irrevocably changes his self-perception: That night on the canal he
shrugged off a chance to save someone from committing suicide.
This realization is Clamence’s undoing and the central focus of
the book. Forced to see the hollowness of his pretensions and the
shame of his failings, he unravels. He had believed he was a good
man, but when the moment (indeed moments) called for goodness,
he slunk off into the night.
It’s a thought that haunts him incessantly. As he walks the streets
at night, the cry of that woman—the one he ignored so many years
ago—never ceases to torment him. It toys with him too, because his
only hope of redemption is that he might hear it again in real life and
then seize the opportunity to dive in and save someone from the
bottom of the canal.
It’s too late. He has failed. He will never be at peace again.
The story is fictional, of course, but a deeply incisive one, written
not coincidentally in the aftermath of the incredible moral failings of
Europe in the Second World War. Camus’s message to the reader
pierces us like the scream of the woman in Clamence’s memory:
High-minded thoughts and inner work are one thing, but all that
matters is what you do. The health of our spiritual ideals depends on
what we do with our bodies in moments of truth.
It is worth comparing the agony and torture of Clamence with a
more recent example from another French philosopher, Anne
Dufourmantelle, who died in 2017, aged fifty-three, rushing into the
surf to save two drowning children who were not her own. In her
writing, Anne had spoken often of risk—saying that it was impossible
to live life without risk and that in fact, life is risk. It is in the
presence of danger, she once said in an interview, that we are gifted
with the “strong incentive for action, dedication, and surpassing
oneself.”
And when, on the beach in Saint-Tropez, she was faced with a
moment of danger and risk, an opportunity to turn away or to do
good, she committed the full measure of devotion to her ideals.
What is better? To live as a coward or to die a hero? To fall
woefully short of what you know to be right or to fall in the line of
duty? And which is more natural? To refuse a call from your fellow
humans or to dive in bravely and help them when they need you?
barry
(Barry)
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