The Plague Albert Camus and Covid 19

 

The Plague

Albert Camus

and

Covid 19

 

The Plague is a novel about a plague epidemic in the large Algerian city of Oran. In April, thousands of rats stagger into the open and die. When a mild hysteria grips the population, the newspapers begin clamoring for action. The authorities finally arrange for the daily collection and cremation of the rats. Soon thereafter, M. Michel, the concierge for the building where Dr. Rieux works, dies after falling ill with a strange fever. When a cluster of similar cases appears, Dr. Rieux's colleague, Castel, becomes certain that the illness is the bubonic plague. He and Dr. Rieux are forced to confront the indifference and denial of the authorities and other doctors in their attempts to urge quick, decisive action. Only after it becomes impossible to deny that a serious epidemic is ravaging Oran, do the authorities enact strict sanitation measures, placing the whole city under quarantine.

Dr. Rieux's mother comes to stay with him while his wife is away. Meanwhile, Dr. Rieux contacts Mercier, the man in charge of pest control, to suggest that sanitation measures be taken. The public begins to feel uneasy when the flood of dying rats continues to increase. The newspapers clamor for the city government to address the problem. In response, the city arranges for the daily collection and cremation of the corpses. Just as a mild hysteria begins to grip the public, the phenomenon abruptly disappears.

The same day, Dr. Rieux meets Father Paneloux, a Jesuit priest, escorting a feverish, weakened M. Michel to his home. M. Michel's neck, armpits, and groin are swelling painfully. Dr. Rieux promises to visit him later in the afternoon. Meanwhile, he receives a telephone call from a former patient, Joseph Grand, regarding an accident suffered by his neighbor, Cottard. Upon his arrival, Dr. Rieux discovers that Cottard has tried to hang himself. Cottard becomes agitated when Dr. Rieux states that he will have to submit a report about the incident to the police. Dr. Rieux visits M. Michel to find his condition worsening. M. Michel dies in an ambulance en route to the hospital.

Other victims succumb to the same illness in the days that follow. The narrator introduces the reader to Jean Tarrou, the author of the written documents mentioned earlier. Tarrou, a vacationer in Oran, keeps notebooks containing detailed reports of his observations about daily life in Oran. He records conversations regarding the appearance of the mysterious illness in the wake of the dying rats. An old man periodically comes out onto a balcony opposite Tarrou's hotel room to spit on the cats sunning themselves below. When the plague of dead rats entices the cats away, the little old man seems greatly disappointed. Tarrou writes about a family of four with a disagreeable, strict father, M. Othon, who dines every day at the hotel. The hotel manager, dismayed at the dead rats in his three-star hotel, takes no comfort in Tarrou's assurance that everyone is in the same boat. The manager snootily explains that he is bothered precisely because his hotel is now like everyone else. One of the chambermaids becomes sick with the strange illness, but the manager assures Tarrou that it probably isn't contagious. In the midst of these vignettes of daily life in Oran, Tarrou ponders philosophical matters such as how not to waste one's time.

The public reacts to their sudden imprisonment with intense longing for absent loved ones. They indulge in selfish personal distress, convinced that their pain is unique in comparison to common suffering. After the term of exile lasts several months, many of Oran's citizens lose their selfish obsession with personal suffering. They come to recognize the plague as a collective disaster that is everyone's concern. They confront their social responsibility and join the anti-plague efforts.

Camus writes,” A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven't taken their precautions. Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.”

“But once the town gates were shut, every one of us realized that all, the narrator included, were, so to speak, in the same boat, and each would have to adapt himself to the new conditions of life. Thus, for example, a feeling normally as individual as the ache of separation from those one loves suddenly became a feeling in which all shared alike and, together with fear, the greatest affliction of the long period of exile that lay ahead. One of the most striking consequences of the closing of the gates was, in fact, this sudden deprivation befalling people who were completely unprepared for it.”

“And in the warm darkness of the summer nights the cars could be heard clanking on their way, laden with flowers and corpses.”

When the epidemic ends, the public quickly returns to its old routine. But the battle against the plague is never over because the bacillus microbe can lie dormant for years. The Plague is the chronicle of the scene of human suffering that all too many people are willing to forget.

The most meaningful action within the context of Camus' philosophy is to choose to fight death and suffering. In the early days of the epidemic, the citizens of Oran are indifferent to one another's suffering because each person is selfishly convinced that his or her pain is unique compared to "common" suffering.

The Plague is a transparent allegory of the Nazi occupation of France beginning in spring 1940. The sanitary teams reflect Camus' experiences in, and admiration for, the resistance against the “brown plague” of fascism.

The narrative is entirely sourced from multiple references in the Internet.

Covid 19 has unleashed endless restrictions and Lockdowns that radically constrict our life.

We are at once ravaged by the Pandemic and the enforcers, a minority of whom, in the garb of protecting lives, revel in exhibitionism of the ultimate in superciliousness conjoined with an annihilating power and invective expressions.

We can only hope and pray that Covid 19 signs off from the surface of the earth just as it had burst out unsolicited shattering our sedentary lives quite similar to the dousing of the Plague in Oran as evinced  in ‘the gripping yet explosive narrative  by Albert Camus.