Albert Camus
(July 2021)
“Everything that a man might win in the plague and life game is knowledge and memory.”
Alert! “The Plague” is a saddening story. Instead of carefreely recommending this book, we would like to warn our readers that it might trigger dreary memories from our own reality during Covid-19 pandemics. Camus did not spare us from the details while describing the agony of the people who were taken down by the disease and who lost the fight, no matter the age. |
In 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic struck, publishers have been observing a significant rise in sales of books about pandemics, epidemics, and similar public health-style dystopian situations. [1] While we can also wonder if reading habits have increased during pandemics or not, or if the book preferences have slightly changed because of this prolonged context [2], I can answer for myself that picking this book now was not a random choice. Not only a classic work of world literature, Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus’ book is certainly one that we can relate to right now.
“The Plague”, published in 1947, portrays the outbreak of an epidemic in Oran city and the unfolding events from the perspective of Rieux, a doctor that works on the frontline to fight and research the disease. At first, it was just an unusual series of sick rats, leaving the sewage in despair to die at the surface. However, soon enough, the disease quickly spread to the people in the city. Although the local government’s first reaction was reluctant and feckless, the severity of the situation forces dramatic measures, including orders to stay at home and to close the city frontiers, forbidding people to freely leave the city.
Rieux’s path sounds somewhat similar to a hero’s journey, starting from a state of calmness, then he awakes as a hero and receives a call to action while facing many crises until the disease is finally controlled and over. Is it, really? The journey is rather bitter and pessimistic, despite the seeming “happy ending”. By the time of his awakening as a hero, Rieux is already facing a personal drama with his seriously ill wife. When the epidemic starts, although a doctor is seen as a hero during pandemics, Rieux constantly feels helpless and powerless due to the lack of cure for the disease; it is mentioned by a friend of his: “‘I imagine then what this plague means to you.’ ‘It is true, Rieux replied, an endless defeat’”. The happy ending is not all happy either, not only because “it was still the plague” for those who lost their dear ones, but also because, from time to time, it is expected to return:
“While hearing the cheerful screams from the city, Rieux remembered that this joy was always under threat. (...) The bacillus of the plague does not die nor ever disappear, it might be asleep for dozens of years in the furniture and in the clothing, patiently waiting in the rooms, in the basements, in the chests, in the handkerchiefs, and in the paperwork. And he also knew that maybe a day would come, for man’s disgrace and knowledge, when the plague would wake its rats and would send them to die in a happy city.”
There are many daunting similarities between the epidemic crises in the book and our own pandemics. Camus describes (and criticizes) the hesitant response from the city government, as well as the secretive strategy of the city rulers, not properly displaying clear information about the situation to avoid commotion from the people. Does it sound familiar to some of you? Many countries have also been criticized for their careless attitude towards the pandemics, especially in the beginning (and I am distressed to say that my country is one of them, due to extended denial of the pandemics’ severity and delayed response from the federal government).
We also find some similarities in people’s behavior to the crises. The population’s response shifts at least 3 times during this critical moment, from opposing and turbulent reactions by the time quarantine is enacted, to a concerned stance as the number of deaths rise vertiginously, then to a thriving optimism that blossoms as the cases of full recovery become more frequent.
The book also portrays many pictures that we actually observed during Covid-19 pandemics. There is an opportunist character who profits with a parallel market, selling inflated products, who is found with several picked food cans under his bed when he gets sick and is assisted by the hospital. There is a simplification of the funeral pomp and procedures since the dead were buried away from their families, as fastly as possible, to avoid the spread of the disease. There is also social and economic disorganization, which caused an increase in the unemployment rate.
The very first article from this website, “Death in Venice”, also portrays a disease outbreak, although, in Mann’s book, the reader’s perception of the epidemic’s severity is limited by the protagonist’s view of the situation, who is unable to retrieve proper, transparent information from the local population of the touristic city. On the other hand, in “The Plague”, the readers’ perspective follows the in-depth meticulous portrait of the situation from the eyes of Rieux, who is aware of the health situation, as a front-line doctor, but also of the political conditions, since Rieux is always accompanying the city rulers and politicians.
This article Camus’ story is painfully familiar for us, ever since the Covid-19 pandemic began, and the tragedy is merciless in its repetition. So many lives and hearts were hurt and we offer all condolences, empathy, and prayers to the victims of pandemics, as well as to those who lost their dear ones. May we stay strong and hopeful of better days to come.
[1] The Guardian (2020). Publishers report sales boom in novels about fictional epidemics. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/05/publishers-report-sales-boom-in-novels-about-fictional-epidemics-camus-the-plague-dean-koontz
[2] The Conversation (2020). How reading habits have changed during the COVID-19 lockdown. https://theconversation.com/how-reading-habits-have-changed-during-the-covid-19-lockdown-146894
Note: The transcriptions in this article were translated from Portuguese to English since we did not have access to the book in its original language, and for that we apologize. |