Escaping Death
In the year 1348, there was a great pestilence that overtook the city of Florence, Italy. The pestilence was named the Black Plague, for the disease left black buboes all over its victims. It was so powerful an illness that once it took hold of a person, he had no chance of surviving. Tragically, the Plague spread all over the continent and destroyed one-third to one-half of all of Europe’s population. The survivors, however, managed to stay alive by focusing on personal goals. Even though the era of the Black Plague was controlled by death, the survivors used three different methods to escape the death that surrounded them.
One method the people used to escape the plague was to fear death itself. A brutal disease, the Black Plague left its victims decomposing in mere days after contracting the disease. When someone showed signs of the plague, another person would claim he would fetch a doctor. Instead, he would leave and lock the door, never returning. Di Coppo says that “the victim, abandoned by both people and nourishment, yet kept constant company by fever, wasted away” (1). Since the people could not fight the Plague, their instinctive flight response resulted in abandoning family and friends in favor of fleeing to the
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Because the plague was a brutal disease, the people forced themselves to develop these methods to stay alive, or else they would succumb to death’s urges. The first method was to actually fear death, or at least the suffering beforehand. The second method was to accept distractions so as to maintain social relations and keep a cheerful demeanor around everyone. The last method was to become desensitized so the people would not suffer more than necessary during this horrible, gruesome period. All of these methods helped keep the people alive in this dark time of the Black