The Plague

They Were All Doomed in

The Plague

Oran was a large French port where the unthinkable happened, it was place filled with people that thought nothing would happen to them. Then there were those that tried to help everyone else see what they were up against. The novel The Plague, written by Albert Camus, shows a city of people turn from an ordinary everyday city, to a place where everyone was fearful of a plague that struck with extreme devastation. The people thought they could get a free ride out and become, what they thought, a worshipper to god. Then the others based of doctors and colleagues tries to find a way to stop the plague knowing what it could do. The Plague shows how brutal natural-fate can be, and what it can do to the human’s intellect.

“The sentence of death is the central theme of [Camus’] work. It matters little here wither it is nature, fate, justice, or human cruelty which pronounces the sentence” (Bespaloff 140). Then is true in The Plague, the main idea of the story has death in it, and it is carried out by a natural fate. Thus possibly leading to something even more terrifying, human evil. “What, at this point, has become clear about the thought of Camus is that for him the ultimate character of the universe is evil and consequently men are always uncertain and always a threat” (Hanna 144). The plague was evil and some of the people did fall into an uncertainty, which caused them to do acts, not normally committed, just because of the threat he/she faced. These being some of the main focuses around Camus’ ideas shows the actual way humans act. In a natural disaster, for example, people begin to break laws because they fell threatened that they will not survive. “Whether or not there be goodness or God is not a primary evidence of human existence - suffering and death are” (Hanna 143). This is something that begins to happen to the people they start to suffer internally from what is happening all around them.

Some of the people thought this was something that was going to just blow over and be done with and nothing would happen. Then there is this quote, “the plague was for them an unwelcome visitant bound to take its leave one day as unexpectedly it had come” (Camus 88) This clearly shows how ignorant the people of Oran could be, thinking that nothing bad would come to them, even with people dieing all around them. This is shown with another quote from the book: “Nevertheless, many continued hoping that the epidemic would soon die out and they and their families be spared” (Camus 88). Now in this quote there is also an uncertainty setting in. They are thinking, “ wow, this might last longer then we expected.” They realize this. Therefore, what do they do? They try and get away from the plague. Not by running, but hiding in the church, with their prayers, hopefully being protected from God. “There were large attendances at the services of the week of prayer” (Camus 88). This shows that everyone was going to church now, to hopefully be saved by God. Father Paneloux points this out in his sermon by saying, “You fondly imagined it was enough to visit God on Sundays, and thus you could make free of your weekdays” (Camus 92). This is a very strong statement made by him, not only because does he know it is happening, but he also points it out to all so that they realize that just because they went to church, it does not mean that now they will not get the plague and die. So this hits the people and they begin to realize that even if this devastation