Empty phrases that he gropes forward with — phrases like "his grim resolve" and "his secret grief," phrases that border on being clichés. The reality is like a bad dream — absurd. When Camus wrote this novel, there was no epidemic of plague in Oran. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. The journalist Rambert seems, at this point, only a foil for Rieux. In the relaxingly furnished quarters of a municipal official, amid a background of professional-sounding doctors and their medical jargon, one is far from the bloody pus pockets of the city. The doctor patiently fights the plague, but is often confused about his duty: he, as the doctor, is supposed to save people, but in the case of plague, he just has a chance to isolate them from the healthy ones, and record their death. And yet The Plague ultimately makes for edifying reading in this time of quarantine. Officially, rats and fleas are to be exterminated; illnesses resembling the mysterious fever are to be reported and patients isolated. Characterization in Albert Camus’ ‘The Plague’ and Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot.’ This is a small point, for there is much description of the rats as repulsive and rotting, but Camus' occasional contrasts of appearance versus reality in his description is exactly what the chapter is concerned with. And since Camus has lamented that man's imagination has ceased to function, perhaps the reader would do well to expand it here in this trapped, sizzling, "normal" situation of death and imagine the eventual effect of the plague. Before Oran is finally quarantined, Dr. Rieux confronts one more tangle in the local snarl of red tape. Non-American Author Research: The Plague by Albert Camus The Plague by Albert Camus is a novel that forms themes around human suffering, greed, and religion. By Sean Illing @seanilling Jul 22, 2020, 10:10am EDT One should question, at this point, whether Rieux is wholly to be trusted. She comes to visit her son during the first days of the plague. eNotes plot summaries cover all the significant action of The Plague. In January 1941, the twenty-eight year old French writer Albert Camus began work on a novel about a virus that spreads uncontrollably from animals to humans and ends up destroying half the population of a representative modern town. Camus conceived of the universe in terms of paradoxes and … Are you sure you want to remove #bookConfirmation# And outside nature is serenely blue, brilliantly golden. Albert Camus's The Plague Plot Summary. Albert Camus’s novel The Plague is set in Oran, a French port on the Algerian coast in the 1940s. By Ivan Spencer. Examining the city more closely, the narrator says that love is particularly repulsive in Oran. The announcement of death is paramount in Camus' philosophy and in his novels. So that the book will not have a one-viewpoint narrative, the author of the chronicle offers the notebooks of — not an Oranian — but those of an outsider, Jean Tarrou. He muses on the dimensions of Grand's character — measurements which are unexceptional, but important in their implications. In any case, the reader should note that Camus does not single out lovers clinging together during a plague situation to snare his readers' attention. He is announcing the deaths of many people, common people, and as spectators, we will wait, watch, hear, and perhaps learn from the consequences of the everyday Oedipuses and Creons of Oran — citizens warned again and again of their fate to die, yet who choose to be unbelieving, antagonistic, and indifferent to the warning. People either have intercourse much as robots might, or they go about it animal-like — all this, he says because they lack time and thinking. This is the careful, exact quality in Rieux that we have seen previously. He becomes loquacious, companionable, and extroverted, delighting in how others now feel how he felt—frightened, oppressed, anxious. Camus, however, had good reason for beginning his work with just such a contrast. The situation of the rats may or may not be considered "normal," he says. 9782806270160 29 EBook Plurilingua Publishing This practical and insightful reading guide offers a complete summary and analysis of The Plague by Albert Camus. The plague tallies a few more deaths, and officials respond with a brief notice or two in obscure corners of the paper and small signs at obscure city points. “The Plague” takes place in Oran, a city that Camus, as a son and partisan of its rival, Algiers, found tacky, shallow, commercial; treeless and soulless. But when he says that prompt action should be taken but "don't attract attention," he is pitifully similar to the civil rights fighter who supports protest marches as long as they are done in good taste and don't "attract attention." Character List. More important, he is a questioner and a self-examiner. (Camus 44) Rieux stays, faces his fear of death, and stays altruistic to fill the duty of being a doctor. In his volume of essays, The Myth of Sisyphus, published five years before The Plague, he says that contrasts between the natural and the extraordinary, the individual and the universal, the tragic and the everyday are essential ingredients for the absurd work. That the rats themselves mean something more serious is ignored by the general population. The plague is an enigma to the doctor. of being alone? He lists his data and where he got them. The rats, they say, are disgusting, obnoxious, and a nuisance. Only old Dr. Castel says matter-of-factly that plague is their visitor. His role will enlarge as the story develops. Surprisingly, it is the town's ugliness, its lack of trees, its hideous houses, and the ridiculous layout. Here is a point, brief as it is, of normalcy to weigh later against the extreme. The recognition of the plague as a collective concern allows them to break the gap of alienation that has characterized their existence. Before leaving this chapter, there are two more incidents of credit for the doctor. He hopes to tell his story authentically, directing the narrative to our intellect and our imagination rather than to our heart strings. Love, for Camus, is a mixture of "desire, affection, and intelligence." Societies too often contain hypocrisy and jealousy; there is seldom honesty and directness. He lacks almost all sense of commercial survival. First, Rieux considers Grand's occupation as clerk. Camus’ The Plague shows us the worth of “the path of sympathy” in these troubling times or, as Rieux says, that “a loveless world is a dead world”. This illness is … It provides a thorough exploration of the novel’s plot, characters and main themes, including war, guilt and disease. The Myth of Sisyphus The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) is about the concept of absurdity. Leaving Grand, Rieux tends more patients. Rieux considers: none of these people matter, yet such a major tragedy as plague — what possible reason could there be for its singling out Oran? Even before the crises that the plague will create, here is a crisis of major importance — a crisis for truth. On the surface, The Plague is a realistic description of how society reacts to a deadly epidemic: Starting with the authorities’ inevitable denial and followed by hastily convened containment measures, panic buying, shameless profiteering and public discontent, the disease also brings out the very best in people, leading to extraordinary acts of human kindness and solidarity. The concern with love gone wrong is a symptom of an illness within Oran even before the plague of death strikes. Web. Another colleague of Rieux's loudly supports the Prefect's stand on the issue, explaining away the fever in vague, medical-book sounding generalities. These people Camus describes are recognizable as Americans and as western Europeans. The Plague Summary. He sees them as pitiful, and universal, dupes of illusion. The Plague is the most thorough fictional presentation of Camus’s mature thinking. It is given to other men instead of to God. Madame Rieux The mother of Dr. Rieux. Explore Course Hero's library of literature materials, including documents and Q&A pairs. The frustration is Kafkaesque. One knows what he encounters when he swims. This study guide and infographic for Albert Camus's The Plague offer summary and analysis on themes, symbols, and other literary devices found in the text. The first dead rat begins the chapter; the first victim ends it. Camus' idea of living meaningfully, yet knowing full well that life has no eventual meaning, is a positive-negative contrast. Is the old man aware of what he is doing? At present, he admits that he works for a newspaper that compromises with truth. This chapter also provides a fuller treatment of the character of Grand. It is, however, Rieux's early indifference to the rats which eventually passes. The tone here is low-keyed because the narrator is speaking of the normal day-to-day process of dying. He is relieved, you remember, when Rieux says that he will protect him. Dr. Bernard Rieux The surgeon — narrator of The Plague.. Jean Tarrou The best friend of Rieux.His notebooks are used as part of the chronicle. In addition, Camus is striving for an esthetic distance between the reader and the novel which will keep the reader an observer. Some of Camus' descriptions of the rats in this chapter are worth brief notice. The Plague is a novel by Albert Camus that was written in 1947, two years after the end of World War II. of the past? Camus conceived of the universe in terms of paradoxes and contrasts: man lives, yet he is condemned to die; most men live within the context of an afterlife, yet there has never been proof that an afterlife exists. Rieux's observation of Grand has Oran as relief, a town which becomes uneasy at the suggestion of affection. Once they do become aware of it, they must decide what measures they will take to fight the deadly disease. The final and short scene of the woman dripping with blood, stretching her arms in agony toward Rieux, is another incident to help us see Rieux as a man who is aware of human cries for help. Why does Cottard have an irrational fear of the police? In contrast to his quandary in this chapter, the natural beauty of the outside beams healthily. Rieux modifies his seeming indecision by saying that the symptoms are not "classic," and at this point his purist view is alarming. Grand, too, seems to furnish a foil-like situation for a deeper insight into Rieux's character. He wonders about wasting time, for example, and his present answer is "by being fully aware of it," one does not waste it. There is a breakdown in communication between Rieux and other men. Camus and The Plague. But because he shows little concern for the rats, but is sufficiently fascinated by Oran to record its idiosyncrasies, he is excellent for Rieux's purpose — a substantiation in presenting as accurate a picture as possible about the first days of the plague. Learn more about The Plague with a detailed plot summary and plot diagram. Rieux has proven himself to be a man of logic; this pondering is quite in character. Cottard's character now takes on greater significance. Camus has said in one of his essays that the absurd is often encountered when one is suddenly aware that habits have strangled natural responses and reactions, that habits have simplified one into simplemindedness. Camus seems, then, to be creating a society of habit-oriented people in order to confront them with death in its most horrible form — the plague. 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