This entry is a discussion of a book that I've recently read, see this entry for an explaination of what these pages are.

I picked the Plague up at my store because I wanted to read all of the orders for high school classes that we had on hand that I had not already read. It was a pretty sleazy way to peruse literature, but I suppose that it is just as bad as going through Harold Bloom's Western Canon for recommendations (which I also do). However, this fairly random selection has given me one of the most gratifying reading experiences of my life.

The story is set North African town that is decidedly (and admittedly) ugly and commercial. The town is swiftly onset by a "classical" plague, and the suffering provides the backdrop for Albert Camus' larger analysis of the victimization of mankind to all sorts of plagues.

For the first seventy-two pages I had no cause to pick up my pen or highlighter and take notes, but only because the action and gore were so relentless that the beautiful analysis that I came to love this book for had not yet settled into the action.

Looking back on my notes now, I feel a little ridiculous. I mistook Camus' allusions at several points and even held the conviction for awhile that one character in this fantastic but all too down to earth tale was the devil, or otherwise a saboteur that brought the plague to Oran intentionally, to test its social consequences. It turns out that this character was not only decidedly not the devil, but was actually striving for a kind of sainthood (all religious connotation aside, in true Camus style).

As the plague begins to become a fixture in the town, and the initial disruption and reaction has died down, Camus begins to analyze the facets of the newfound isolation and constant fear of death that has gripped Oran's citizenry.

"Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress.

Thus, too, they came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose. Even the past, of which they thought incessantly, had a savor only of regret....

Hostile to the past, impatient of the present, and cheated of the future, we were much like those whom men's justice, or hatred, forces to live behind prison bars."

This is the same sort of isolation that Camus addresses in some of his essays concerning, not literal plague, but the plague of the individual living without religious faith, who must struggle to actualize his existence on his own terms. Camus showed, through this book and others, that victory (though not victory over the various plagues or of the cold nature of such an existence) in such a struggle is not only possible, but perhaps admirable over the fates of those who subordinate to a higher power and relinquish control of their struggle to faith. This kind of control over our individuality, experience, and (as Camus goes to demonstrate) actions is the truly existential position, although Camus conflicts with some (perhaps most) other existential philosophers when he states vehemently and repeatedly that it is our duty as beings conscious of suffering to struggle against the cold tide of the universe and all of the plagues that befall mankind, though this struggle is decidedly futile.

"Each of us had to be content to live only for the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky."

He comments on what he perceived as the grossly abnormal nature of indifference, and the attitude that the suffering of men would be justified in another life or world, and so (some say) it is best to let the suffering continue... or at least, not to go out of one's way to stop it.

"But under the prolonged strain it seemed that hearts had toughened; people lived beside those groans or walked past them as though they had become the normal speech of men."

He expresses concern about an alternate nature of the man turned from god; one which Ivan Fydorovich Karamazov expressed well in Dostoevsky's masterpiece... if there is no god, then everything is permitted. Camus argues that there is still (and perhaps because of the realized brevity of life, greater) obligation and an obvious right.

"In the early days... religion held its ground. But once these people realized their instant peril, they gave their thoughts to pleasure."

In one exchange, Camus illustrates his moral theory beautifully, through the vessel of Doctor Rieux, who *SPOILER* turns out to be the narrator, and thus the character most closely aligned with Camus' own perspective. Rieux converses with his saintly friend, Tarrou (who has recently organized volunteer sanitation squads... the risk of participation is self-evident.)

TARROU
You think... the plague has its good side; it opens men's eyes and forces them to take thought?

RIEUX
So does every ill that flesh is heir to. What's true of all evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves.

TARROU
Do you believe in God, doctor?

RIEUX
I'm fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out. But I've long ceased finding that original.

TARROU
Why do you yourself show such devotion, considering you don't believe in God?

"His face still in shadow, Rieux said that he'd already answered: that if he believed in an all-powerful God he would cease curing the sick and leave that to Him. But no one in the world believed in a God of that sort...and this was proved by the fact that no one ever threw himself on Providence completely... in this respect Rieux found himself to be on the right road- in fighting against creation as he found it..."

RIEUX
Since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn't it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him and struggle with all our might against death, without raising our eyes toward the heaven where he sits in silence?

This same train of reasoning but a very different conclusion is contemplated by the Chorus in Euripides' Alcestes...

"Wouldn't it be better
To knot a rope round your neck
And hang yourself in the empty face of heaven?"

Camus actually analyzes the question of suicide in one of his most famous collections of essays, "The Myth of Sisyphus." He concludes that one can lead an actuated existence and have a will to life while acknowledging that this life may be (and probably is) the only chance a human being gets. In the continued conversation between Rieux and Tarrou, he argues that consciousness of suffering is the moral obligation to alleviate it, or at least struggle against it.

TARROU
But your victories will never be lasting, that's all.

RIEUX
I know that. But it's no reason for giving up the struggle.

TARROU
No reason, I agree. Only now, I can picture what this plague must mean for you.

RIEUX
Yes. A never ending defeat.

TARROU
Who taught you all this, Doctor?

RIEUX
Suffering...
What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this [the sanitary squads]?

TARROU
I don't know. My code of morals perhaps.

RIEUX
Your code of morals? What code?

TARROU
Comprehension.

This self-evident code of a moral obligation to struggle against the various pestilences that infect humankind and the action that they merited were not, Camus argued, praiseworthy. They were simply what must be realized and what must be done.

"These men [in the sanitary squads] were risking their lives. But again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is that of knowing whether two and two do make four...

The essential thing was to save the greatest possible number of persons from dying and being doomed to unending separation...

There was nothing admirable about this attitude; it was merely logical."

I have so many other quotes that I would love to include here and discuss, but I think that they merit a separate entry of their own.