The Plague (1947), and his long essay The Rebel (1951). In his last work, however, a novel called The Fall published in 1956, the year before he won the Nobel prize for literature, Camus presents an unforgettably perverse character named Jean-Baptiste Clamence, who exemplifies all the bitterness and despair rejected by his previous characters and in his earlier essays. Clamence, like the character in The Stranger, refuses to judge people, but whereas Meursault (the "stranger") is incapable of judgment, Clamence (who was once a lawyer) makes it a matter of philosophical principle, "for who among us is innocent?" It is unclear where Camus' thinking was heading when he was killed in an automobile accidence (with his publisher, who walked away unharmed).

(Excerpt from Robert Audi, ed., The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 1995). Other Pages and Sources
Some time ago there were few, if any pages on Albert Camus. Now, however, there are some good ones.

Born: November 7, 1913 in Mondovi, Algeria
Died: January 4, 1960 in an automobile accident

After winning a degree in philosophy, he worked at various jobs, ending up in journalism. In the 1930s, he ran a theatrical company, and during WWII was active in the French Resistance, editing an important underground paper, Combat.

Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times". A copy of his acceptance speech is available on line from the Nobel web site, as is a more detailed biography.

(Note: All the following titles were written and originally published in French.)

The Stranger (1946)
In the story of an ordinary man who unwittingly gets drawn into a senseless murder on a sun-drenched Algerian beach, Camus was exploring what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."

The Plague (1948)
A parable of the highest order, The Plague tells the story of a terrible disease that descends upon Oran, Algiers, in a year unknown. After rats crawl from the sewer to die in the streets, people soon begin perishing from terrible afflictions. How the main characters in the book--a journalist, a doctor and a priest--face humanity in the wake of the plague presents one of the book's many lessons. The book deserves to be read on several levels, because the pandemic in The Plague represents any of a number of worldwide catastrophes--both past and future--and the difficult choices everyone must make to survive them.

The Fall (1957)
In a shady bar in Amsterdam, the man who does the talking in The Fall is indulging in a calculated confession. He recalls his past life as a Parisian lawyer, a pleader of noble causes, secure in his self esteem, privately a libertine, yet apparently immune to judgement. The irony of the recital predicts the downfall. Inescapable, it comes in the narrator's intense discovery, in the space of one terrible and unforgettable instant, that no man is innocent and no man therefore judge others from a standpoint of righteousness.

A Happy Death (1972)
Through young Patrice, the protagonist, the reader feels in touch with the young Camus--his joy in the sea, sun, his native Algeria, his relationships with women, his need of them and detachment from them, the intense alienation he experienced as a traveler in Central Europe. And it is from his early intimations of death, movingly evoked, that the novel draws its theme--how one is to live in order to have the right death.

The First Man (1995)
"All honor to Catherine Camus for offering us this invaluable glimpse into the life and art of a writer who may have been greater than we knew then or can know even now." Camus' unfinished novel, found in the wreckage of the car crash in which its Nobel Prize-winning author perished in 1960, has finally made its way to readers. An autobiographical novel, it is generally thought that had he lived, Camus, an intensely private man, would have revised the novel to reveal less of himself, about which Newsweek says, "The ironic bright spot in the otherwise tragic circumstances of his death is that he never got the chance. The First Man, incomplete and raw, is fine just the way it is."

Who retained the copyrights to Mr. Camus' works? From what I've been able to find out, his son and daughter do. To contact either of them, write them at Camus' publishers:

The First Man by Albert Camus, Sarah Burnes (Editor), David Hapgood (Translator), Catherine Camus

Notebooks 1935-1951 by Albert Camus, Philip Malcolm Waller Thody, Justin O'Brien

“…Camus is one of the most representative men of our time. What troubled him has troubled and continues to trouble us.”[1] Many critics concur with the foregoing statement and consider that Albert Camus has importance as a spokesman for the conscience of our era, as well as for his artistic creations. Camus was one of the foremost members of the generation of French writers which includes such men as Sartre and Malraux. These writers consider themselves “engagés” or committed to the issues of their time as well as to their art, and cannot envision one separated from the other.

Camus’ philosophic, political and social ideas are thus an integral part of each of his literary works and are reflected also in his long journalistic career. His commitment does not, however, lead him to neglect in any way his absorption with his art, and it is always with a high degree of technical skill and uniqueness of style that his ideas find embodiment in literary form. He was constantly experimenting with different genres. His legacy to us appears as essay, drama, short story, novelette and what he terms a “récit” as in The Plague.

It may be argued that all philosophers are artists to a certain degree, but not as regards accessibility to the general reader. It is always interesting to study the fusion of philosophic though with successful artistic expression such as one finds in Camus. The evolution of this thought can be traced through his works. The basic tenet of The Myth of Sisyphus, that of the absurd sensitivity, remains unchanged. What evolved was Camus’ concept of a morality for our times.

Before turning to The Plague and The Fall, it is perhaps worthwhile to summarize the ideas which Camus presents in The Myth of Sisyphus, since they are the background of both works. Camus does not pretend to present a metaphysical system in this essay. His intellectual modesty limits him to “deal with an absurd sensitivity that can be found widespread in the age . . . There will be found here merely the description, in the pure state, of an intellectual malady.[2] The recognition that the world is absurd, that true knowledge is impossible and that man is a stranger suffering anxiety in the face of nothingness, is an awareness that Camus shares with many other thinkers. What he stresses, however, is that the absurd is primarily “the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.”[3] How can this call be answered? For Camus, only by acceptance of the absurd and the decision to live without hope, without appeal either to religion or ideology. He proposes a total rejection of all the abstractions that man has been asked to serve in the attempt to escape the ultimate absurdity of man in his world. Instead, man is left with his only certainty, himself, and by extension, other men, in the present. He must take up the challenge of the absurd to his humanity: “At last man will again find there the wine of the absurd and the bread of indifference on which he feeds his greatness. . .”[4]

Philosophically, then, man can only adopt the position which Camus terms revolt: “a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity.”[5] From this, Camus derives the only morality possible in this scheme of things, and ethic of quantity, not of quality. This is a highly individualistic morality which Camus continually redefines throughout his later works so that this originally hedonistic approach becomes a deeply humanistic one which seeks true justice for all men in their day-to-day existence. Man’s potential nobility is indicated in Camus’ description of Sisyphus, “the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing.”[6] Camus’ attempts to give literary life to the absurd hero via his fictional characters. Some aspects of this hero appear in Meursault of The Stranger, but a more direct descendant of Sisyphus is found in Dr. Rieux, the main character in The Plague. This latter book also provides, in concrete terms, an example of the morality accessible to the absurd man.

The form of the myth, with its symbolic nature, appealed greatly to Camus and the art forms of antiquity had a strong influence on his thought and aesthetic. The Plague is a myth of modern times; the dreadful disease itself is symbolic on two levels. “When the book first appeared in 1947, most French critics greeted it as an allegorical presentation . . .of the particular experience of the German Occupation.”[7] There is much in Camus’ life and in the book itself to support the narrow symbolism, but, as with all great artistic creations, it rises above its immediate associations and offers a timeless portrait of humanity in the face of life’s disasters, whether man-made or external in nature. The identity of the plague itself is secondary, beyond the fact that it exists; it is man’s reaction that is at issue.

The setting of the book is in Oran, a city of Camus’ beloved North Africa. The atmosphere plays an important role in the imagery of the narration. This is a treeless, barren city, set against the rocks and the sea. The sun, the heat, the wind, and the changing seasons reflect the various stages of the plague. The people of Oran are much like people everywhere, with their narrow visions and their bourgeois values. Camus stresses “the banal aspect of the city and its life.”[8]

The dying rats which indicate the coming of the plague are ignored by these people of little imagination. Even the full onslaught of the disease finds a reluctant acceptance on the part of the citizens and their municipal representatives. It is weeks before effective resistance is organized. The progress of the disease itself is described mainly in subjective terms rather than in objective medical descriptions. It is here that the general symbolism of the plague must be understood. The major effects of this allegorical plague which has isolated the city from the outside world are the feelings of separation, exile and futility among the victims. In the face of this general disaster, individual love loses its primary force. The citizens of Oran eventually feel the unifying impact of the plague, but many also come to an acceptance of suffering as a mode of life. These are the aspects that concern Camus. It is only in the episode of the death of the child that the physical rises to the fore, and then only to show the final absurdity of the suffering of the innocent.

All of this is seen through the eyes of the narrator, Dr. Rieux, who describes himself early in the book as “a man who was weary of the world in which he lived; who had, however, a liking for his fellow human beings and had decided, for his own part, to have nothing to do with injustice and compromise.”[9] As a doctor, Rieux is brought into close contact with all aspects of the plague and is forced to see the futility of most of his medical efforts to win against this enemy. His recognition of this futility does not lead him to relax his efforts or seek consolation in the eternal, the choice represented by the Jesuit Paneloux. With the lucidity of the absurd man, he faces a creation which he cannot accept and his revolt consists of his determination to struggle against pestilence. “It was necessary to fight in one way or another and not to fall to one’s knees. The entire issue was to prevent the greatest possible number of people from dying and thus knowing the final exile.”[10] Rieux is a compassionate man, but he must learn to stifle his feelings of pity and his personal suffering because of his wife who is dying in a distant sanatorium. Pestilence overwhelms all, and in his unspeakable weariness he is left only with the “blind stubbornness which, in our hearts, was then the replacement for love.”[11] Thus revolt is seen as the ultimate moral value. Rieux, in a moment of anger with Father Paneloux, avows “I shall refuse until the day of my death to love this world in which children are tortured.”[12]

The other value which Rieux as Camus’ spokesman acknowledges is represented by the character of Rambert, a journalist who finds himself trapped in Oran by the plague, isolated from his home in Paris and from his beloved. Rambert sees human love and happiness as the greatest of life’s values, and struggles desperately to escape from the closed city to rejoin his love. The descriptions of isolation and exile reach their peak in the narration of Rambert’s efforts. Rieux accepts the validity of Rambert’s belief that love is all important, but only for Rambert. Each man has his own truth for Rieux, his truth is that he must perform his job. Rambert, through the unifying force of human suffering, eventually comes to identify with the people of this city in which he formerly considered himself a stranger. He joins in one of the sanitary teams which have been organized by private individuals to combat the plague. With the end of the plague, Rambert is reunited with his beloved one; the wife of Rieux has died. Earthly happiness is obtainable, though only sometimes, and is important to man in his sphere of possibilities. It is when man looks beyond the realm of man himself that he is doomed to have no answer to his questions.

The picture of man in isolation, with or without a state of pestilence, is most vividly portrayed in the character of Grand. The need for human communication and affection is poignantly shown in the figure of this obscure, limited man whom Rieux describes as the true hero of his narration. His heroism consists of his innate humanity which leads him to perform without reflection those commonplace aspects of the work of the sanitary teams which lie within his capabilities. Grand reserves for himself, however, certain hours of the evening which he devotes to his life’s most important work. He is writing a novel. Though he has produced many pages of manuscript he has not as yet progressed beyond the first sentence. The search for the exact word that will be the true expression of his thoughts haunts his every moment. This barrier of words hinders him in his conversations with his friends and was the cause, long before, of his wife leaving him. “As long as we were in love, we understood one another without words. But people are not in love all the time. There came a time when I should have found the words that would have kept her with me, but I wasn’t able to.”[13] In Camus’ play The Misunderstanding the failure to speak out cost a man his life. In the case of Grand, his silence made him lose forever that which could have given his life some meaning.

When Grand is stricken with the plague it is of Jeanne that he thinks, of the letter he never wrote, the novel that will never be finished. And Rieux, witnessing the tears of this old man, feels a profound sorrow and sympathy which months of fighting the plague had seemingly stifled within him. “Rieux knew exactly what the old man was thinking of as he cried, and he himself shared the same thought, that a world without love was a dead world, and that there always comes a time when a person becomes weary of prisons, of performing one’s duty and of courage, and needs only the face of another human being and the wonder of a loving heart.[14] Grand recovers from his sickness and begins anew in perfecting his opening phrase, in searching for meaning.

The enigmatic figure of Tarrou carries part of the thread of the narration. He, like Rambert, is not a native of the town of Oran, and has come there somewhat in the character of a pilgrim, seeking an inner peace. Whereas Rieux has observed men and seen them bound to one another by suffering, Tarrou has found them linked by a universal guilt. Life has taught him that all men are carriers of the plague, and that it is only by an extraordinary effort of will that one can refuse to do harm to one’s fellow creatures. His personal exile is a result of this, and his own hard-learned truth is this: “I can only say that there are on this earth pestilences and victims, and I must, as much as is possible, refuse to be on the side of the pestilence.”[15] He adds a third category, that of the true healers, but since it is so difficult to belong to this category, he chooses to align himself with the victims and, by means of human sympathy, attain peace of mind. He is, however, hoping to enter the third category: “To put it bluntly, the thing that interests me is to know how one can become a saint,”[16] but a saint without God. Tarrou’s courageous efforts to combat the plague are similar to those of Rieux, despite different motivations. He maintains his personal vigilance over his actions until the final moment of his death, as the plague’s last victim. Many of Camus’ own strongly felt ideas against bourgeois justice and the innate lack of mercy in contemporary revolutionary ideologies are expressed via Tarrou.

The tone of The Plague is somber, and yet contains a great deal of human warmth. Each of the major characters presents a separate truth which, for him, is valid. The overall result is a morality of the possible, a limited morality that is based on man and is for man. The lesson of The Plague is a ray of light in the absurd world, that “There are more things to admire in men than to despise.”[17]

A storm of controversy arose among the French critics of the Right and Left when The Plague appeared in 1947. Its artistic merits were not disputed, but rather its political intention. Some accused Camus of an inaccurate portrayal of the Resistance movement, while others condemned in The Plague its plea for moderation and its anti-revolutionary nature.[18] Eventually Camus was to disassociate himself completely from the political and literary figures of his generation, for reasons which find some of their expression in The Plague. He was also to run his immense artistic talents against these modern intellectuals and supposedly progressive social thinkers in his ironic novelette, The Fall.

There are several points of connection between The Plague and The Fall. In both works, the reader finds the same sensitive use of background to evoke mood. A similarity exists in the existential condition of loneliness and isolation that is man’s lot in this world without transcendental hopes. The character of Tarrou in The Plague, who had made the discovery of the universal guilt of each isolated man, is mirrored in the person of Jean-Baptiste Clamence of The Fall, though each reacts to this awareness in a distinctly different manner. Camus uses the characters in both novels as spokesmen for some of his personal ideas and feelings, but with a different general interest.

It is the areas of contrast that are the most striking, however. The Fall, in presenting one man’s reaction to his inner discovery by way of a monologue, cannot be compared in scope to the panorama of possible reactions presented in the longer book, The Plague. The tone of The Fall is extremely ironic throughout, except when Clamence is expressing certain of Camus’ own views, such as his interpretation of Christ or his condemnation of bourgeois conformity. This difference of tone is further underlined by the bleak, fog-bound world of Amsterdam, whose “concentric canals resemble the circles of hell”[19] and where Clamence and his listener find themselves within the inner circle.

Jean-Baptiste Clamence describes himself to his listener: “My profession is double, like the human being. I have already told you, I am a judge-penitent.”[20] In various stages, he explains how he has arrived at this profession, which he practices in a bar, among society’s outcasts. Formerly, he had been an eminent Parisian lawyer, supremely satisfied with his own virtuous nature and hedonistic mode of life. His many-faceted relations with people were all on a superficial level and he considered himself vastly superior to all. “I felt like a king’s son, or a burning bush . . . personally marked out, among all, for that long and uninterrupted success.”[21] The sense of personal freedom which accompanies his feelings of uniqueness is complete. “The judge punished and the defendants expiated, while I, free of any duty, shielded from judgment as from penalty, I freely held sway bathed in a light as of Eden.”[22]

His fall from his summit is a gradual one, the beginnings of self-doubt taking the form of a distant laughter and an awareness of an inner anger in the episode with the cyclist. “…I discovered in myself sweet dreams of oppression.”[23] His failure to react to the cries of the drowning woman marks the final stage in this philosophic metamorphosis from certainty to doubt. His discovery is a dual one: all men bear a universal guilt, and all men seek to avoid judgment and proclaim their innocence to the world.

Clamence’s reaction to his discovery took many forms. He tried to destroy his image of perfection before others. Love, chastity and debauchery were other manners of escape from this new image of himself, but were unsuccessful. Eventually, he adopts his career of judge-penitent, and succeeds in avoiding his guilt. By proclaiming his complicity in the evils of the world, he causes his listener to realize that he, too, shares the guilt of Clamence. Then Clamence himself is once again in a position to judge. He has also regained the summit from which he once dominated, and again feels his God-like nature, through his ability to enslave others through their feelings of guilt. Unlike Tarrou, Clamence’s awareness does not lead him to any feelings of compassion for his fellow man. His chosen path is one marked by a lack of commitment; his isolation is as complete as before. The final picture is of a rather pathetic man, protesting his happiness while dreaming of the sunny climes of his youth.

There are those critics who see in The Fall a suggestion of the eventual conversion of Camus to orthodox religion. “Here is an obvious analogue on the Christian doctrine of the Fall of Man . . . Perhaps Camus’ The Fall is a new confessional for us to set by our prayer books.”[24] This is an obviously pious bourgeois statement, made possible by the early death of Camus, that shows a complete lack of understanding of the writer and of the book. First of all, the theme of universal guilt which Clamence expounds is not a tenet held solely by Christian thinkers. It is an integral conception of many modern humanistic philosophies and has scientific exponents as well. Robert Ardrey in African Genesis presents an evolutionary picture of the animal man, innately aggressive and predatory, the opposite of the Rousseauian ‘noble savage’ concept. Secondly, Camus does not identify with Clamence in The Fall and does not sympathize with his resolution of the problem. The tone of irony which prevails throughout the book is entirely missed by those who would equate Camus with Clamence. They share many observations and generalizations on society in common, but the dividing line is clear to one who knows Camus’ positions.

A more valid interpretation of The Fall is one which includes Camus’ reaction to his contemporaries in political thought and action. The ‘absurd sensitivity’ which he described in The Myth of Sisyphus allied him with the existentialists and other atheistic thinkers, but he declined to follow them in their political paths. These lead, in his opinion, to nihilism and what he termed the abstraction of Hegelian-Marxism. He could not justify in his mind either the sacrifice of any individual for some future good, or the freeing of man from one type of shackles only to present him with others. When Clamence says: “The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone. As it is not so easy as the detective novels might lead one to believe, one generally relies on politics and joins the cruelest party”[25] – it is Camus who is giving his impression of the thinkers of his intellectual circle.

Emmet Parker presents this view of The Fall quite convincingly to those who are aware of the ironies of the novel. “Jean-Baptiste Clamence, rather than being a modern John the Baptist clamens in deserto as many critics have thought, comes nearer to being a satirical portrait of left-wing intellectuals as Camus saw them, lost in the nihilistic desert of twentieth century ideologies, led astray by their own systematic abstractions . . . La Chute further suggests the immobility into which Camus felt the progressist intellectuals had drifted as a consequence of their exaggerated sense of guilt and responsibility.”[26] Like Clamence, all they seem to do is talk.

The Fall is a book which lends itself to being re-read. Nuances of thought and several excellent examples of Camus’ humor make this possible, as well as the ambiguity of interpretation discussed above. Artistically, Camus’ handling of the monologue and the flashback without losing the reader’s attention is admirable. His use of atmosphere, unobtrusive symbolism and deftly handled foreshadowing show his technical mastery.

Looking at The Plague and The Fall together, one cannot help but feel admiration for Camus as an artist. In The Plague, however, one admires him most as a man.

Camus, Albert, La Peste, Gallimard, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1947.

Clurman, H., “Substance of Spirit,” Nation, November 1, 1965, 201:310-311.

Killinger, John, “Existentialism and Human Freedom”, The English Journal, May 1961, Volume L, Number 5, 303-313.

Parker, Emmett, Albert Camus: The Artist in the Arena, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison and Milwaukee, 1965.

[Teacher’s comments: A very interesting, valid and well done paper. Certainly of graduate quality. A.]

[1] H. Clurman, “Substance of Spirit”, Nation, November 1, 1965, 201:310

[2] Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, Vintage Books, New York, 1961, p. 2

[7] Philip Thody, Albert Camus: 1913-1960, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1961, p. 99

[8] Albert Camus, La Peste, Gallimard, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1947, p. 7 (all quotations from La Peste translated by J. Johnson)

[19] Albert Camus, The Fall, Vintage Books, New York, 1956, p. 14

[24] John Killinger, “Existentialism and Human Freedom”, The English Journal, May 1961, Volume L, No. 5, p. 312

[26] Emmet Parker, Albert Camus: The Artist in the Arena, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison and Milwaukee, 1965, p. 160

Albert Camus(1913—60)

THEATER REVIEW OF ALBERT CAMUS' [MISUNDERSTANDING]:
A Cry for Humanity in the Carnage of War

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The Existential Primer

The Absurd Man

Between Yes and No

Ephemeral Creation

The Minotaur

Albert Camus 1913–1960

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