The Specter of Narration and Hypocrisy in Albert Camus' The Fall.

In this paper, I explored what Sartre referred to as Camus' 'most beautiful and least understood novel,' The Fall. As a methodology, I applied textual hermeneutics to immerse in the text and got out of it what I deemed as the crux of its existentialism as founded in the two-in-one leitmotif of narration and hypocrisy. In Clamence, there was a profound need - a specter that lingered and haunted - to narrate his life, especially the fall that triggered it and the judgment that allowed him to do it. I argued then that the nature of the text reflected a deep sense of narration that stemmed from hypocrisy, in which Clamence branded himself as 'judge-penitent' - what such a life entails, how it freed him, and how it mirrored life-callings or vocations in all walks of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]