Jean-Baptiste Clamence (a pseudonym)

Narrator and sole speaker in The Fall, aged in his forties, middle class background. Clamence is a French ex-patriot who spends his time at a seedy bar in Amsterdam awaiting anyone who will listen to his tale of corruption and its concomitant philosophical musing. Using his considerable natural gifts, Clamence can charm anyone to his purposes, and with his tremendous self-love, has no compunction about doing so.

Immediately showing himself to be intelligent and shrewd, Clamence is perfectly at ease discussing modern bourgeois society, the Dutch as opposed to the European character, and waxes lyrical on the qualities and benefits of gin. He reveals a bit of himself as well, confessing a self-imposed ban on crossing bridges at night. His rhetorical method is clear by the conclusion of the first chapter - he intersperses long passages with peculiar bits of half-revealed information, thereby securing the...