Tormented by his usual self-doubt, on the eve of its publication in 1947, he complained to a friend that it was a “livre manqué” – a waste of a book. At first the child seems to be coming out of the illness, but then succumbs to it in horrible, prolonged agony, emitting a fierce cry followed by endless wailing. Around the same time the first living rats are seen in town again. The story is narrated to us by an odd, nameless narrator strangely obsessed with objectivity, who tends to focus on a man named Dr. Bernard Rieux. Next. With the right precautions and modern medicine, they should be able to control an outbreak, shouldn’t they? After German troops occupied all of France in November 1942, the Resistance eventually united behind de Gaulle. ― Albert Camus, quote from The Plague “And indeed it could be said that once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the dominion of plague was ended.” ― Albert Camus, quote from The Plague “No doubt our love was still there, but quite simply it was unusable, heavy to carry, inert inside of us, sterile as crime or condemnation. Still, some took the stance of “refus absurde” (Jean Cassou) – refusing to accept the inevitable. The Plague is essentially a philosophical novel, meaning that it forwards a particular worldview through its plot and characterization. He fled to Lyon, where he married one of his many concurrent girlfriends – the pianist and mathematician Francine Faure – and moved to the Algerian coastal city of Oran with her. It has been described as 'a metaphysical novel the machinery of which can be compared to a Sophoclean tragedy. In the streetcars, people are twisting their backs to avoid contact and thereby contagion. Albert Camus, inspired by historical accounts of plague outbreaks and his experience during the Resistance in Nazi-occupied France, answered that timeless question in The Plague: Get up and do something useful together! He often intersperses his sober narration with quotes from a diary written by Tarrou, thus introducing another detached perspective to underline the unbiased nature of the account. Rieux notices the sudden appearance of dying rats around town, and soon thousands of rats are coming out into the open to die. 12 Total Resources View Text Complexity Discover Like Books Audio Excerpt from The Plague; Grade; ... 1957 given by Albert Camus Created by Nobelprize.org View on Nobelprize.org Share. Guide to the Classics: Albert Camus' The Plague Menu Close For both of them, it is a rare and refreshing moment of complete happiness and friendship, a taste of the overwhelming beauty of life and nature. The doctor sees off his ailing wife on the night train, assuring her that everything will be all right. Camus joined the French Resistance as chief editor of the underground newspaper Combat in 1943 and became friends with Jean-Paul Sartre. £4.68. [The Plague] [by: Albert Camus] Albert Camus. What does it feel like to be suddenly cut off from nature and the world, beleaguered by an invisible bacillus and condemned to endless apathy? Since he is already dealing with contraband goods and knows the right people, he puts Rambert in touch with some of his partners. Summary Read a Plot Overview of the entire book or a chapter by chapter Summary and Analysis. The Plague (Vintage International) - Kindle edition by Albert Camus, Stuart Gilbert. eNotes plot summaries cover all the significant action of The Plague. In truth, the estimated number lies somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 – out of a population of then almost 40 million. That night people go out celebrating in the streets. He is aided in his attempts by Cottard, a man who committed an unknown crime in the past and has since then lived in constant paranoia. Plague didn’t change anyone. In October, Rieux tries out Castel’s new anti-plague serum on a little boy who appears to be a hopeless case. by Albert Camus and Stuart Gilbert | May 7, 1991. Having moved to Paris in 1943, he joined the Resistance as chief editor of the influential clandestine newspaper Combat. Meanwhile Rieux struggles ceaselessly against the plague and is joined by Jean Tarrou, another visitor to Oran, and Joseph Grand, an older municipal clerk who longs for his ex-wife and struggles daily over the first sentence of a book he is trying to write. Like everybody else, Rambert is awaiting his love with nervous foreboding, fearing that the long plague months have changed him to a point where it would be hard to rejoin his past. We’ve discounted annual … Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans. Another former patient, the modest and underpaid municipal clerk Joseph Grand, calls him because of his neighbor’s failed suicide attempt: Cottard has rather ambivalently tried to hang himself. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. It is interesting that in 1941, when Camus was jotting ideas for the novel in his notebooks, he had decided to have a sea full of corpses. A quarantine camp is set up in the former municipal stadium, with hundreds of tents in the playing field and shower-baths installed under the stands. The Plague Summary. They're like having in-class notes for every discussion!”, “This is absolutely THE best teacher resource I have ever purchased. Albert Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria, on November 7, 1913, into a family of French-Algerian Pieds-Noirs. Albert Camus - The plague. The move takes everybody by surprise. Our, “Would not have made it through AP Literature without the printable PDFs. The townspeople are disgusted and alarmed. ― Albert Camus, The Plague. Raymond Rambert, a foreign journalist, tries to escape Oran and rejoin his wife in Paris, but he is held up by the bureaucracy and the unreliability of the criminal underground. Tarrou organizes an anti-plague sanitation league, and many volunteers join to help. Castel starts to develop a vaccine based on the local variety of the plague bacillus, Grand acts as a general secretary to the squads, keeping the statistics of the disease, and even Father Paneloux ends up joining the effort. The hospital ward is filling up, so that the authorities are constrained to requisition a school to open an auxiliary hospital. But one day he visited his father in court, and that day changed his life: Tarrou became an ardent opponent of capital punishment. The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. Camus was a cautiously optimistic humanist and moralist: He believed that, for all their colossal failings, people are inherently decent – when given a chance. Only one of Rieux’s patients, an old asthmatic Spaniard who spends his days moving dried peas from one saucepan to another to keep track of time, seems to take pleasure in the situation: “They are coming out,” he exclaims blithely. Soon things get much worse, though. Some found it cloyingly moralistic, while others, like Roland Barthes, worried that the metaphorical use of plague risked turning the historic horrors of the Nazis into an ahistorical happening. The first-person narrator is unnamed but mostly follows Dr. Bernard Rieux. Albert Camus, inspired by historical accounts of plague outbreaks and his experience during the Resistance in Nazi-occupied France, answered that timeless question in The Plague: Get up and do something useful together! Rambert finalizes his escape plan, but when he learns that Dr. Rieux is also separated from his wife (who is ill in a sanatorium) he decides to stay and fight the plague. Analysis Of Albert Camus 'BookThe Plague' 1424 Words | 6 Pages. The first-person narrator is unnamed but mostly follows Dr. Bernard Rieux.Rieux notices the sudden appearance of dying rats around town, and soon thousands of rats are coming out into the open to die. Camus is often considered an existentialist, but the philosophy he most identified with and developed was called absurdism. His daughter Catherine Camus, when asked about the book’s newfound popularity, said that its core message was now more pressing than ever: “We are not responsible for the coronavirus, but we can be responsible in the way we respond to it.”. The man begs the doctor not to report the incident to the police, but Rieux says it’s his duty to do so. Rieux warns his friend that his chances of surviving this adventure are one in three. The two men take a brief break to go swimming and then they go back to work. Nobody, not even Rieux, is willing to help him bend the rules and skip town. Albert Camus was working for the daily newspaper Paris-Soir when the Germans marched on Paris. FREE Shipping on your first order shipped by Amazon. The Plague concerns an outbreak of bubonic plague in the French-Algerian port city of Oran, sometime in the 1940s. A summary of Part X (Section1) in Albert Camus's The Plague. At first, everyone is in denial. Yet for every German killed, about 50 to 100 French hostages were executed in retaliation. Geared to what today's students need to know, SparkNotes … They have yearned for and attained love, he thinks, at least for the moment. Temporarily out of stock. Camus believed that the only way to confront the absurdity and pointlessness of life was to rebel against it and create meaning through action. After several months the public loses the selfishness in their suffering and recognizes the plague as a collective disaster. Select the sections that are relevant to you. Oran is a bustling yet dull port town on the Algerian coast, populated by hardworking, business-minded people who seldom look beyond their mundane habits – a place to live peacefully and unperturbed by the world at large. From the title, you know this book is about a plague. The townspeople react to their sudden isolation with feelings of exile and longing for absent loved ones, with each individual assuming that their suffering is unique. At first, few heeded his call – the majority were convinced that Germany would win the war, and they supported Pétain’s authoritarian and anti-Semitic regime. For Dr. Rieux, that’s not a question of heroism, but simply of “doing my job”. After much death and despair, the plague is defeated, families and lovers are reunited and life begins anew. But Tarrou ignores this and enrolls his first team of voluntary “sanitary squads,” which are soon followed by others. The locked-in townspeople become dull and passive; cars seem to be going around in circles, the port lies idle, and commerce dwindles. Word Count: 311. Learn how the author incorporated them and why. Finally they close the gates and quarantine Oran. Just before Christmas, Rieux catches Grand in front of a shop window with tears in his eyes: The old clerk remembers his early and happy days with his young wife, who left him after a few years of unfulfilled hopes. The Plague by Albert Camus. Only one person won’t join in the festive mood: Cottard has barricaded himself in his apartment and is shooting at people from his house. 29 $15.00 $15.00. What matters is that people are dying from a highly infectious disease, and a wait-and-see policy could have deadly consequences. At almost 44 he was the second-youngest author ever to receive the award, and the pressure to perform weighed on him. In a subsequent sermon, Paneloux speaks of “we” instead of “you,” and mentions that nothing in the world could ever justify a child’s suffering. In the first, the rats come out, creating a sense of ominous foreboding. In 1957, at almost 44, the Algerian-born Camus became the second youngest Nobel Prize winner ever. Wasn’t plague a thing of the past, something that befell only the poor and underdeveloped? At first, most restrictions remain in place. Not long after that sermon, Paneloux dies of plague. The novel tells of a group of men who don’t even try to make sense of a meaningless disease, but instead establish hygiene standards, isolate and care for the sick, develop a cure and hope for the best. The Plague Summary. Soon after the rat epidemic disappears, M. Michel, the concierge for Dr. Rieux’s office building, comes down with a strange fever and dies. The Plague (French: La Peste) is a novel by Albert Camus, published in 1947, that tells the story from the point of view of a narrator of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran.The narrator remains unknown until the start of the last chapter, chapter 5 of part 5. Then, on a morning in February, the gates are officially reopened with great pomp. Albert Camus (1913 – 1960) was a French author and philosopher who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.His novel The Plague has recently garnered much worldwide attention do to the pandemic of 2020.As a philosopher familiar with Camus’ thought, I’d like to highlight the book’s main philosophical themes.But first a very brief plot summary. In November, thanks in part to Castel’s serum, the curve begins to flatten, but the poor don’t have enough to eat, and the mood is turning ugly. The complicated liaison would later turn into outright hostility, as Camus was an anti-Stalinist at a time when it was not yet cool to be one. From now on small notices go up in inconspicuous parts of town, asking citizens to follow decent hygiene rules as well as to report the occurrence of fleas and unusual fevers to the authorities. THE PLAGUE, which won the Prix des Critiques in 1947, is considered by many to be the author's finest book. Get it as soon as Sun, Oct 4. But there is something that still has a meaning.” That something, among other things, is to resist injustice, help your community and alleviate human suffering. Like all pestilences, the plague eventually runs its course. Your highlights will appear here. On January 4, 1960, he died in a car crash en route to the capital. if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live as if there isn't and to die to find out that there is.” -Albert Camus, The Fall In Albert Camus’ novel The Plague, the author employs three main characters -- the narrator, Tarrou, and Father Paneloux -- to represent extremist views on religion and science in culture. And although the death rate among burial workers is high, the list of applicants is long – at this point many fear hunger more than plague. His mother, who was half-deaf, worked as a cleaning woman. Complete summary of Albert Camus' The Plague. The Plague is a novel by Albert Camus that was first published in 1947. LitCharts Teacher Editions. Moreover, it is a philosophical treatise of the Absurd: We are challenged by the paradox that we want to give meaning to our lives, while knowing that all of our struggles ultimately amount to nothing. At the same time, he got caught between the ideological fronts of the Algerian War, with opponents attacking his pacifist, non-committed approach as hopelessly naive. To keep house during her absence, his mother will join him soon. The novel tells of a group of men who don’t even try to make sense of a meaningless disease, but instead establish hygiene standards, isolate and care for the sick, develop a … On June 18, General Charles de Gaulle took to the microphone in a London BBC studio and called on the French people to resist Nazi Germany and the soon-to-be established collaborationist Vichy regime under Marshal Philippe Pétain in the south. She will spend some time in a mountain sanatorium to get better. After this ghastly ordeal, Rieux turns to Father Paneloux in anger: How about this innocent child, did it also deserve to die? Here are some memorable quotes from the novel. His father died in World War I when he was an infant. But then the journalist visits the overworked Tarrou and Rieux in the plague ward and tells them that he decided to stay: Leaving his friends alone now would be cowardly, and as a coward he won’t be able to look his lover in the eyes. Paneloux falls ill and dies soon afterwards, though he does not have the symptoms of the plague. After France’s crushing defeat by Nazi-Germany in 1940, the nation was in shock: Huge swastika flags were flown at the City Hall and Eiffel Tower in Paris, the ultimate symbol of humiliation. Camus' The Plague is an uncannily prescient description of the world of COVID-19, giving us reasons for reflection, and finally for hope. Similar cases of fever and inflamed lymph nodes start multiplying at a worrying clip across town. 4.3 out of 5 stars 10. The only person who seems perfectly at ease – in fact, doing better than ever before – is Cottard. Albert Camus's The Plague Chapter Summary. Rambert’s wife joins him in Oran, but Dr. Rieux learns that his wife has died at the sanatorium. Despair sets in along with the merciless summer heat. The novel consists of five acts resembling the trajectory of a classic Greek tragedy. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Plot Summary of “The Plague” by Albert Camus. The Plague (French: La Peste) is a novel by Albert Camus, published in 1947, that tells the story of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran. 78 likes. Still, to him it has proven that, when all is said and done, there are more reasons to admire his fellow human beings than to despise them. Everyone grows weary and depressed, and the death toll is so high that the authorities have to cremate the bodies. At the start of the COVID-19 crisis in 2020, demand was so high that, “On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. Albert Camus’ ‘The Plague’ and our own Great Reset Two police officers are the only ones on Rome’s Spanish Steps on March 10 amid the coronavirus outbreak. Book Guides ... View on SparkNotes Share. The book was published in 1947 and is considered one of the most important works by Camus. Grand shows all the symptoms of plague, but against the doctor’s expectations he recovers. From now on things improve rapidly. But Rieux grows increasingly impatient: The name is irrelevant, he says. An oily, awful-smelling odor descends on that part of town. Like “Thus each of us had to be content to live only for the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky.” ― Albert Camus, The Plague. They urge the government to take action, but the authorities drag their feet until the death toll rises so high that the plague is impossible to deny. In 1941, armed resistance began, with many young Frenchmen joining in disgust: One of their motives was the much-hated “horizontal collaboration,” a euphemism for sexual relationships between German men and French women desperate to feed themselves and their families. He’s feverish, and that same night he asks Rieux to burn his 50-page manuscript, containing the same opening sentence over and over again, in all conceivable variations. Plague victims are dying alone, away from their families, and then buried without church services. When a bedraggled looking dog comes out onto the street – the first Rieux has seen in months – he shoots the poor animal, too. Isolated riots are breaking out, and a special brigade shoots cats and dogs as possible carriers of the disease. In 1942, he went to the small French mountain village Le Panelier, in order to cure one of his recurring bouts of tuberculosis. But the doctor suggests he look into this curious rat invasion. Cottard’s shady business partners get back to Rambert and tell him that this time they have organized his escape for good. We must rise up in collective action and resist each recurring wave, over and over and over again. The biggest mistake, according to Camus, is to believe that it can be rooted out for good. His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and The Rebel. Family members, friends and lovers are separated for an unforeseeable future, and all communication with the outside world, except for telegrams, is forbidden. Grand falls ill with the plague, but then he makes a miraculous recovery. Finally, Rieux’s friend Tarrou, a nonlocal of private means, organizes a group of volunteers to help the doctors, who are already teetering at the brink of collapse. The novel reflects three aspects of the author’s personality: Dr. Rieux stands for the detached and dutiful healer, who fights on and continues to do the good work; Rambert is someone who lives for love, knowing full well that passion is fleeting and sustained marital bliss an illusion; and Tarrou is a disillusioned idealist, who searches for true meaning and dies before attaining it. Then he suggests to his friend to go out for a swim in the sea. A little deeper, it is an allegory of Nazi-occupied France during World War II – or any place on Earth that gets infected by the disease of a totalitarian ideology. There are shootouts at the gates, and some people escape. Two days later the man is dead. Albert Camus (/ k æ ˈ m uː / kam-OO, US also / k ə ˈ m uː / kə-MOO, French: [albɛʁ kamy] (); 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, and journalist. Customers who bought this item also bought. 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