The Plague

I have long been interested in plague literature, so I'm not sure why it has taken me so long to get round this example. It's a great entry in the genre, too. It does some of the things that most plague lit does (describes the various kinds of reactions people have to the disaster and uses those reactions to examine human nature, for example), but Camus goes farther and gives us more detailed character studies, using the plague as a backdrop for their reactions and interactions. It's a particularly fascinating - and in several ways troubling - read right now; both the parallels and some of the divergent points are sad-making when compared to how our society is handling our current outbreak.

The Plague by Albert Camus tells the story of a plague that sweeps through the small Algerian town of Oran. Told in various parts, we start off with a local doctor who tells of the uncountable number of rats who come out of hiding to die on the streets and in the buildings of the town. When this stops, the first cases of humans begins and it isn’t too long before most of the town’s doctors recognize this disease as the bubonic plague. At first the ton officials refuse to recognize this but eventually the town is shut down.

At this point I noticed that the author is a master at symbolism, allegory, and absurdism as there is a lot going on beneath the surface of the story. While not being humorous in any way, Camus often shows the show more quirky side of human nature while not hesitating to show the horror of unrelenting death.

The Plague explores relationships, community and existence as the characters survive or confront death. I was immediately pulled into the story and found it a dark but not difficult read. This is the second book by this author that I have read, and I have liked both of them. show less

When rats begin dying in legions in the small coastal town of Oran, it citizens are disgusted but otherwise uninterested. When cases of bubonic plague begin to crop up in the population, the officials hesitate to overestimate the severity of their predicament. When the plague at last becomes too pervasive to ignore and the entire city is quarantined, the citizens of Oran go about their business and try their best to live normal lives in the face of horrible epidemic.

Camus' The Pague follows a small collection of men in the city, each of whom reacts to the Plague in different ways. We have the reporter Rambert, who spends his time trying to escape back to his wife in Paris, the criminal Cottard who takes solace in the fact that everyone show more else is now suffering as much as he has suffered, and the doctor Rieux, who accepts the facts of the plague and does what he feels is the only thing there is to do, fight it wherever it reveals itself, among others.

While the plague is real and terrible in the book, Camus is not simply writing about a single epidemic. The lifeshaking event of the plague is not the terror itself in his novel, but rather a giant focusing crystal through which people are forced to look at the essence of our everyday lives. It shocks the characters and the readers into contemplation of what has value in their lives and how we should live when living is so full of struggle and uncertainty.

This isn't a book all about a plague and what it does to a city, it's a book about a city and what it does when faced with the plague. It is not a gut wrenching horror novel, but a book for serious contemplation. It is literature written to provoke thought in the reader, and if the reader is not interested in taking the ideas of The Plague and applying them to their own everyday life, the value of The Plague will be be lost on them.

The greatest part of this novel is in its dialogue. The characters in The Plague are all symbolic of particular mindsets, and their discussions are not just discussions between people but interactions of various ways of thinking. As a quick example here is a chat between Tarrou and Rieux, the two men who probably have the greatest understanding of each other in the book.

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"What do you think of Paneloux's sermon, Doctor?"

The questions was asked in quite an ordinary tone, and Rieux answered in the same tone.

"I've seen too much of hospitals to relish any idea of collective punishment. But, as you know, Christians sometimes say that sort of thing without really thinking it. They're better than they seem."

"However, you think, like Paneloux, that the plague has a good side; it opens men's eyes and forces them to take thought?"

The doctor tossed his head impatiently.

"So does every ill that flesh is heir to. What's true of all the evils in the world is true of the plague as well. It helps men rise above themselves. All the same, when you see the misery it brings, you'd need to be a madman, or a coward, or stone blind, to give in tamely to the plague."

===

You can flip to any page in this book and find similar dialog, all contemplative and struggling with the reality of the plague and life. I've yet to read a work of existential thought so well crafted or that illuminated my own philosophy so well.

The Plague will not be for everyone. It is critical of certain aspects of religion, can be considered extremely depressing or nihilistic, and anyone looking for a 'page turner' will not find any narrative suspense to keep them interested here. This is a sober thinker's book, and one that I have mentally shelved (face forward) as reference as I continue my philosophical education. show less

I'm not exactly sure why this book grabs me the way it does, but I guess I find it to be an interesting and perfect mix between philosophy and literature, psychology and religion. It manages to be none of these and all of these at the same time. I'm not sure if any author so eloquently describes the human condition as Camus. The characters are interesting, complex and beautiful in their flaws as much as they are beautiful in their strengths. This book reads less like a dire end-of-the-world novel such as 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale (both excellent of course), and yet it does seem to make us think that our city, in our country, in modern times, could find itself in the same situation as the city in the novel (Oran), and we would behave show more much the same. People are people the world over, and nothing unites man, while simultaneously disunites man, the way pestilences do. In this way we see that Camus has used the plague backdrop as a way to highlight the good and the bad in all of us that manifeststs itself more subtly in normal life. I think this book is about as perfect as a book can be: Entertaining, well-written, great characters, readable on many levels... But most of all it makes you think. show less

The Plague is Albert Camus' great existential novel about a fictional outbreak of the Bubonic Plague in a small Algerian seaport in the early 20th century. Reading this book in 2026, I found Camus to be incredibly prescient, as the book is a near mirror image of the events that took place 70-plus years after The Plague's 1947 publication, namely, the 2020 Covid pandemic. From the downplaying of urgency to the lax administrative response. There were moments when the book invoked memories of those very trying times of our recent past. Memories of separation from loved ones, the effects on mental health and relationships, lack of trust in the medical community... to quack cures and price-gouging. It's all there as if Camus wrote this book show more today about Covid. A fascinating comparison.

But there lies a much deeper meaning to The Plague, as it is an allegorical representation of the German occupation of France during WWII. With this in mind, The Plague can easily be summed up in that man is the plague, and that sympathy and compassion are acts of resistance. "... on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it's up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences." show less

As is standard for Camus, this is a fantastic and thought-provoking novel.

I was amazed at reading through this book how many aspects of a fictional plague epidemic in Algeria 80 years ago mirrored the COVID-19 pandemic. The novel felt prescient in how it laid out the responses of people to the isolation, fear, and loss that accompanies an epidemic.

Again, Camus provokes immense thought on the front of the divine. Paneloux is particularly representative of this line of thought, of course, and I took note of his transformation of attitude in the face of the suffering of M. Othon's son. While his first sermon carried a pretentiousness that emphasized how the plague was a divine punishment on the populace, he switched tone for his second to show more discuss how critical it was to face the unacceptable as God's work. "...we must go straight to the heart of that which is unacceptable, precisely because it is thus that we are constrained to make our choice." I believe that this line of thinking faces the ugliness of the world as part of God's creation in a way that modern Christianity largely does not. I tend to agree with the idea that it is irresponsible to believe in a God who does not bear responsibility for the worst aspects of the world. To me, this creates a religion of idealism that stands in the way of our facing the work that can be done to make our world a better place.

It felt like the right time to read this book for me as an aspiring physician in the first week of Trump's second presidency. In many ways Rieux felt like an embodiment of the difference I hope to make in the world even in the worst of times. The line that stuck with me most of all is this: "anyhow, in this respect Rieux believed himself to be on the right road - in fighting against creation as he found it." Irrespective of the hand of any God, this attitude has characterized how I have come to feel about my place in the world today. I have no control over the rise of many terrible things in the world, but I am in a position to fight against creation as I find it.

This brings me as well to the theme of love in the novel, which in many ways is antithetical to the suffering brought about by the plague. The plague destroys love: it isolates us from those we love (such as in the case of Rambert), it brings death upon those we hold close, and it brings about conditions that make friendship and close connections difficult. Thus while love is recurrent as the thing which helps many carry on, it is also worn down over the course of isolated months. People relied on memories, which turned to shadows, and "even shadows can waste away, losing the faint hues of life that memory may give." However, as I read the novel, even in the complete loss of hope there remains love. The friendship that Rieux and Tarrou cultivate is the purest form of this, and the love remains even with the loss of Tarrou.

Finally, I will briefly discuss the ending. While I have primarily found discussions of the bleak nature of Rieux reflecting on the plague's capacity to seize any happy city, I read the ending as much more hopeful. Yes, the plague came with immense pain, and suffering, but as Rieux came to reflect, we learn in "times of pestilence... that there are more things to admire in men than to despise." While it is inevitable that humankind face immense challenges in the world, through these the beauty of human nature becomes clear. It is certainly challenging for Rieux to face the immense losses that he has suffered in the time of the plague, but there is also much that he gained in the form of love that survived such a bleak period of time. show less

Read this book when I was maybe 15 or so in translation, along with the stranger

This time, read it again in French right on the heels of L’Etranger

A fine work with lots of insight into the human condition during times of ever present mortal danger, of course so *relevant* at a time like this, one of global pandemic and widespread death, although the mortality of the plague in question is much higher than current figures for COVID-19

I’m assuming that this book, centered on the stoic Dr Rieux is sort of l’inverse of L’Etranger. Whereas Mersault lives a life devoid of intention, alienated from even his own desires, Rieux chooses a life of activism. Camus is careful to differentiate this activism from one based on religion or show more ideology - it seems we are to understand Rieux as someone (like Mersault) carried along on a certain kind of current. What makes the good doctor different from the hapless narrator of L’Etranger is that his boat has a rudder.

Regardless of the fact that I’d much rather hang out with Bernard Rieux than Meursault, I think L’Etranger is the better book. What makes the story of Meursault so disturbing is that some variation of his story happens to so many people all over the world everyday- in fact, if you don’t take action to steer your life, it’s likely to happen. Despite Rieux saying to Tarrou in an eminently quotable line that he doesn’t strive to be a saint but rather a man, this book sometimes verges on a kind of existential hagiography. I guess we are supposed to see the doctor as a kind of exemplar for the rational man striving against absurdity and death, and he certainly plays this role well. But I think this is where the book shows it’s age. Camus was writing on the heels of Allied victory in WW2 and French liberation from fascist domination. The afterglow definitely seeps into La Peste, and it’s a far more optimistic book than L’Etranger. I can’t help but feel like this book’s vision of human nature has soured a bit in the intervening 70 years, not to mention that for a book based upon valorizing humanism, it barely touches on the colonial situation in French Algeria, and reduces every female character to a kind of cardboard cut out. Camus would probably be scandalized by the fact that the experience of Meursault is more relatable than that of Dr. Rieux to a modern reader. But it feels to me that the world is being overwhelmed by multiple plagues, both physiological and ideological, and there are not enough Dr. Rieuxs to turn the tide. show less