Jean-Baptiste Clamence
Not only is Jean-Baptiste the narrator, he is the only one with an actual speaking part in the entire novel. Camus’ novel is essentially a monologue told to an unidentified receiver of the tale. The reader essentially fills the role of that listener who engages Clamence as he relates a story of a man whose lust for life is so profound that his story touches upon every aspect of his existence deemed worthy of the telling. Those aspect essentially boil down to the two most significance events of his life: hearing laughter behind him and not being able to discover the source and his decision not to help a woman who jumped from a bridge into the river Seine.
The Listener
While it is the reader who assumes the role of the person listening to Clamence’s narration, there actually is an unidentified person in the novel who fulfills that role. This is primarily signified by the fact that Clamence occasionally repeats individual words of the narrator. This device intensifies the conceptual structure of the novel as a dialogue, but when all is said and done The Fall is a monologue. The unidentified listener exists in a way to deny the novel’s claim to being an interior monologue. Someone is listening and it is not just the reader.
Laughing Voice
As indicated, one of the significant moments in the life of Jean-Baptiste Clamence involves laughter behind him and the fact that he never identified the source. Upon turning around, there is nobody there. The source of the laughter is ultimately identified, but—again as indicated—there is no other character that speaks in the novel. Thus, the laughter is produced by the narrator. The reason for this is complex and one must read the novel in order to fully appreciate the irony.
The Woman on the Bridge
Slim. Young. Dressed in black. The narrator walks past her and then hears a splash in the water down below. Nothing else is known about her except that she could have been saved by the narrat0r and might well be should the occasion ever arise again.
