Birthed during the reconstruction pangs of World War II, French author
Albert Campus penned a multi-tiered plot with multi-leveled significance about
the isolation of a city, the isolation of emotion, and the coping mechanisms
with the various forms of isolation. On a purely as-is view, the story is a
softly heroic tale of silent fortitude and the submission to fatalism. On
another level, the isolation of the city symbolizes the isolation of the
individual with numerous parallels between the city’s plights and the ones
experienced by those cut off from the rest of civilization and family. However,
on a more historical and academic front, the story serves as an allegory to the
French resistance (and assistance, at times) to the Nazi occupation of France
(thank you, Wiki).
The Plague is a very literary read with subtleties abound,
emotion ablaze, and hope adrift. I wasn’t able to compress the number of
reading days, so the full effect of the book’s beauty was partially lost to me,
but from what I gleaned off the multi-faceted gem left me in humble awe.
Rear cover synopsis:
“The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a virulent plague.
Cut off from the rest of the world, living in fear, they each respond
in their own way to the grim challenge of the deadly bacillus. Among them is Dr
Rieux, a humanitarian and healer, and it is through his eyes that we witness
the devastating course of the epidemic.”
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The northern Algerian coastal city of Oran is home to
200,000 citizens, the city is as nondescript as the crated good which enter its
port: “treeless, glamourless, soulless” (3). Centered on a plateau, Oran is
ringed by a city wall and, further, ringed by hills. Populated by traders and
common folk, among the listless souls linger “obscure functionaries cultivating
harmless eccentricities” (45). The lethargic townspeople are oblivious to the
passing time of the world, the influx of news and people, and the general
entropy of life and love. Even the lethal portent of rats dying in the city’s
very streets isn’t enough to jostle the worries of the people of Oran; their
inherent fatalism simply accepts the situation as another link in their chain
of events which they call life.
The balmy air of Oran’s mid-April season ought to be
a time of temperate diversions or sybaritic dalliances, but the ambiance is
disrupted by the presence of rats vomiting blood: “they [the rats] emerged in
long wavering files into the light of day, swayed helplessly, then did a sort
of pirouette and fell dead at the feet of the horrified onlookers” (13). The
commoners and medical practitioners alike ignored the ominous signs of bubonic
death ascending from the sewers to their very feet, they ignored the chthonic
exodus of vermin which died on their doorsteps and windowsills. Soon, the doctors
whisper the word “plague” and measures are taken to isolate the city from the
rest of the world.
The rats, having died by the thousands, were
disposed of by the city but now the populace has begun to show similar symptoms
as the rats had. Lethargic to the disease’s lethal impetus, the ignorant and
the knowledgeable all come within the influence of the plague’s cynical, cyclic
gravity: isolation means detachment, detachment means isolation… isolation from
the world, isolation from their countrymen, and isolation from the sea which
feeds the city’s people. “Thus, too, they came to know the incorrigible sorrow
of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that
serves no purpose. Even the past, of which they thought incessantly, has a
savour only of regret” (69).
When official news of the Plague’s existence is
broken, people nearly rise to arms at the ghastliness of their fate and their
hermetic existence. The spring and summer months beyond April become a barren
landscape of hope for the townspeople of Oran; “The furious revolt of the first
weeks had given place to a despondency, not to be taken for resignation, though
it was none the less a sort of passive and provisional acquiescence” (174). Their
war against the unseen viral crusader bent upon their destruction draew not
flagrant hatred or resolute victory, but a fatalistic acceptance of the
“deliberate progress of some monstrous thing crushing out all upon its path”
(173). The once maturing metropolis of Oran descends into a decaying
necropolis.
Designating confirmed cases of the Plague is Dr.
Rieux, a practitioner detached from the emotional aspect of death and immune to
significant social or familial ties. Once a healer, now the doctor sees himself
like Archangel Michael—the good angel of death. Despondent by the Plague’s
relentless toll of death through Oran, the good doctor sinks further into his
fugue with his 20-hour days lending no relief to his disconnectedness. However,
his central importance is prominent and inclusive enough to provide an
objective summary of the events during the Plague.
With Dr. Rieux at the hub of the story, the narrator
offers radial spokes of additional narratives which capture the eccentricities
of the hermetic city and the undulations of hope. The pestilence sweeps through
the city in the humid summer months of northern Algeria and even into the
autumn months. The newspapers keep tally of the number of deaths, the sermons
from the local parish extol virtues and implore for exoneration by God’s Hand,
and the fatalism of the townspeople impel them to continue their daily
existence of visiting cafes and drinking wine. From this salt of the earth of
Oral come stories of stoicism, complacency, determination, schizophrenia, diligence,
and maturation:
- · M. Othan is the city’s magistrate and remains vigil to the corpulent corruption which abounds in his city and soon surrounds his family.
- · The complacent Joseph Grand, though poorly perceived by other as being unkempt and underpaid, starts his own novel; however, through the course of the Plague’s savagery, Grand is only able to pen the first sentence, an introduction which he mulls over and rewrites time and time again: “One fine morning in the month of May an elegant young horsewoman might have been seen riding a handsome sorrel mare along the flowery avenues of the Bois de Boulogne” (100).
- · Raymond Rambert is a displaced man, a visiting journalist who is shut in by the Plague and shut out from his love in Paris; his determination of escape and reunion offers him entertainment more so than actual solvency.
- · Ashamed of a spoilt attempt at suicide, the man named Cottard turns his life around by becoming more social, though his cynical side unabashedly beckons the Plague to wreak its havoc and consume the town’s populace.
- · The diligent Jean Tarrou is yet another displaced man, but his motivations lie far from self-emancipation; Tarrou calls for volunteers in assistance with his newly founded corps of gravediggers and disposers of bodies, a calling which draws him into friendship with Dr. Rieux.
- · Lastly, the maturation of Father Paneloux begins through his volunteerism in Tarrou’s copse when he witnesses the protracted pain and suffering, and ultimate death, of a child; his emotional reliance on the hope which medicine brings causes the Father to doubt his own stance in the church and sermonizes a borderline-heretic oration at Sunday mass.
The protracted residence of the Plague through spring,
summer, and autumn doesn’t cease with the temperate weather, but its corruption
transmogrifies with the change in climate, a reflection of the seasonal swap
from festering autumn to corpse-like winter; the bubonic manifestation of the
Plague morphed into that of the pneumonic variety, a simple shift in anatomical
focus though equally as deadly. Against this corruption is the hope of the
people, latent yet set to effervesce into victory: “once the faint stirring of
hope became possible, the plague would end” (259). And with the New Year came
the respite of recovery, yet fear remained that their dogged perseverance
through the Plague times would end with their inability to resist the Plague
and unable to revisit the vista of love with their separate loved ones; this
love fueled their resistance during the times of the Plague: “The egoism of
love made them immune to the general distress and, if they thought of the
plague, it was only in so far as it might threaten to make their separation
eternal” (72).
None
the less, he [the narrator] knew that the tale he had to tell could not
be one of a final victory. It could be only the record of what had had to be
done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never-ending fight
against terror and its relentless onslaughts, despite their personal
afflictions, by all who, while unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to
pestilences, strive their utmost to be healers. (297)
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Encompassing speculative fiction more so than that of
science fiction, I was moved enough by The Plague to write a lengthier
than usual review about it. I made a substantial number of notes during the
reading and cross-referenced my data with Wikipedia. The loquaciousness of the
book may have rubbed off on me when writing the review—my late apologies
because the prose in The Plague trumps anything I’ve ever written, be it
narrative or academic. The challenge in reading the novel derives from its
sentence lengths and punctuation usage, a combination which is eloquent and circumspective,
therefore open to interpretation as to its allegorical parallel.
I hesitate to connect the themes of “hope” and
“cope” together simply because they rhyme; regardless, the novel evokes both
feelings: the confidence of fulfillment and contention of suffering. As openly
fatalistic as the townsmen are, there still lingers that errant bit of hidden
hope which each tuck away as a coping mechanism for the community; if the
proclamation of hope was as obvious as the death on the streets, the community
would have withered into its own quiet death. Many continue their daily life as
a way to combat the intrinsic fear of the plague which consumes all, yet they
deny themselves the outward show of the future victory over their silent,
unseen adversary.
Amid the metamorphoses the characters undergo, the
most substantial and sudden occurs to the dynamic eulogist Father Paneloux. Witnessing
the death throes of a child infected with the Plague, the Father pleads to his
God to spare the child of the worst symptoms and grant him life or death rather
than the transitional pain of purgatory. When Father Paneloux’s prayers are
unanswered, he relies on Dr. Rieux and his medical knowledge to ease the boy’s
suffering; thus, Father Paneloux doubts his spirituality against his reliance
on the doctor’s expertise—if God cannot answer a prayer to ease the boy’s pain,
why is it a simple doctor can answer that prayer? The following Sunday’s sermon
is a lengthy, philosophical, and borderline sacrilegious oration which spans
seven pages of the novel (212-218). It’s an excellent, excellent introspective
look at one man’s attempt of coping with the realities of the Plague and
his once hopeful reliance of an ethereal miracle.
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Reading a book with that is so textually and
contextually rich makes me feel warm and fuzzy, and perhaps makes me loquacious
to a sickly degree. Thankfully, I don’t have many novels of this caliber in my
121 unread book pile, so I won’t spend so much time writing 2,000-word reviews
instead of exploring the many facets, both good and bad, of the science fiction
genre. Bless Camus though for this rich, rich narrative!
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