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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Fall, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Guilt and Judgment
Freedom vs. Domination
Egotism
Hypocrisy and Inauthenticity
Judeo-Christianity
Summary
Analysis
The narrator, speaking to a listener whom he calls “monsieur,” offers to order a gin on behalf of the listener from the bartender, who speaks only Dutch. The narrator goes on to say that the bartender’s refusal to learn other languages is odd, especially since he named his bar Mexico City. He calls the bartender a “Cro-Magnon” and says that whereas mere primates have no “ulterior motives,” the bartender has a few such motives and, as a result, distrusts others. For example, he took and relinquished the painting that used to hang over the bar “with the same distrust.” The narrator concludes that “society has somewhat spoiled” the bartender’s native innocence.
When the narrator calls the listener “monsieur,” it implies that both men are French, though the novel takes place in Amsterdam. Cro-Magnons are the early modern humans who first populated Europe almost 60,000 years ago. By calling the bartender a “Cro-Magnon,” the narrator implies contempt for the bartender’s primitive personality. At the same time, the narrator suggests that the bartender lacks even the virtues of primitive man: “society has somewhat spoiled” him, making him distrustful and deceitful. In this way, the narrator implies that human society is characterized by pretense and hypocrisy, in contrast with Cro-Magnon purity. Finally, the narrator’s early reference to the painting over the bar hints that the painting may become relevant later in the story.
Themes
The narrator says he himself is very inclined to make friends. He accepts the listener’s invitation to have another drink and asks how long the listener will stay in Amsterdam. Struck by the listener calling the city “fascinating,” the narrator says he hasn’t heard that word since he left Paris. He claims Parisians are obsessed solely with intellectualism and sex—as are all Europeans, the Dutch excepted. Implying that the men in the bar are violent pimps and the women sex workers, the narrator suggests they are “more moral” than people who slowly murder their own families in the domestic sphere.
The narrator’s claim that he hasn’t heard the word “fascinating” since he left Paris implies that he and the listener may both be from Paris originally. Meanwhile, when the narrator claims that Europeans are obsessed with intellectualism and sex, he implies that Europeans are hypocritical, preoccupied with appearing smart and idea-oriented while actually focused on base physical sexuality. The narrator’s condemnation of hypocrisy continues when he argues that the pimps and sex workers in the bar are “more moral” than people who slowly murder their families, an argument that implies conventional domestic life is stultifying, false, and deathly to the free human spirit.
Themes
The bartender brings the narrator and listener gin. The narrator explains that the bartender only called him “doctor” because the Dutch call everyone that—in fact, he was lawyer and is now a “judge-penitent.” He introduces himself as Jean-Baptiste Clemance. Then he guesses that the listener is about the narrator’s age, somewhere in his 40s, and a “cultured bourgeois” who finds the narrator amusing. The narrator then asks the listener whether he owns anything. When the listener says yes, the narrator asks whether the listener has shared his belongings with the poor. When the listener says no, the narrator calls him a “Sadducee”—and expresses interest when the listener knows the term.
The narrator doesn’t immediately explain what the peculiar term “judge-penitent” means. While both “lawyer” and “judge” are professions associated with questions of guilt and innocence in the legal realm, a “penitent” is a religiously connoted word for someone who repents of their sins. Thus, a “judge-penitent” might be a person who both judges others and accepts judgment themselves. Meanwhile, the Sadducees were an elite Jewish sect active circa 167 BCE to 73 CE, which did not believe in an afterlife. The Christian New Testament mentions them as enemies of Jesus Christ. That both the narrator and the listener are familiar with the term Sadducee suggests they are familiar with Judeo-Christianity, whether or not they are believers.
Themes
The narrator encourages the listener to judge him by his appearance, pointing to his own ragged coat but neat fingernails. He also points out his presence in a dingy bar despite his high-flown way of speaking. He calls himself “double” by profession: a judge-penitent, the way all human beings are double by nature. He also says that while he is now poor, he used to be a rich Sadducee like the listener.
The narrator encourages the listener to judge him—but he also points to contradictory evidence from his appearance: a ragged coat but neat fingernails. He also calls himself and all other human beings “double,” suggesting that humanity is plagued by internal conflict and hypocrisy. Finally, he continues to use the Judeo-Christian term “Sadducee” to describe himself and the listener, indicating that he believes religious history and stories can be useful lenses for interpreting reality whether or not he believes in religious dogma.
Themes
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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 called the “Jewish quarter” until the Holocaust. The narrator comments that the Holocaust helps him understand the bartender’s suspiciousness of others. He adds that the most trusting, loving man the narrator ever knew was murdered by a “militia” in his own home.
The Fall was published in 1956, 11 years after the end of World War II (1939–1945) and the Holocaust, Nazi Germany’s genocide against Jewish people in Europe. When the narrator says that his neighborhood was called the “Jewish quarter” until the Holocaust, he is implying that it was a Jewish neighborhood but that its residents were murdered by Nazis. His subsequent comments—that the Holocaust helps him understand the bartender’s suspiciousness and that the best man he knew was murdered by a militia—suggest that the totalitarian, anti-Semitic politics of Nazi Germany have fundamentally shaped his understanding of human nature as well as of political power and domination.
Themes
Outside, the narrator claims that the Dutch evoke his talkativeness due to their doubleness: they are businesspeople who live in an Indonesian dream world. He asks the listener whether he’s ever remarked that the “concentric canals” of Amsterdam resemble Dante’s nine circles of hell. He calls Amsterdam’s wharf the final circle of hell and says he waits for travelers here in Mexico City. He bids farewell to the listener at a bridge, saying that he has sworn never to walk across bridges at night lest “someone should jump in the water.”
The Dutch officially colonized what is now modern Indonesia as the Dutch East Indies from 1800–1945. In 1945, Indonesia declared independence, after which the Netherlands and Indonesia fought in the Indonesian War of Independence until 1949, a war that ended with the Dutch agreeing to recognize Indonesian independence. When the narrator claims that the Dutch live in an Indonesian dream world, he suggests that the Dutch are dreamily nostalgic for their colonial domination of Indonesia despite their reputation as hardnosed businesspeople—another example of humanity’s internal contradictions and hypocrisies. Meanwhile, his comparison of Amsterdam’s “concentric canals” to the circles of Hell in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (c. 1321) again indicates that religious stories are useful lenses for understanding modern life even in the absence of religious belief. Finally, his odd claim that he avoids bridges so as not to encounter jumpers hints that he has had such an encounter in the past.
Themes
