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Pages 97-118
Themes
and Colors
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
When the listener arrives at the narrator’s home, the narrator explains that he’s in bed due to a fever, possibly caused by malaria he contracted when he “was pope.” The narrator acknowledges that the listener may struggle to determine whether the narrator’s stories are true or fabricated—but he argues that since all his stories hide “the same meaning,” their factuality doesn’t matter. Then he explains that he was elected pope of “a prison camp.” Digressing, he mentions that his home used to be full of books but now contains almost nothing.
The narrator’s claim that he “was pope” at one point, though ridiculous, emphasizes the narrator’s claims to a kind of secular religious status as well as his nonbelieving interest in Catholic Christianity. Presumably in response to the listener’s incredulity after the “pope” comment, the narrator admits that he may be unreliable or even lying. Yet he argues that the literal truth or falsity of his stories doesn’t matter because, true or false, the stories contain “the same meaning.” Readers may judge for themselves whether the narrator’s argument holds water—or whether his telling the listener false stories without admitting they are false constitutes deceitful and manipulative behavior.
Active
Themes
Apparently at the listener’s urging, the narrator begins explaining how he came to be pope of a prison camp. During the war, the French army mobilized him late and asked him to take part in a retreat; shortly thereafter, he returned to German-occupied Paris. Intending to join the Resistance, he fled to the Southern Zone. Yet once there, he decided that the Resistance’s “underground action” was a bad fit for him, as he loves “exposed heights.” Instead, he traveled on to Africa, vaguely intending to flee to the UK. In Tunisia the Germans arrested him, and he was imprisoned in a camp in Tripoli.
During World War II (1939–1945), Germany invaded France on May 10, 1940 and took Paris on June 14, 1940. The Resistance refers to French guerilla groups that fought against the Nazi occupiers of France and the Nazi-backed Vichy puppet government that ruled most of France from July 1940–August 1944. The “Southern Zone” refers to the area of France unoccupied by the Nazis. The narrator’s decision not to participate in the Resistance’s “underground action” against the Nazis emphasizes yet again his egotism and his love of domination: by implication he didn’t want to fight without public recognition or the promise of victory (“exposed heights”).
Active
Themes
In the camp, the narrator met a religious Frenchman, whom he nicknamed “Du Guesclin.” Du Guesclin had traveled to Spain to fight and, upon being interned by Franco’s fascists, was depressed that Spain was “blessed by Rome.” In the camp, inveighing against the pope, Du Guesclin decided that they needed to elect another pope who “live[d] among the wretched.”
Active
Themes
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 impressed—agreed. As pope, the narrator ended up in charge of water allotment for the other prisoners. He doesn’t like to remember that time because he ended up drinking the water of another prisoner who then died, telling himself that he had to survive because the prisoners needed him. He says that if Du Guesclin hadn’t already died by that point, he wouldn’t have taken the other prisoner’s water—but Du Guesclin was dead, and so the narrator took the water.
Active
Themes
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The narrator says that in telling this story, he’s had a revelation: “one must forgive the pope,” not only because the pope desperately needs forgiveness but also because one can thereby make oneself superior to the pope. Then, after asking the listener to check that the door is closed, the narrator instructs him to open a cupboard and examine the painting therein: a panel, titled “The Just Judges,” stolen in 1934 from a van Eyck altarpiece in Ghent. He explains that a patron of Mexico City sold it to the bartender, who hung it up behind the bar until the narrator told him its history, at which point the bartender gave it to the narrator for safekeeping.
Active
Themes
When the listener asks why the narrator never returned the painting, the narrator retorts that the bartender has as much right to the painting as Ghent’s Archbishop; that since people can’t tell the difference between the painting and the reproduction now in the altarpiece, the theft is a victimless crime; that the painting allows him to “dominate” as the sole possessor of truth in a world of falsehood; that he likes chancing incarceration; that the theft of a painting that represents judges on their way to meet an innocent lamb is “justice” because “there is no lamb or innocence”; and that as innocence has been crucified and justice hidden in a cupboard, the narrator himself can operate freely as a judge-penitent.
The narrator announces that he finally will explain what a judge-penitent is. First, he asks the listener to lock the painting of the judges back in the cupboard. Then he explains that for the past five days, as he has been talking to the listener, he has been acting as judge-penitent. He has been using their conversations to “avoid[] judgment personally […] by extending the condemnation to all.” As a rule, he rejects all possibility of innocence or forgiveness, adding up people’s sins and then sentencing them.
Active
Themes
The narrator claims that, by sentencing everyone, he is an “advocate of slavery.” Freedom itself always leaves a person “alone” and facing “a court sentence.” Ergo, the narrator argues, every person to avoid freedom must bow to a higher power—and that higher power must be an enslaver since God is “out of style.” Digressing, the narrator claims that many supposedly atheist humanists believe in both Christian values and God but refuse to say so out of egotism and self-hatred, because such a public statement might cause embarrassment.
The narrator argues that everyone, whether atheist or religious, is a “hypocrite.” Scared of their own freedom and believing “only in sin, never in grace,” they want laws and punishments and powers dominating them so that they can avoid freedom and judgment. They want someone else telling them what’s right and wrong so they don’t have to freely choose for themselves. Admitting that the incident on the Paris bridge showed him his own fear of freedom, the narrator argues that what everyone needs is a “democracy” of total enslavement and total guilt.
Active
Themes
The narrator says that since total enslavement isn’t practical yet, he has come up with an interim plan to avoid the laughter and judgment of others: he became a complete “penitent” to earn the right of becoming “a judge.” He lurks at the Mexico City to find targets, especially wayward middle-class men. His practice involves, first, a sophisticated self-condemnation where his self-description becomes a “mirror” for the target. This allows the narrator to transition from condemning himself to condemning a “we” that includes the target. However, the narrator sets himself up as better than the target due to his greater self-knowledge—and goads the target into self-condemnation, which makes the narrator feel better.
Active
Themes
The listener laughs when the narrator admits he’s looking forward to the listener’s “confession.” In response, the narrator tells him that though intelligent targets need longer to break down, they contemplate what the narrator has said—and eventually confess. The narrator predicts that the listener will either send him a letter later or return in person—and the narrator will be waiting, as he having discovered a lifestyle that brings him joy, has no reason to move or change.
Active
Themes
The narrator explains his joy: it isn’t in avoiding judgment after all but in “permit[ting] oneself everything"—permission that comes from loudly judging oneself. Now, he’s still totally egotistical and manipulative, but he can derive pleasure both from his egotism and from his “charming repentance.” This maneuver allows him to “dominate” and to “judge everybody.” Though he occasionally still hears laughter, he uses his method of self-flagellation and domination of others to quiet it again.
Active
Themes
The narrator invites the listener to come to the Mexico City that evening and watch the narrator work. Each time he convinces a patron to condemn himself, he feels dominant, like God. The narrator, frenzied with triumph, gets out of bed and paces around. He explains that when he feels this way, he paces by Amsterdam’s canals in the mornings—“for the fall occurs at dawn”—and feels “happy unto death.”
Active
Themes
The narrator returns to his bed, asking the listener to “forgive” him. He admits that he became overemotional and that while his interim plan may not be the best, there’s nothing else to do: “we have lost track of the light, the mornings, the holy innocence of those who forgive themselves.” Suddenly, the narrator points out that it’s snowing and insists he must go out. When the listener remonstrates, the narrator asks whether the listener will confess now. Furthermore, the narrator admits that he’s waiting for a target who turns out to be a policeman who’ll arrest him as an accessory to the theft of the painting. Then maybe he could be beheaded and “dominate” as “an exemplar.”
Active
Themes
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 the listener are similar and asks the listener to confess what happened to him “on the quays of the Seine.” He exhorts the listener to cry out to the woman in black to attempt suicide again so that the listener will have an opportunity to save them “both.” Then the narrator says that luckily this plea is only figurative, as “it’s too late now.”
