ABSTRACT
This chapter brings together the issues of interpretation and ethics in a reading of Camus's final novel, La Chute (The Fall). The first parts of the chapter discuss two readings of La Chute which have become important in recent years. The first, inspired by the work of Shoshana Felman, interprets it in the context of the Holocaust, and the second links it to the Algerian War of Independence. The chapter examines how these readings have now become dominant strands in our understanding of the novel despite the absence or near-absence of explicit textual support. The final part of the chapter relates these readings to the problem of ethical ambiguity in the novel. Its first-person narrator invites mistrust, warns us to disbelieve everything he says and twists ethical vocabulary beyond recognition. And yet he retains that vocabulary, problematising it but not entirely emptying it of meaning. The chapter argues that therein lies its ethical significance. The persistent adoption of the language of ethics suggests that the novel is not entirely nihilistic, even if it cannot work out a clear way forward in the labyrinths and mirror-games of ethical choice and action.
