Written during World War Two in occupied France the story is set in 1940’s Oran, French colonial Algeria. The city is quarantined during the progress of bubonic plague. Events are described by an initially unnamed narrator and are centered around Dr Rieux and a small group of colleagues and friends. The book is usually regarded as a significant existentialist work. Also, it has particular relevance since COVID.
The narration presented as a personal journal, is anthropologically detailed on the emergence of plague in the city and the effect on people, medically, socially and emotionally. The tone and tempo of the story rise from bemused disbelief and wishful thinking to restrained social terror and individual horror.
Plague is discussed as an act of God, a moral judgment, social judgment, evil, accident and wrong by different voices. The setting in a sun-baked coastal city trapped by the advancing, deepening plague, first witnessed as rats dying in the streets is contrasted with the seeming helplessness of humanity faced with a determined fate. It has been said that Camus is illustrating the absurdity, even uselessness, of life in this allegory.
It is true that the main characters come to a range of fates, among others, themes of religion, sanity and language are discussed. However, there seems to be a strong thread of humanity in the reactions, sooner or later, of these characters, despite the challenges of horror, inevitability, selfishness, death and loss of hope. Do you do nothing, up the denial, or does something deep inside us actually try to act humanly? What triggers this? If the death of a little boy (despite the well meaning intervention) doesn’t, nothing will, Camus seems to be saying.
Construction of the language is tight, intense, paced, ambiguity and meaning are intertwined, merge, it’s as if Camus wants close readers to hear the resonance and dilemmas of his view of life. Brutality tests the limits to cast off a sort of case hardened outlook.
In a wider context the characters are not helped by a God, they are not themselves Gods, but they, we, all have a surprisingly wide range of individual choices, we can make social choices if we want. God might be absent, but rationality and humanity can be what remains as well as absurdity, which is the omnipresent.
Vivid, unsentimental philosophy, brilliant story and writing.
Mark's Reviews 