Editing The Fall (Camus novel) (section)

=== Crisis ===
Clamence initially attempts to resist the sense that he has lived hypocritically and selfishly. He argues with himself over his prior acts of kindness, but quickly discovers that this is an argument he cannot win. He reflects, for example, that whenever he had helped a blind man across the street—something he especially enjoyed doing—he would doff his hat to the man. Since the blind man obviously cannot see this acknowledgement, Clamence asks, "To whom was it addressed? To the public. After playing my part, I would take my bow" (Camus 301). As a result, he comes to see himself as duplicitous and hypocritical.

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. In fact, Clamence even begins laughing at himself as he defends matters of justice and fairness in court. Unable to ignore it, Clamence attempts to silence the laughter by throwing off his hypocrisy and ruining the reputation he acquired therefrom.

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

{{cquote|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. ... the very word 'justice' gave me strange fits of rage. (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. Clamence eventually realizes that his attempts at self-derision can only fail, and the laughter continues to gnaw at him. This is because his actions are just as dishonest: "In order to forestall the laughter, I dreamed of hurling myself into the general derision. In fact, it was still a question of dodging judgment. I wanted to put the laughers on my side, or at least to put myself on their side" (Camus 325).

Ultimately, Clamence responds to his emotional–intellectual crisis by withdrawing from the world on precisely those terms. He closes his law practice, avoids his former colleagues in particular and people in general, and throws himself completely into uncompromising debauchery; while humankind may be grossly hypocritical in the areas from which he has withdrawn, "no man is a hypocrite in his pleasures" (Camus 311—a quotation from [[Samuel Johnson]]). 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 (?)"