Rating: 5/5
Potential spoilers ahead
Albert Camus' The Plague: What a novel can tell us about society during absurdist disasters
With the COVID-19 pandemic six years in our rearview mirror, I turn to Albert Camus novel The Plague to figure out how society would prevail if another panedemic hit the world.
Camus' The Plague is more than just a fiction novel. Camus is a world-renowned philosopher of the absurdist tradition. His works spring out notions such as "Do emotions, values and people really matter at the end of the day?" In The Plague, this branch of philosophy appears in the namesake epidemic which strikes the town of Oran, a coastal city in Algeria.
Oran, just like most towns in the world before Covid, is described as a simple place. Nothing particularly special about its people or its industries. The townspeople live life on "easy mode." They work all day, find something to entertain themselves in the afternoon - swimming, cafes, cinema shows - until it is time to go to bed. In fact, Camus even foreshadows the events in the novel, proclaiming, “What’s most original about our city is how difficult it can be to die there.” Like the people in the novel, we did not have the slightest clue that anything as bad as the Covid-19 pandemic could befall us.
What makes this novel so relevant to the period, 2019 and any era afterward, is the way the characters reacted to the plague. At first, when rats die in the streets, the people of Oran note how bizarre the events were, but didn't feel any slippery slope of danger looming over them. Believing that the rats would stop dying and life would go back to normal, the town created crews to clean the streets and updated the people with their progress as they went. When a mysterious disease started to appear, however, things changed.
Like the people, the administrators of the city do not act hastily when the disease claimed its first souls. They made plans to test whether the plague was really a plague by calling indoctors to examine the disease. The number of deaths was recorded in the newspapers every day and debates over what the disease really was churned out with it. The people, unless related to those few who were sick, lived their lives as usual until the deaths-per-day count hit thirty. At this point, the administrators got scared and closed the city. No one comes out. No one comes in. All traffic stops. No shipments from the port. No trains run on the tracks. All life in Oran stopped indefinitely.
With the people isolated inside the city, same as us stuck in our homes during Covid, the people started to feel hopeless in such a mundane world. As time went on, the people felt the depth of their situation. People died daily and houses in their neighborhoods were shut off from the rest of the world. At first, people were optimistic. The Plague will end in a month, a season, another season. This overall feeling connects to how when we students got out of school for two weeks, everyone did not foresee how big Covid-19 would become. We understood that terrible things were happening, but we were still in the mindset of ‘before.’ Something so terrible could not happen to us, right? Plagues, epidemics and pandemics are for history textbooks, not for the modern day, we thought.
Camus’s philosophy comes in here. At some point, we all think nothing stereotypically bad will happen to us. Our paths are set for us. We will go to A, which leads to B, which will cause us to end up a C. What if the world has other plans? What if one sudden shift of fate changes everything? What if point B does not work out? Can we still make it to point C? What does one do when the world around them, portrayed as secure and stable, shatters? Camus shows that, despite unfavorable conditions, people can still work to fix the unpredictable. These actions, illuminated by characters such as Rieux and Rambert, showcase this excellently.
The main character Rieux is a doctor, naturally being one of the main fighters of the plague. As time goes on, it is a wonder to the reader and the other characters alike why Rieux still fights against the plague when everything is bleak and hopeless. Rambert, a visiting journalist who is trapped in the city when the plague starts, showcases moral triumphs in absurd situations perfectly. He spends the majority of the novel trying to escape the city to get to his lover in France, leading him to meet up with people on various occasions to plan when he is going to leave. When his plan is delayed repeatedly, he spends his time working as part of the volunteer squads that help the sick. When he finally gets the opportunity to leave the city once and for all, he stays, relenting, “There is shame in being happy all alone.” This acknowledges how groups of people who feel so isolated from each other, even in times of health, come together in times of sickness.
Rambert should feel nothing toward the other people in the city, being an outsider to them. He should have escaped when he had the chance, but it was the recognition that others would still suffer no matter where he fixed his attention that kept him in Oran. It is the preservation of humanity through absurd destruction of morals that strikes the readers of The Plague. Even when life throws sufferings and hardships at people, they somehow can manage to live on despite the environments they are in. One should think Sisyphus, cursed to roll a rock up a hill, happy. Rieux, Rambert, Tarrou and other characters in this story continued to help the sick in these mad circumstances because they could not think of a life where they stopped, lay down their arms and let whatever would happen occur.
For readers who want to understand the philosophies of absurdism, pick up this novel that is both relevant and timeless. Camus' work in portraying unrealistic circumstances with realistic values strengthens the core meaning of The Plague. People who wish for a novel that brings them back to six years ago when they were living in a similar situation to the characters in Oran and want to see the dilemmas in a new light will be captivated by this masterful novel. The Plague is a story about absurdism, how one can suffer through the trials of life and seek order in a turbulent world.
Thanks for reading!
“Besides, you know it too! Otherwise, what are you doing in that hospital? Have you all chosen, and so renounced happiness?” -Rambert, The Plague
