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LangLit
An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal
Special Issue 118 July 2021
Website: www.langlit.org Contact No.: +919890290602
One Day International E-Conference on “Literature in the Pandemic Era:A Continuum” Organized by
The Department of English, M.S.P. Mandal's Arts, Commerce & Science College, Kille Dharur Dist.Beed
Indexed: ICI, Google Scholar, Research Gate, Academia.edu, IBI, IIFC, DRJI, The CiteFactor, COSMOS
ISSN 2349-5189
IMPACT FACTOR – 5.61
READING ALBERT CAMUS’ THE PLAGUE DURING A PANDEMIC
DR. PRADNYA D GHODWADIKAR
Assistant Professor, Baliram Patil College
Kinwat . Tq. Kinwat Dist Nanded ( M.S)
ABSTRACT
Pandemics are mass murderers. Diseases like smallpox, influenza,
plague and cholera damage families subvert towns and leave a
generation scarred and fearful. Literature provides us intense and
accurate record of events during pandemics and tries to feed
consolation in times of need. As we are cramped within the four walls
of our homes under lockdown in the wake of Covid-19, literature helps
break the barriers, connecting us across different historical periods
and time zones with others who have experienced similar tragedies.
Literature shows us that we have a lot in general with others who are
from distant lands and different times, encouraging us to appreciate
the fact that we are not the only ones who are dealing with the
worldwide dilapidation hammered by the pandemic.
Key Words – Literature, Epidemic, Mental Stress, Quarantine, Lockdown, Outbreak,
Destruction, Famine, Unemployment.
Pandemics is similar across the geographic locations and the human being follow the same
pattern indifferent of culture and time, in 1722, Daniel Defoe wrote A Journey of the Plague
Year, which is still considered as one of the most accredited and decorating works of
literature on infection and human behavior. In this book, Defoe gives an account of the
bubonic plague of 1665, which caused havoc on London in what became known as the Great
Plague of London. He tells us the people of London were forced to undergo to the most
severe measure taken by the city of London in 1665 by forcing all infected individuals to be
fastened in their homes with their families even if their family members were not sick. The
lockdown “had very great inconveniences in it, and some that were very tragical,” Defoe
acknowledges, “but it was authorized by a law, it had the public good in view as the end
chiefly aimed at, and all the private injuries that were done by the putting it in execution must
be put to the account of the public benefit”
From ancient times to the present, knowledge of diseases, including in comparison to the
recent awareness and development of pathology‟ has been theoretically erected and clinically
operationalised. Many medical innovations, such as penicillin, antibiotics and steroids, were
found to cure diseases that were formerly very dangerous and deathly; vaccines likewise are
certified as safe and effective in preventing such diseases. Despite this, people continue to
suffer from life- threatening illnesses and injuries, which are like arrogant and cruel enemies.
Medical treatment of diseased bodies provides great insight into society and its history and
culture throughout recorded history; these cultural norms and world views differ
psychologically and ideologically, but will be assimilated into a new system, thus, the mode
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LangLit
An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal
Special Issue 119 July 2021
Website: www.langlit.org Contact No.: +919890290602
One Day International E-Conference on “Literature in the Pandemic Era:A Continuum” Organized by
The Department of English, M.S.P. Mandal's Arts, Commerce & Science College, Kille Dharur Dist.Beed
Indexed: ICI, Google Scholar, Research Gate, Academia.edu, IBI, IIFC, DRJI, The CiteFactor, COSMOS
ISSN 2349-5189
IMPACT FACTOR – 5.61
of knowledge that permits us to understand diseases is not only particular, but also universal
in that the current generation can benefit from the wisdom of its predecessors. Similarly, the
disease narrative is a literary form of pathology in relation to the characters affected.
Since earth‟s climate has undergone continuous changes since the dawn of time, new
diseases and disease patterns also have continuously arose, each of which presents a specific
and notable scenario. For example, tuberculosis was spread over a large area in Britain during
the Romantic period of the 19th century, and as treatments were developed for prior deadly
illnesses, while AIDS and Cancer emerged as a new type of the Black Death in the 20th
century. This progressive phenomenon constitutes the historical background of an era, just as
the disaster of a plague is described in the Nobel Prize winner and French novelist, Albert
Camus‟ chronicle novel, The Plague. In it Camus depicts the plague, already well known
over the course of human history. The folly of unexplained and sudden outbreak of death
symbolizes all of the other similarly enigmatic and mysterious aspects of life. People are not
vigilant, with almost no time to respond. The epidemic thus is used to express and test human
attitudes toward disease and death, and to create out of violent devastation a collective
alertness in thereafter handling prominent events.
The plague is a philosophical reflection by Albert Camus written in the form of a novel. It
was published in 1947 and supposed that it was composed during the end of the Second
World War. It is about a plague epidemic in the large Algerian city of Oran. In April,
thousands of rats staggered into the open and die. When a mild hysteria grips the population,
the newspapers begin clamoring for action. The authorities finally arrange for the daily
collection and cremation of the rats. Soon thereafter, M. Michel, the concierge for the
building where Dr. Bernard Rieux works, dies after falling ill with a strange fever. When a
cluster of similar cases appears, Dr. Rieux‟s colleague, Castel, becomes certain that the
illness is the bubonic plague. He and Dr. Rieux are forced to confront the indifference and
denial of the authorities and other doctors in their attempts to urge quick, decisive action.
Only after it becomes impossible to deny that a serious epidemic is ravaging Oran, the
authorities enact strict sanitation measures, placing the whole city under quarantine.
The public responds to their sudden imprisonment with intense longing for absent loved
ones. They take delight in selfish personal distress, believed firmly that their pain is unique in
comparison to common suffering. Father Paneloux delivers a determined sermon, declaring
that the plague is God‟s punishment for Oran‟s sins. After the term of exile lasts several
months, of Oran‟s citizens lose their selfish obsession with personal suffering. They come to
identify the plague as a collective disaster that is everyone‟s concern. Mail service is stopped
for fear of spreading the plague beyond the city walls. The public, settling into a grim
acceptance of exile, ceases to think about carefully a hopeful future. If someone conjectures
that the epidemic will last six months, he or she quickly realizes that there is no reason why it
should not last for a year or longer. Rumination of the present provokes helpless impatience,
and not the past provokes regret. The citizens, who now consider themselves prisoners, carry
aimlessly through the days because all of their hope and suffering seem irrational.
Fortunately, the selfish obsession with personal distress prevents widespread panic. The cafes
and movie theaters enjoy brisk business because the idle public needs to occupy its time.
Only when they are imprisoned do the citizens of Oran realize the relative freedom they once
enjoyed. Before, there was nothing restricting them except the force of their own habits.
Page 3 of 4
LangLit
An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal
Special Issue 120 July 2021
Website: www.langlit.org Contact No.: +919890290602
One Day International E-Conference on “Literature in the Pandemic Era:A Continuum” Organized by
The Department of English, M.S.P. Mandal's Arts, Commerce & Science College, Kille Dharur Dist.Beed
Indexed: ICI, Google Scholar, Research Gate, Academia.edu, IBI, IIFC, DRJI, The CiteFactor, COSMOS
ISSN 2349-5189
IMPACT FACTOR – 5.61
However, just as before the plague, they continue to be selfishly self- absorbed with their
personal suffering. Each citizen believes his distress is somehow unique. They do not try to
find the right words for their suffering because they are horrified to think that their listener
pictures a common, mass traded emotion. Partly Oran‟s people lack the imagination to
communicate their suffering to other people; they were consistently bored before the
epidemic.
Summer descends on Oran, accompanied by its characteristics burning heat. When the
sounds of moaning victims drift out to the street no one stops to listen a pity. Escape attempts
are now punishable by long prison terms. The tally of deaths is announced daily over the
radio rather than weekly. All the cats have been shot as possible carriers of the plague. In
truth, no human science can save any person from death of any sort. There is nothing that
makes a plague death more meaningful than any other death. Camus implies that death is
senseless no matter how it happens. Before the plague, the citizens of Oran were doing a little
more than waiting for death, passively entertaining themselves as their lives slipped through
their fingers. They did not have the capacity to love intensely simply because they lived in
complete denial, or completely unaware of the certainty of their deaths.
Oran‟s citizens finally acknowledge their collective plight when their imagination ceases to
provide the means to fill their idle time. Everyone is equally condemned because the plague
snatches its victims from all walks of life. In revealing the absurdity of hierarchies by
refusing to obey them, the plague illuminates the universal absurdity of hierarchies, all
people, rich or poor, young and old; live under a death sentence every day of their lives.
Death is always a collective catastrophe because it is humankind‟s collective fate. The
distinction of burial fall away under the flood of corpses, the plague victims are disposed of
in the same manner as the rats had been a few months earlier. Any attempts on the part of the
living to impose a posthumous hierarchy on the victims are exposed as utterly absurd.
Similarly, many people realize that there is no rational or moral hierarchy in the suffering
caused by the plague. The community begins to see itself as a true community, united in a
profound experience.
The population hesitates to show any hope in response to the declining death rate because
they have become cautious during their long confinement. The central irony in the Plague lies
in Camus‟ treatment of „freedom‟. The citizens of Oran become prisoners of the plague when
their city falls under total quarantine, but it is doubtful whether they were really free before
the plague. Their lives were strictly controlled by an unconscious enslavement to their habits.
Besides, it is questionable whether they were really alive. It is only when they are separated
by quarantine from their friends, lovers and families that they most intensively love them.
Before, they simply took their loved ones for granted.
Camus‟ philosophy is an blend of existentialism and humanism. An atheist, Camus did not
believe that death, suffering, and human existence had any essential moral or rational
meaning. Because he did not believe in God or an afterlife, Camus held that human beings as
mortals live under an enigmatic, irrational, completely absurd death sentence. Camus did
believe that people are capable of giving their lives meaning. The most meaningful action
within the context of Camus‟ philosophy is to choose to fight death and suffering. The Plague
is infused with Camus‟ belief in the value of optimism in times of hopelessness. The novel
can be read o several levels; as a realistic tale of an epidemic outbreak, an allegory of active