Camus | The Plague
‘Literature always
anticipates life. It doesn’t copy it but moulds it to its purpose’, said Oscar
Wilde.
All our delightful
literatures that we drink deep of, from around the world, across genres and
languages - how true they prove to this credo!
The current ‘Covid’ pandemic
that’s proving lethal in many parts of the world, has forced many governments across
the world, to come out with pro-people initiatives and strategies to safeguard
its citizens.
Great novelists, poets
and writers from across frontiers have also sprinkled on paper their very own figments
of imagination and their artistic air of realities on the subject.
Indeed, literatures in
English from far and wide, have been witness to great creative spirits who have
written extensively about plagues, pestilences, epidemics and pandemics – both
fictitious, allegorical and real as well, in their books, across ages and
climes!
True to this credo - since
time immemorial - the pages of the past
have had their own shares of plagues and pestilences from across the world; and
writers, who have many a times proved mirrors to their milieu, have spontaneously
given vent to the impact and the intensity of these contagious diseases, in
their intensely original and highly creative musings.
One such intense
reflection - albeit fictitious in its ambit - of an epidemic that sweeps
through the town of Oran in Northern Algeria sounds quite premonitory and
highly relevant to today’s scenario!
It’s no wonder then, that this Albert
Camus masterpiece titled The Plague, catapulted
him to instant celebrity status, thanks to the intense air of reality that
pervades the pages of this philosophical read, all through!
While reading through The Plague I was quite spontaneously reminded
of the famous Oscar Wilde-an dictum – ‘Literature always anticipates life. It
doesn’t copy it but moulds it to its purpose’.
How true Wilde proves!
Coming first to the epigraph
to this Camus delight!
Well, the epigraph is
from Defoe, and it goes thus -
‘It is as reasonable
to represent one kind of imprisonment by
another, as it is to represent anything that really exists
by that which exists not’.
- Daniel Defoe
Coincidentally, Defoe himself
had literally lived through one of
the greatest plagues of London, which had killed one thousand people in just a
week’s time, back then in 1665! Defoe’s historical novel titled, A Journal of the Plague Year is an
intense testament to this sordid event!
Coming back to Camus’s
The Plague: how beautifully does Camus
come out with such an intense and descriptive analysis of the human predicament
during such a time of crisis – the outbreak of the plague - by carefully
bringing out the reactions of the residents of the town during the course of
the spread of this epidemic!
Race, class and social hierarchies disintegrate
quick and fall flat in the face of death that’s staring at everyone in town
now!
People of the town did not even have the time and the thought to have a relaxed look at
the beautiful sea that lay pretty close to them in this port town! They were so
engrossed in their petty trifles and foibles that they did not have the time to
heed to the still, solemn voice of nature, says Camus.
Now, people are in
panic mode all along!
Everyone is afraid of coming out of their homes for
fear of contracting the dreaded plague. In addition to self-imposed
barricading, a social curfew is also imposed on the town, by the imposition of
a martial law. The situation is highly tense!
Dr. Rieux, who dons
the role of the protagonist in the novel, gives a descriptive narration of the lives
of many people in the town of Oran, that’s now infected by the plague.
The conflicting
dualities in the thought processes of the main characters seem to have been so elegantly brought out by Camus. He deserves two Nobels just for this, and for this alone!
;-)
Rieux the protagonist,
is also a profound and compassionate humanist. He does not believe in the trappings
of conventional religion when it comes to combating the plague. To him, human
solidarity in such times of crisis, is the best antidote to the epidemic, by
all means!
However, there’s
Paneloux the priest who believes that the plague is God’s punishment on the
people of Oran, and hence only through divine mediations and meditations the
plague could possibly be eradicated from off the town!
However, towards the
end, both the characters resolve to bury the hatchet and their differences as
well, and come together in one accord, to defeat the plague, albeit through
scientific ways and means.
There’s such a
nourishing plenty in store for the avid reader, particularly the Camus buff, in
every word and every line of this profound Camus read!
The novel thereby proves
such an intense contemplation on human solidarity and the responsibility of
every individual as well, in combating the plague!
Added, the book
abounds with such memorable, high-octane quotes and maxims, that are so delightful by all
means! In fact, every page has a memorable line up for grabs! But me thought of
giving just a sample from them all, as appetizers to the main course that’s in
store for us all!
So here we go…
Perhaps the easiest way of making a town’s acquaintance is
to ascertain how the people in it work, how they love, and how they die.
In our
little town (is this, one wonders, an effect of the climate?) all three are
done on much the same lines, with the same feverish yet casual air.
The truth
is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits. Our citizens
work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich. Their chief interest is
in commerce, and their chief aim in life is, as they call it, ‘doing business’.
Certainly nothing is commoner nowadays than to see people
working from morn till night and then proceeding to fritter away at
card-tables, in cafes and in small-talk what time is left for living.
At Oran, as elsewhere, for lack of time and thinking, people
have to love one another without knowing much about it.
And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his
tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead
world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one’s
work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth
and wonder of a loving heart.
‘It comes to this’, Tarrou said almost casually; ‘what
interests me is learning how to become a saint’.
‘But you don’t believe in God’.
‘Exactly! Can one be a saint without God?—that’s the
problem, in fact the only problem, I’m up against today’.
‘Another skirmish at the gates, I suppose’.
‘Well, it’s over now’, Rieux said.
Tarrou said in a low voice that it was never over, and there
would be more victims, because that was in the order of things.
‘Perhaps’, the doctor answered. ‘But, you know, I feel more
fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don’t
really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man’.
‘Yes, we’re both after the same thing, but I’m less
ambitious’.
‘However, you think, like Paneloux, that the plague has its
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 plague as well. It helps men to 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.