Significance Of Jim Clarkson In An American Plague

Throughout the novel, An American Plague, Jim Murphy tells of a man named Matthew Clarkson who was a sixty year old man, with a wife and nine children, when the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 started. He was the Mayor of Philadelphia at the time, but did not have much power in the city. He was more of a figurehead than a government official. Matthew Clarkson had many reasons to desert the infected city, but instead stayed throughout the pestilence. During the epidemic he had became a symbol of heroism for the selfless volunteers who stayed during the fever and made a real difference in Philadelphia by having sense of duty, being selfless, and persevering throughout the fever epidemic. First off, Mayor Clarkson was a symbol of heroism because he showed a strong sense of duty during the Fever Epidemic of 1793. He stayed and cared for the people, even though he was old, poor, and had a whole family to take care of. He could've easily left the people of his city like the majority of his colleagues, but he decided to stay. Jim murphy states that,”Clarkson stayed despite many good reasons to flee. He was sixty years old, with

This is evidenced when Murphy writes,”Mayor Clarkson, meanwhile, faced mounting problems. The mayor showed up to city hall every day to learn what new crisis had developed, meet visitors, and considered options. But there was little he could do. Every day more and more city officials failed to show up at work”(Murphy 37). Being almost by himself with the amount of problems, and the amount of responsibilities he had, it would've been hard to keep on going and trying to make things better in Philadelphia. He kept on persevering through all of this, and improved the city along the way, which is another major reason why Mayor Matthew Clarkson was such a symbol of heroism during the Fever epidemic of