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The Plague by Albert Camus
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The Plague

by Albert Camus

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Showing 1-5 of 40 (next | show all)
In relation to timeline The Plague is simple. It covers the duration of a bubonic plague. The story begins with the death of rats. First, a few rats are found here and there until they are everywhere; dying by the thousands all across the Algerian city of Oran. Then, the plague increases in intensity and starts killing hundreds of people until finally, colder temperatures arrive and the plague is mercifully over. But, The Plague on a philosophical level is much deeper than the spread of a disease. Dr. Bernard Rieux is a doctor trying to save the community of Oran from the ravages of a plague. Even though Dr. Rieux patiently tries to care for everyone in the makeshift infirmaries most of his patients die. It appears to be a losing battle. Soon it is obvious the bigger question on Dr. Bernard Rieux's mind concerns humanity. For him, the struggle between good and evil is all apparent. He observes how people react to the disease, are influenced by the disease, and are changed by the disease. In the end, the whole point of the didactic lesson for Dr. Rieux is that we all need someone. Rieux's biggest discovery is that he is content to continue the crusade against any disease, any suffering, any pain or death. ( )
1 vote SeriousGrace | Nov 11, 2009 |
A very influential book. I remember the pleasure of reading this book while studying for A levels and trying to understand its wider significance. ( )
  jon1lambert | Oct 18, 2009 |
I liked it's beauty, it's honesty in dealing with the human condition without deifying or celebrating any part of it. I liked it's persistent unwillingness to look for any real meaning to life and man except the contradicting meanings of each of the individual characters. I liked the assembly of characters but most of all the beauty, the beauty in the description and the phrases, the beauty in all the ugly things. ( )
1 vote KelliRowe | Aug 13, 2009 |
This is an incredibly boring book. I laboured all the way to part three in the hopes it would improve, but I was sorely disappointed. The language is too dense and the style is condescending - I feel as though I'm being talked down to. The blurb states that this book is supposed to be a metaphor for the German occupation of France - I simply cannot see it. anyhow, this is not a book I would recommend. ( )
  fairy-whispers | Aug 4, 2009 |
I guess Camus is supposed to be the prototypical existentialist novelist. I also guess I don't like existentialist novels. I liked this book even less than I did The Stranger. There was no plot to speak of. There was also relatively little character development or characterisation at all. The characters that there are seem relatively like stock beings, and we do see them react to and change in response to the plague, but we only see this on a superficial level, I think, never really getting inside any of the characters' internal lives. Perhaps this is because, for existentialists, there's "nothing" there. ( )
  Matt_the_Cat | Jul 7, 2009 |
Showing 1-5 of 40 (next | show all)
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Epigraph
'It is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another, as it is to represent anything that really exists by that which exists not! -' ('Robinson Crusoe's preface' to the third volume of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe).
Dedication
First words
The unusual events described in this chronicle occurred in 194- at Oran.
Les curieux événements qui font le sujet de cette chronique se sont produits en 194., à Oran.
Le matin du 16 avril, le docteur Bernard Rieux sortit de son cabinet et buta sur un rat mort, au milieu du palier.
Quotations
"Oran, however, seems to be a town without intimations; in other words, completely modern."

"They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences."

"In normal times all of us know, whether consciously or not, that there is no love which can't be bettered; nevertheless we reconcile ourselves more or less easily to the fact that ours has never risen above the average."

"You'd almost think they expected to be given medals for it. But what does that mean—'plague'? Just life, no more than that."
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Book description

Amazon.com (ISBN 0679720219, Paperback)

The Nobel prize-winning Albert Camus, who died in 1960, could not have known how grimly current his existentialist novel of epidemic and death would remain. Set in Algeria, in northern Africa, The Plague is a powerful study of human life and its meaning in the face of a deadly virus that sweeps dispassionately through the city, taking a vast percentage of the population with it.

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:10 -0400)

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