A word to the wise: when large numbers of rats come out of the woodwork and commence dying nasty, bloody deaths in the streets and houses, something is definitely wrong. In the port city of Oran, the population ignores the signs of danger and only grudgingly admits that an epidemic, a form of the bubonic plague to be exact, has taken root in their city. The protagonist, Dr. Rieux, is a doctor who finally helps convince the authorities to take extreme measures in the interest of public safety and to eventually quarantine the entire town. Over the course of the novel, we get to observe the manner in which Dr. Rieux, his companions, and prominent men of the community react to the worsening plague and its social consequences. Dr. Rieux has just sent his unhealthy wife off to a sanitarium before the plague breaks out, and he must suffer her absence alongside the stresses of working 20+ hours a day trying to save people's lives while accomplishing little more than watching them die horrible deaths. Dr. Rieux's attempts to make sense of everything is a basic pulse of the story; an atheist, he cannot find happiness but goes on day after day fighting the disease with all his might because that is what he as a doctor is supposed to do. His friend Tarrou supplies much of the knowledge we glean about the reactions of society as a whole as month after month of isolation continues in the face of death's greedy fingers. His journal records small but important facts about all manner of men, yet he himself cannot be said to find ultimate peace. We first encounter M. Cottard after he has hanged himself and been saved before death. A criminal type yet not a bad man, his initial worries over inquiries into his suicide attempt fade away as the plague's grip on Oran tightens. He emerges from a self-imposed exile to actually become a communicating member of society; he alone seems to enjoy the plague because it makes everyone else like him, forced to live each day with the fear of a brooding, horrible fate. Then there is M. Grande, one of my favorite characters in all of literature. A simple civil service employee, he devotes himself to volunteer work computing plague statistics and the like while still continuing his fervent efforts at writing a novel. Grande's wife left him years earlier because he got too wrapped up in his work and lost the words to communicate his love for her; he began writing a novel in an attempt to find those words. With great devotion and commitment he works on his writing, determined to produce a perfectly crafted novel, one where each word is meaningful and necessary for the story--in short, one that will inspire the future publisher to introduce it to his publishing house cohorts with the phrase, "Hats off, gentlemen." After untold months of dedicated effort, Grande has yet to get the first sentence to sound exactly right; he engages all of his efforts into perfecting this one sentence, sure that the rest of the novel will fall into place after it is perfected.

These main characters are all fascinating character studies. Not all of them live to see the plague's end, but each of them struggles to find meaning in his own experience--e.g., one character continues living because that is what is required of human beings, to go on fighting for life in a meaningless world; another character seeks to become a saint of sorts by helping his fellow man fight the pestilence. The overriding message I was left with at the end is that life is worth living despite the arbitrary cruelties of an unforgiving world because there is more good in man than there is evil. I found that the book delivered in fact a rather darkly uplifting celebration of the human spirit; one's loved ones give life its meaning in a hostile world. The Plague succeeds in ways The Stranger never could because the characters in this novel are utterly human and represent diverse aspects of the lives of each of us.


Healing Amidst Death   July 26, 2000
 78 out of 87 found this review helpful

"The town itself, let us admit, is ugly." So says Dr. Bernard Rieux, the narrator of Albert Camus', The Plague.

The Plague takes place in Oran, a small Mediterranean town in North Africa. Not only does Dr. Rieux find Oran ugly, he find its inhabitants boring people with little involvement in the actual business of living.

One day, Rieux steps on a dead rat, then another and another. Soon, he sees them everywhere, littered among the bloated corpses of Oran's inhabitants. Rieux and the Oranians ignore the problem at first, blaming the sanitation bureau for neglecting its duties. However, they soon discover that the dead and dying have a far more sinister tale to tell.

Although Rieux is the narrator of The Plague, several other main characters do exist. Jean Tarrou is a hapless man who has the misfortune of wandering into Oran during the plague. He quickly becomes a friend of Rieux's and his chronicles of Oran's ordeal appear throughout the book. Raymon Rambert is a French journalist who simply ends up in Oran during the time of the plague. Although longing to return to his beautiful wife in Paris, Rambert is forced to remain in Oran. Jospeh Grand is a writer eking out an existence in Oran as he attempts to write the perfect book, while Cottard is a prisoner who is using Oran to hide from the officials who want to execute him.

Oran is quarantined and its citizens must find various ways of dealing with this catastrophe. Some simply accept the inevitable and wait for the disease to strike while others turn a blind eye in the hope that if they do not see the plague, the plague will not see them.

One problem, however, affects all of the town's inhabitants--money. For the first time, Oran's port is closed. They cannot buy nor can they sell. They struggle to survive on their own with little fresh food and basic medical supplies. Only Cottard is happy, because while Oran is under quarantine, Cottard can consider his dismal life spared.

As the situation in Oran worsens, and little can be done, Father Paneloux, the town's priest, tells its inhabitants that the plague has come to punish the sinners of Oran and further tells his congregation that the plague will cease upon the town's repentance of its sins.

After a long and forceful sermon by Paneloux, the town does, indeed, change. Grand begins to have problems writing even one sentence containing a conjunction. He trembles, mutters, gulps and exhibits other qualities of a man on the edge. Rambert attempts to escape to France, first legally, then, when that fails, illegally. The two men finally calm themselves and join Rieux and Tarrou in their dedication to overcoming the plague. Paneloux, himself, finally joins in these efforts. Strangely, the plague, which has come to kill, has served in uniting men of different beliefs and visions in one life-affirming quest.

Once Oran becomes united, the plague begins to level off. Another victim dies, however. Father Paneloux becomes ill after witnessing the slow and agonizing death of Jacques Othon, a young, innocent boy. Chastised, Paneloux retracts his earlier, sophomoric message and decides that the plague is part of a plan that must be accepted.

As the survivors celebrate, the plague claims one last victim, the man who was its greatest enemy. While this man's life is gone, the others who have battled the plague find their lives forever changed.

The very first chapter of The Plague is short but filled with immense foreshadowing and extensive descriptive passages.

We find it easy to see why Oran becomes such an easy target for death and disease. Oran is not only ugly and ordinary, it is built so that its back is turned to the sea. In fact, the changing seasons in Oran, says Rieux, must be discriminated in the sky, for the town is an unrelieved monotony of grayness and its inhabitants are already living on the fringes of life.

Ignoring the simple pleasures of life, Oranians are nevertheless hard workers, but ones for whom money has no meaning beyond its mere possession. Love, too, is foreign to the citizens of Oran. They marry and have children but the concept of love for love's sake is unknown to them. Their very inauthenticity and narrow views make them prime targets for the plague and when confronted with it, they have precious few resources for dealing with the calamities it presents.

The greatest piece of foreshadowing, however, and the one that sets the book's theme is the sense of alienation and entrapment. Both the living and the dead remain trapped behind the walls of Oran. Freedom, truth and beauty all lie within a stone's throw, but, until the plague forces them to look, the Oranians remain blind to the beauties of the world outside.

The message of Oran is as clear as the sea that sparkles within reach of its walls. Beauty and truth are always ours for the taking. If we choose, however, to turn our backs on the riches that are ours, disease and death await us and only the luckiest among us will survive.


Decisions...   January 31, 2005
 53 out of 62 found this review helpful

This book isn't overly engaging, it is somewhat shocking at times, and its prose is probably too dry. Despite that, I highly recommend it to you... Why?. Well, the reason is simple. The plot of "The Plague" is merely a way of understanding something that has to do with our everyday life, and the way we live it.

Succinctly, the story begins when a plague strikes the North-African town of Oran. People at first try to ignore the clues that show that something bad is happening. When they cannot help but recognize that things are seriously wrong, a quarantine is declared. For those inside the walls of Oran, reality changes: death is omnipresent, and loneliness and despair, feelings they must confront. Different people react in diverse ways to the same reality, and we get to know about them through the narrator of this book, that also happens to be one of the protagonists. The real question that most of the persons in Oran ask themselves sooner or later is whether is it worthwhile to fight against the plague, when the outcome in that unfair war is almost certain death...

I won't give you the answers they find, if any. For that, you need to read the book... However, I can tell you Albert Camus' opinion. Camus (1913-1960) thought that it is in the fighting against evil that mankind finds its greatness (and maybe justification, who knows), even if we face what might seem at first sight a desperate situation. In a way, I think that for Camus the plague was in this case an allegory of evil, and our attitude against it. That evil changes faces, but always reappears, and it is again time to make choices, and decide what kind of attitude we will take. It is only in the right decisions that we will find the meaning we were searching for.

Again, recommended...

Belen Alcat



The Plague is not about a plague.   January 8, 2000
 33 out of 46 found this review helpful

Camus' The Plague is one of the most profound and important literary achievements of the last century. It is an allegory for the human capacity to inflict the ultimate iniquity, taking one's life. If you know anything about the WWII and especially the death camps you will have a clearer understanding of this work, for that is what The Plague is really about. Suffering and random indiscriminate death, utmost lack of compassion and yet somehow survival of all that is good about the Man. It is a book that is not easy to understand if you're reading it and thinking that boubonic plague is an actual threat to the people of Oran (an allegory for mankind). Mankind is the greatest threat to itself. I wasn't supposed to tell you that. The book is self-explanatory. Camus didn't want the reader to delve into The Plague thinking that it was about the holocaust. He gradually and brilliantly makes it clear by his amazing use of descriptions (which are the apparent source of trouble for all the readers who don't quite know what the book is about). I had tears in my eyes at the end of the book just when Camus seemed destined to pronounce the inevitable human downfall but he left us with a ray of hope. Camus was a genius. It is not easy to understand his work, especially when he chooses not to be easily understood. It is not a work of existentialism. It is a loud plea for existence and the consummate triumph of life. This is not a book for everyone. It is a must read, however, for people whose IQ's are in triple digits.


Some thoughts on Camus' Plague   April 28, 2002
 29 out of 30 found this review helpful

The plague is an allegory, for fascism and totalitarianism. The novel deals largely with individuals' varying reactions to the plague as it emerges and settles in on the city of Oran. Only those who act or are important in the development of the scene are named, and though many of the characters perceive reality differently, we are able to sympathize with where they are coming from. The novel is about overcoming indifference and performing good acts that we are all capable of. Camus makes it clear that there are no heroes in the novel, only people who recognize their responsibility and embrace life. Even though the plague is ultimately "defeated," there is no typical happy ending, for the plague bacillus never dies. This novel is still entirely relevant to our world today. The central point of Camus' writing is "the absurd." The absurd is characterized by the confrontation of "rational man and the indifferent universe." Camus dismisses ideas such as transcendence, or a leap of faith, there is no existential commitment. He looks to embrace the absurd, to keep it alive. Camus is very much a moralist and a pacifist; he deplored one-sided views of any political situation, and broke off relationships with other prominent writers of his time such as Sartre, whose ties to Communism and justification of violence Camus abhorred. He did not wish to take sides in the French-Algerian war. Camus did not seem to identify with a particular people, a belief system or any form of certainty, but viewed man as being in constant revolt against the powers that tried to enslave him, keeping him from living. Camus would rather embrace the absurdity of life than a frail system. Camus did not accept, as other "existentialist" writers of his time did, that humans were born into the world as nothing and it was up to the individual to entirely assert his own identity through his/her acts. "For Camus a man's acts could reveal an intrinsic integrity or dignity which were always there but which had laid dormant and unasserted until he was made to face the absurdity of his mortal condition in an immortal universe."(Masters, Camus: A Study). How The Plague deals with Reality:
-Subjectivity, shows how one person's reality is not the same as another's. It is only when people begin to realize that they are indeed "in the same boat" as one another (that they have common interests and a common spirit to fight for, and that they needn't be alienated from one another) that the plague can be seen as a real problem which needs to be fought, rather than an abstraction which must be hidden from.
-Shows how many cannot comprehend the enormity of a situation until it falls upon them, still often triggering disbelief.
-Looking at the "small things," people's reactions, etc. which "history" might ignore.
-Paying close attention to the conditions of the society; the indifference and apathy that helped to allow the plague to take hold.
-In historicizing an event like the Nazis occupation and plundering of Europe, it seems all too easy to look past the indifference which allowed such events to take place. The view in much of Europe was that it was someone else's problem, and even after their own nation was attacked, many merely tried to adapt, acted to appease the Nazis, or hoped that it would soon pass... they still saw it as someone else's problem to take care of. Camus was born in poverty in Algeria, somewhat of a "stranger" in France during the German occupation, but he found himself confronted with the situation, nonetheless, and was a key contributor to the French resistance army. One of his most important contributions was his work as the editor of Combat, the major underground resistance newspaper informing others of the problems and giving voice to a movement that all individuals needed to recognize their place in.
I hope that in reading Camus' Plague, you will be inspired and recognize the great relevance this novel still holds.