Albert Camus: The Plague - book review

Most of us live our daily lives as if the day of tomorrow is an unequivocal fact, as if we would live to feel the warmth of the Sun the next morning. We’re so busy with our own lives that we seldom give much thought to the concerns of a community, or how the wheels—almost miraculously—keep turning every day, how an amalgam of people preoccupied with their personal ambitions and „selfish love” happen to live and work together, acting as a small part in a bigger whole, sacrificing their own comfort for the greater good.

These days, when all you hear on the news is „Coronavirus” and „new record for deaths in a day”, it’s hard not to draw analogies from Camus’ famous novel to what’s happening around the globe today. Sure, you’d say, coronavirus is not a plague, and you’d be right—death rates are much lower, but try telling that to an Italian doctor right now (the new epicenter of the virus), try telling them that „it’s not a big deal, it’s just a flu”. They would probably stare you in the face with tired, grey eyes of exhaustion and without wasting another minute would go back to working, trying to save another life, putting their own feelings and concerns on the back-burner and using their sweat and expertise in trying to stop something which mostly kills older people by the hundreds each day.

Moreover, the way in which Camus describes people’s psychology and the way the authorities dealt with this outbreak is oddly similar to how things unfolded in real life.

The Plague is a story of how the town of Oran in Algeria wakes up one day with „dying rats coming out on the streets”— a plague was emerging, and people of Oran were caught by surprise. Even as the evidence of a plague was becoming clearer and clearer, people of Oran pretended it wasn’t a big deal, and that they could continue living life like they always did.

„What’s this business about the rats?”
„I don’t know. It’s peculiar, but it will pass.” (p. 10)

But it didn’t pass. Deaths were rising and people were slowly starting to take it seriously. Dr. Bernard Rieux—a pragmatic man, was one of the first ones to be more suspicious and observe the numbers go up; yet even so, his reaction was delayed, as was the reaction from authorities and from people of Oran—only when victims were literally dying on the street did they start to realize that this was the plague.

Camus describes very well the reluctance (and even arrogance) of people to accept the fact that their daily lives may be interrupted for an indefinite amount of time and that this misfortune happened to them—that pestilence doesn’t care about your feelings:

„Pestilence is in fact very common, but we find it hard to believe in a pestilence when it descends upon us. There have been many plagues in the world as there have been wars, yet plagues and wars always find people equally unprepared. Dr. Rieux was unprepared, as were the rest of the townspeople, and this is how one should understand his reluctance to believe. One should also understand that he was divided between anxiety and confidence. When war breaks out people say: ’It won’t last, it’s too stupid.’ And war is certainly too stupid, but that doesn’t prevent it from lasting. Stupidity always carries doggedly on, as people would notice if they were not always thinking about themselves. In this respect, the citizens of Oran were like the rest of the world, they thought about themselves; in other words, they were humanists; they did not believe in pestilence. A pestilence does not have human dimensions, so people tell themselves that it is unreal, that it is a bad dream which will end. But it does not always end and, from one bad dream to the next, it is people who end, humanists first of all because they have not prepared themselves. The people of our town were no more guilty than anyone else, they merely forgot to be modest and thought that everything was still possible for them, which implied that pestilence was impossible. They continued with business, with making arrangements for travel and holding opinions. Why should they have thought about the plague, which negates the future, negates journeys and debate? They considered themselves free and no one will ever be free as long as there is plague, pestilence and famine.” (pp. 30, 31)

But that egotism and ignorance did not last long. Soon enough a common and almost banal fact brought people together: suffering. The universality of death and the suffering that ensued made people forget about their individual feelings and concentrate on mitigating and containing this terrible disease.

„From that point on, it could be said that the plague became the affair of us all. Up to then, despite the surprise and anxiety that these unusual events had brought us, everyone had gone on with his business, as well as he could, in the usual place. And that no doubt would continue. But once the gates were closed, they all noticed that they were in the same boat, including the narrator himself, and that they had to adjust to the fact. This is how, for example, a quite individual feeling such as being separated from a loved one suddenly became, in the very first weeks, the feeling of a whole people and, together with fear the greatest agony of that long period of exile.” (p. 53)

What followed was a long battle which saw thousands of wasted human lives, a struggle that united the town and its people—they shared the exhaustion, the pain and the tears, the courage and the fear. They were a whole entity, yet they were individuals—the ones who in times of need realized that they have a duty towards their community, that in sticking together the suffering could be almost bearable.

Dr. Rieux, the protagonist, did not romanticize the struggle, or the people in the „health teams” who would be considered „heroes” in our day and age. This plague was to be fought by regular people, by simple and consistent acts of duty. For Dr. Rieux, there was nothing noble or romantic about suffering, „he would treat suffering, not try to demonstrate what a fine thing it is.” (p. 97)

The Plague is at its core a moral tale, some say it’s an allegory for France’s occupation by the Nazis in WW2—given the time when Camus started writing it, in 1941; I don’t know, it may be. But I also know that what makes this story so powerful is that it transcends the political. It is ultimately a story about us, about the way in which we respond as individuals and as a community to life’s tragedies that are beyond our control.

Camus was a moralist who separated good from evil, but he also studied the „grey area”, the absurd, the human frailty. Cottard—a character in the novel who was a depressive cynic and who didn’t wish the plague to end, was the exception to the rule. Contrary to Sartre (Camus’ contemporary), who thought that „hell is other people”, Camus thought that most people are better than we think. „You just need to give them the opportunity.” (p. 115)

Camus’ pragmatism could be summarized In Rieux’s words, „I don’t think I have any taste for heroism and sainthood. What interests me is to be a man.” (p. 197)

And maybe the wisest words, ironically, came from „an old asthmatic who was sorting chickpeas with equanimity from one bowl to another in order to pass time”, who told Rieux at the end of the novel:

„Other people say: ’It’s the plague, we’ve had the plague.’ Next thing, they’ll be wanting a medal. But what does it mean, the plague? It’s life, that’s all.” (p. 236)

Rating: 5/5