Boris Johnson orders UK coronavirus lockdown, The latest updates from our reporters in California and around the world. The public begins to feel uneasy when the flood of dying rats continues to increase. The plague is often considered an allegory for war and military occupation, and Camus drew from his own experience to describe the isolation and struggle of the novel. Dr. Bernard Rieux is the first to intuit that things are not right with the city when he notices a sudden spike in the number of dead rats around town. The novel is often called an allegory for fascism. But Camus is structuring an irony. Camus’s novel has fresh relevance and urgency—and lessons to give. (“What writer,” he said, accepting his Nobel prize, “would from now on in good conscience dare set himself up as a preacher of virtue?”) Camus was as uninterested in self-mythologizing as he was in anatomizing the fascist mentality. A young journalist, Raymond Rambert, calls on Dr. Rieux to discuss his current project, a report on the sanitary conditions in the Arab population. The Plague was heavily influenced by the Nazi occupation of France during WWII, during which Camus joined the French Resistance and wrote for an underground newspaper. Dr. Rieux promises to visit him later in the afternoon. Tarrou writes about a family of four with a disagreeable, strict father, M. Othon, who dines every day at the hotel. Dr. Rieux's elderly asthma patient declares that hunger has driven the rodents to die in the open by the hundreds. Furthermore, despite Dr. Rieux's claims of objectivity, his description of pre-plague Oran society is heavily laced with irony. We are living in the eerie, low-pressure vacuum before the storm. Many people do not want to admit that the rats pose a serious health risk to human beings, so they resort to rationalizing the phenomenon. ), and this has left them unprepared for something as indifferent to human needs and desires as a pestilence. 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” takes place in Oran, a city that Camus, as a son and partisan of its rival, Algiers, found tacky, shallow, commercial; treeless and soulless. He doesn’t dare come closer, but he has something he wants to say: “Perhaps this will be a Great Reset.”. It begins inconspicuously, with the appearance of a few disordered rats, then works its way virulently through the human population, as aided by indifference, hypocrisy, laziness. Summary and Meaning of Camus’ “The Plague” April 9, 2020 Existentialism Albert Camus (1913 – 1960) was a French author and philosopher who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. Perhaps Dr. Rieux withholds his identity because he is concerned with maintaining his objective distance from the chronicle. In the days that follow, an increasing number of rodents stagger out into the open and die, blood spurting from their muzzles. Rats are emerging into the streets, where they move awkwardly in a sort of dance, then bleed … Rieux states that the spirit of pre-plague Oran is one of empty commercialism. The novel presents a snapshot of life in Oran as seen through the author's distinctive absurdist point of view. Metcalf is the co-host of Slate’s “Culture Gabfest” podcast and is writing a book about the 1980s. Summary, Analysis and Reading Guide, Book Analysis: The Plague by Albert Camus, Bright Summaries, Books On Demand. The novel “The Plague” by Albert Camus is composed of 5 parts. Dr. Rieux's main concern before talking with Rambert is to make sure that Rambert will report the truth about the sad state of public sanitation. A Shasta County supervisors’ meeting was faced with verbal threats to government officials and talk of civil war. There is clear evidence that the post-Christmas holiday surge in cases is worsening. A friend emails from the Bay Area to say she’s baked her first loaf of bread; another writes from Australia to say that this epidemic will be “a giant mirror held up to everyone,” and that he is reading Mary Shelley’s “The Last Man.” A neighbor walking his dog halloos from across the fence. Rieux's description of Oran's character implies that Oran's citizens are not living their lives to the fullest. Then there is Tarrou, an observer and incorrigible overthinker, the one who must seek out why. And the public cycles incoherently through moods: denial, dread, a growing sense of panic; sudden gusts of piety, followed by gusts of licentious abandon. That time Kamala Harris flew on Trump’s private plane, and more from her biographer. Get the latest news, events and more from the Los Angeles Times Book Club, and help us get L.A. reading and talking. Book: The Plague. It's a fictional story written about the very real town of Oran in Northern Algeria. This foreshadows the point during the epidemic when dead plague victims will meet the same fate. On the phenomenon of the rats, Dr. Rieux states that it is as if an infected abscess had burst open, implying that Oran itself is diseased in some way. It is as tiny, in “1984,” as writing a sentence in a diary or exchanging glances with a beloved. Introduced as a surgeon, and is one of the first urge action to be taken It provides a thorough exploration of the novel’s plot, characters and main themes, including war, guilt and disease. Every day, they follow the same routines of work, movies, cafes, and shallow love affairs. Dr. Rieux, preoccupied by his wife's impending trip to a sanitarium, doesn't give a great deal of attention to the phenomenon at first. Rieux refuses to philosophize, to abstract away even for a minute from his duty — but merely to do it. Many of his works are now considered modern classics, in particular his novels The Plague and The Outsider. The narrator introduces the reader to Jean Tarrou, the author of the written documents mentioned earlier. In response, the city arranges for the daily collection and cremation of the corpses. Just as a mild hysteria begins to grip the public, the phenomenon abruptly disappears. Before too long, thousands of the creatures are making their way to the streets to die. Summary. Albert Camus's novel The Plague is about an epidemic of bubonic plague that takes place in the Al-gerian port city of Oran.When the plague first arrives, the residents are slow to recognize the mortal danger they are in. It is the 1940s in Oran, a French-occupied Algerian colony. The machinery of global capital has gone quiet, and we find ourselves half-abandoned, each to our own little mindful solaces. A day before Capitol attack, pro-Trump crowd stormed meeting, threatened officials in rural California. M. Michel, the concierge for the building where Dr. Rieux works, is convinced that the dead rats in the building have been placed there by pranksters. He muses that one can make oneself aware of time by indulging in intricate, frustrating, complicated routines. A social comedy on ‘detransitioning’ asks: Who is anyone to judge? Against the background of events, he creates various attitudes of human beings toward the plague, heightened by … The surface story is about plague in the early 1940s visiting the Algerian coastal city of Oran. This particular plague happens in a Algerian port town called Oran in the 1940s. An epidemic, it turns out, is “a shrewd, unflagging adversary; a skilled organizer, doing his work thoroughly and well.”. How a rootless orphan pieced together an identity — and a mission. Death does not finally seem as important as knowledge does. Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Tarrou, a vacationer in Oran, keeps notebooks containing detailed reports of his observations about daily life in Oran. As a younger man, he’d called it a city without “reprieve.” The citizens of Oran may not be especially sinful, but they subordinate every aspect of life to business (sound familiar? The closest Camus himself comes to voicing a moral is this: “What’s natural is the microbe. Camus shared with Orwell the belief that the moralizers are always stationed far from the front lines. At the end of The Plague, the narrator reveals himself as Dr. Rieux. Review: If anyone can teach you writing, maybe George Saunders can? But — as I have now, belatedly, discovered — there’s no substitute for finally sitting down and reading the 1947 novel “The Plague,” by Albert Camus. Soon thereafter, M. Michel, the concierge for the building where Dr. Rieux works, dies after falling ill … Tarrou's concern about wasting time echoes Rieux's own frustration with the Oran's time wasting tactics in response to the swarm of rats and later with the rising epidemic. The hotel manager, dismayed at the dead rats in his three-star hotel, takes no comfort in Tarrou's assurance that everyone is in the same boat. Word Count: 785. “The Plague” is an anti-allegory: It is vivid, tactile and frankly repulsive — the story of particular people actually dying from an actual disease, in ways medieval and pitiless. Their narrow, circumscribed routines and their indifference prevents them from making the most of their finite existence--they are wasting their time. 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