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.
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