The Narrator Character Analysis in The Fall

The narrator claims to be a former lawyer, well known in Paris, who took on pro bono defense cases and engaged in other charitable works—ultimately not out of genuine moral conviction but out of egotism and a desire that others should admire him. One night after hearing mysterious laughter whose source he could not discover, the narrator began remembering unflattering and alarming incidents from his past that destroyed his elevated self-opinion. In particular, he remembered walking past a woman in black on an otherwise deserted Parisian bridge, hearing her attempt suicide by jumping into the river below the bridge, and failing to help her even after she began crying out. After this memory resurfaced, the narrator tried to escape his own crushing self-condemnation through public self-criticism, sentimental love affairs, and sexual debauchery and alcohol. He thought he had finally escaped until, one day, he mistook a piece of trash in the water for a drowning person and realized the woman in black would always haunt him. At that point, he moved to Amsterdam and decided to become a “judge-penitent,” someone who through self-aware penitence manipulates others into similar agonized confessions of unworthiness—thus allowing him to feel superior to them. Throughout the novel, the narrator engages in conversations with his unknown listener for just this manipulative purpose. Notably, all information that readers have about the narrator comes from his manipulative conversations with the listener, during which he admits to lying; for example, he introduces himself to the listener as “Jean-Baptiste-Clamence,” only to admit a little later that he invented the name. Thus, it’s unclear how much of the narrator’s story about himself is true.

The Narrator Quotes in The Fall

The The Fall quotes below are all either spoken by The Narrator or refer to The Narrator. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Anyone who has considerably meditated on man, by profession or vocation, is led to feel nostalgia for the primates. They at least don’t have any ulterior motives.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener, The Bartender

Page Number and Citation: 4

Explanation and Analysis:

Have you noticed that Amsterdam’s concentric canals resemble the circles of hell?

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener

Page Number and Citation: 14

Explanation and Analysis:

Of course, I didn’t tell you my real name.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener

Page Number and Citation: 17

Explanation and Analysis:

The feeling of the law, the satisfaction of being right, the joy of self-esteem, cher monsieur, are powerful incentives for keeping us upright or keeping us moving forward.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener

Page Number and Citation: 18–19

Explanation and Analysis:

A very Christian friend of mine admitted that one’s initial feeling on seeing a beggar approach one’s house is unpleasant. Well, with me it was worse: I used to exult.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener

Page Number and Citation: 21

Explanation and Analysis:

Even in the details of daily life, I needed to feel above. I preferred the bus to the subway, open carriages to taxis, terraces to closed-in places.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener

Page Number and Citation: 23

Explanation and Analysis:

That’s the way man is, cher monsieur. He has two faces: he can’t love without self-love.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener, The Woman in Black

Page Number and Citation: 33–34

Explanation and Analysis:

Power, on the other hand, settles everything. It took time, but we finally realized that. For instance, you must have noticed that our old Europe at last philosophizes in the right way. We no longer say as in simple times: “This is the way I think. What are your objections?” For the dialogue we have substituted the communiqué: “This is the truth,” we say. “You can discuss it as much as you want; we aren’t interested. But in a few years there’ll be the police who will show you we are right.”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener

Page Number and Citation: 45

Explanation and Analysis:

You, for instance, mon cher compatriote, stop and think of what your sign would be. You are silent? Well, you’ll tell me later on. I know mine in any case: a double face, a charming Janus, and above it the motto of the house: “Don’t rely on it.”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener

Page Number and Citation: 47

Explanation and Analysis:

Oh, I don’t know. Really, I don’t know. The next day, and the days following, I didn’t read the papers.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener, The Woman in Black

Page Number and Citation: 71

Explanation and Analysis:

I have no more friends; I have nothing but accomplices. To make up for this, their number has increased; they are the whole human race. And within the human race, you first of all. Whoever is at hand is always the first.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener

Page Number and Citation: 73

Explanation and Analysis:

To be sure, I knew my failings and regretted them. Yet I continued to forget them with a rather meritorious obstinacy. The prosecution of others, on the contrary, went on constantly in my heart. Of course—does that shock you? Maybe you think it’s not logical? But the question is not to remain logical. The question is to slip through and, above all—yes, above all, the question is to elude judgment.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener

Page Number and Citation: 76

Explanation and Analysis:

As I told you, it’s a matter of dodging judgment. Since it is hard to dodge it, tricky to get one’s nature simultaneously admired and excused, they all strive to be rich. Why? Did you ever ask yourself? For power, of course. But especially because wealth shields from immediate judgment, takes you out of the subway crowd to enclose you in a chromium-plated automobile, isolates you in huge protected lawns, Pullmans, first-class cabins.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener

Page Number and Citation: 82

Explanation and Analysis:

Then I realized, as a result of delving in my memory, that modesty helped me to sin, humility to conquer, and virtue to oppress.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener

Page Number and Citation: 84

Explanation and Analysis:

I realized likewise that it would continue to await me on seas and rivers, everywhere, in short, where lies the bitter water of my baptism.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener, The Woman in Black

Page Number and Citation: 108

Explanation and Analysis:

I had to submit and admit my guilt. I had to live in the little-ease. To be sure, you are not familiar with that dungeon-cell that was called the little-ease in the Middle Ages. In general, one was forgotten there for life. That cell was distinguished from others by ingenious dimensions. It was not high enough to stand up in nor yet wide enough to lie down in.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener, The Woman in Black

Related Symbols: The Little-Ease

Page Number and Citation: 109

Explanation and Analysis:

They have hoisted him onto a judge’s bench, in the secret of their hearts, and they smite, they judge above all, they judge in his name. He spoke softly to the adulteress: “Neither do I condemn thee!” but that doesn’t matter; they condemn without absolving anyone.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 115

Explanation and Analysis:

Justice being definitively separated from innocence—the latter on the cross and the former in the cupboard—I have the way clear to work according to my convictions.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener

Related Symbols: The Painting

Page Number and Citation: 130

Explanation and Analysis:

Alone in a forbidding room, alone in the prisoner’s box before the judges, and alone to decide in the face of oneself or in the face of others’ judgment. At the end of all freedom is a court sentence; that’s why freedom is too heavy to bear, especially when you’re down with a fever, or are distressed, or love nobody.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener

Page Number and Citation: 133

Explanation and Analysis:

Brr . . . ! The water’s so cold! But let’s not worry! It’s too late now. It will always be too late. Fortunately!

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener, The Woman in Black

Page Number and Citation: 147

Explanation and Analysis:

The Narrator Character Timeline in The Fall

The timeline below shows where the character The Narrator appears in The Fall. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

The narrator, speaking to a listener whom he calls “monsieur,” offers to order a gin on behalf... (full context)

The narrator says he himself is very inclined to make friends. He accepts the listener’s invitation to... (full context)

The bartender brings the narrator and listener gin. The narrator explains that the bartender only called him “doctor” because the... (full context)

The narrator encourages the listener to judge him by his appearance, pointing to his own ragged coat... (full context)

When the listener indicates that he’s leaving, the narrator offers to walk him back to his hotel, located near the narrator’s neighborhood, which was... (full context)

Outside, the narrator claims that the Dutch evoke his talkativeness due to their doubleness: they are businesspeople who... (full context)

At a later meeting, the narrator says that he can tell the listener what a “judge-penitent” is, but he’ll have to... (full context)

The narrator claims that he was excellently positioned for self-esteem as a lawyer. He avoided corruption, financial... (full context)

The narrator also claims that he had excellent manners. People thought he was charitable for his giving—as... (full context)

The narrator insists to the listener that his life back then was basically perfect, occasionally hedonistic, and... (full context)

The narrator suggests that, on the other hand, perhaps he is overestimating the joys of his prior... (full context)

When the listener asks the narrator about the “evening” he mentioned earlier, the narrator encourages the listener to wait and claims... (full context)

The narrator tells a story about how he had a genuinely nasty concierge. Despite the concierge’s nastiness,... (full context)

The narrator says that, on the decisive evening mentioned earlier, he was walking along the quays of... (full context)

Abruptly, the narrator promises to meet up with the listener the next day. Now, however, he has to... (full context)

The narrator tells the listener that he largely stopped thinking about the laughter after a few days—but... (full context)

The narrator claims that domination and oppression are completely natural: everyone wants to dominate someone else. Even... (full context)

The narrator claims that slavery is “inevitable” but that it’s better to pretend that it doesn’t exist... (full context)

The narrator says that he’s always been an egotistical braggart who secretly believed that he was better... (full context)

The narrator starts giving examples of what he learned when he began remembering. He describes a traffic... (full context)

The narrator adds that this incident also made him realize that he only wanted to defend guilty... (full context)

The narrator claims that though he didn’t love the women with whom he had affairs, he would... (full context)

In response to the listener’s silence, which the narrator interprets as disapproving, the narrator says that perhaps the listener will remember and recount a... (full context)

The narrator says that he has been feeling this emotion ever since one incident he remembered. Several... (full context)

The narrator praises the “quaintness” of the village on Markan Island but tells the listener that he... (full context)

The narrator claims that he knows he has no friends because when he considered dying by suicide... (full context)

As an example of his egotism, the narrator admits that even after he remembered his own faults, he tried to forget them while... (full context)

The narrator argues that people judge others to avoid being judged. All people see themselves as “innocent.”... (full context)

The narrator warns the listener not to believe anyone who asks him to be honest with them—they... (full context)

In response to something the listener says about “patience,” the narrator agrees that patience is required to await the Last Judgment—but everyone is impatient, including him,... (full context)

The narrator’s only excuse for his horrible behavior is that he isn’t truly capable of taking “human... (full context)

The narrator hypothesizes that his inability to believe in any truly serious events motivated him to try... (full context)

The narrator tells the listener that while he tried to tell himself that “Salvation” (i.e., annihilation) would... (full context)

The narrator recalls how, one day, having been invited to give a lecture to early-career lawyers, he... (full context)

The narrator tells the listener that their boat is speeding along—it only appears motionless because, on the... (full context)

The narrator explains that eventually, unable to benefit either from love or from renouncing sex, he turned... (full context)

Yet, the narrator says, when he went on an ocean-liner trip to celebrate his crisis’s end, he saw... (full context)

The narrator tells the listener that at this moment, he realized he could not avoid his fate:... (full context)

The narrator argues that God’s real purpose would be to prove innocence, not guilt, which makes religion... (full context)

As their boat comes ashore, the narrator invites the listener to accompany him home so he can finish talking. Then he asks... (full context)

The narrator claims that “he” wanted to be beloved, not to be a judge—but that while some... (full context)

The narrator notes that he and the listener have reached his home. While taking his leave, he... (full context)

When the listener arrives at the narrator’s home, the narrator explains that he’s in bed due to a fever, possibly caused by... (full context)

Apparently at the listener’s urging, the narrator begins explaining how he came to be pope of a prison camp. During the war,... (full context)

In the camp, the narrator met a religious Frenchman, whom he nicknamed “Du Guesclin.” Du Guesclin had traveled to Spain... (full context)

When Du Guesclin asked who the worst among the prisoners was, the narrator raised his hand, so Du Guesclin nominated him pope, and the other prisoners—half joking, half... (full context)

The narrator says that in telling this story, he’s had a revelation: “one must forgive the pope,”... (full context)

When the listener asks why the narrator never returned the painting, the narrator retorts that the bartender has as much right to... (full context)

The narrator announces that he finally will explain what a judge-penitent is. First, he asks the listener... (full context)

The narrator claims that, by sentencing everyone, he is an “advocate of slavery.” Freedom itself always leaves... (full context)

The narrator argues that everyone, whether atheist or religious, is a “hypocrite.” Scared of their own freedom... (full context)

The narrator says that since total enslavement isn’t practical yet, he has come up with an interim... (full context)

The listener laughs when the narrator admits he’s looking forward to the listener’s “confession.” In response, the narrator tells him that... (full context)

The narrator explains his joy: it isn’t in avoiding judgment after all but in “permit[ting] oneself everything"—permission... (full context)

The narrator invites the listener to come to the Mexico City that evening and watch the narrator... (full context)

The narrator returns to his bed, asking the listener to “forgive” him. He admits that he became... (full context)

When the listener admits that he is not a policeman but a lawyer, the narrator cries out that that explains his fondness for the listener. He insists that he and... (full context)