Albert Camus The Plague

This paper is a critical analysis on the story wrote by Albert Camus, The Plague. This book is an allegory that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden message, usually a moral or a political message. It is a book written from personal experience of the cruelty of this world, the violence, the destruction, the suffering and death that Camus has seen and lived during WWII. He wrote The plague to express the worth of human beings and their actions passive and active toward an epidemic illness that can potentially act as a tyrant for all humanity. The author brought up many themes in The plague, he discussed people's attitude toward the plague and death, the effect of the plague on people's belief in religion during a dark period, the separation

Rieux is the voice of Camus, he is a hardworking and talented doctor who set up in his mind to help and save lives during the horrific plague. He is also the narrator of the tale, he hides this fact during the whole story to simply stay objective. While the plague is ravaging the town, Rieux refuses to lay low and be passive and indifferent like the rest of the town. The peoples attitude towards this epidemic is very passive at first, most people stay in their houses, continue living their boring, useless routinely life and ignore the number of bodies pilling up. Most of the societies doctors and people do not take the illness seriously until Dr. Rieux convinced them to react, “[i]f we don’ make that declaration, there’s a risk that half the population may be wiped out.” (Camus, p.48) Dr. Rieux seems to be the only one noticing the urgency of this grave illness and pushes the Perfect to act and take measures of precaution to avoid spreading of the epidemic. These actions are the starter of the sensitization of the town toward the plague and they accentuate the danger of the plague making the people more aware and ready to help out. Judt points out that Rieux says that the only way to fight the plague was by being decent, having the proper moral and respectable behaviours facing such a disastrous period of history. (Judt, par. 17) Dr. Rieux being a humanist and an atheist has little patience with the inactivity and lack of actions of the authorities, he pushes them to react and take actions. His personality shows his belief in a personal ad social code of ethics. Tarrou is a wanderer who comes for vacation to the town of Oran, he helps Rieux battle the plague and stays to help the sanitization team with accordance with his code of ethics. He believes that man too often get murdered in the name of justice, he believes taking a human life is the supreme evil in the world. Tarrou is a great model because he is not indifferent like others of the society he