Abstract

What is Hell? Here is one answer: five straight days of conversation with a garrulous, narcissistic, rather depraved lawyer. This is the text, in fact the entire content, of Camus's brilliant quasi-religious novel, The Fall. The book has been read as a meditation on the "deadly" sin of pride, introducing a host of ethical and theological questions. I interpret the book as the story of a virtuous, contented, vulnerable man who is struck down by his own mistaken self-reflection and then forced to re-establish his superiority by way of the resentment that replaces his pride.