ALBERT CAMUS’S – THE PLAGUE
ITS RELEVANCE TODAY
Forty-five
years ago, I first read Albert Camus’s novel ‘The Plague’. This was the third
book of his after ‘The Fall’ and ‘The Outsider’ that I had picked up for
reading, not only because the first two had created such an impact on my
thinking process, but because this was cited as one of the great books of those
times. Now looking back, I am convinced that it is one of the great books of
all time. The relevance of Camus’s novel becomes even starker when we
contemplate and try to understand the situation we now find ourselves in. The
Corona pandemic has made us reassess our attitudes towards life and death. It
has exposed our fragility in the face of ultimate termination. The book is
prophetic; which we realize now. When I first read the book, what left an
impact was its literary translation of human emotions and one could actually feel
the terror that encompassed the whole population of a city when faced with an
epidemic of enormous proportions. As a young man, my life was proceeding on
predicted lines and the possibility of such a situation sweeping the entire
world was never within the scope of my imagination. Of course, though such
epidemics have occurred from time to time in some clusters around the world,
they never threatened a whole population. Even when I used to travel from
Ahmedabad to Baroda and back, daily during the plague epidemic in Surat, I have
never felt so insecure as I do now. I could never imagine being locked down in
one’s own home for three months at a stretch. Though we are hopeful that a cure
will be there in the course of time, what until then? Like all things, this too
shall pass is the common refrain, and we continue with that hope and I am sure
we shall overcome. Now, as a much older and presumably a more mature individual,
I find myself reassessing my view of the world and my way of life. I am sure
this situation is bound to bring about a new normal and like we believe a
crisis in our personal lives, brings about an awakening within us, so also this
universal crisis is bound to give rise to an awakening in the universal
consciousness. And so, it happened that I was reminded of ‘The Plague’ and
Albert Camus and what I had read decades ago. I knew I had to read it again and
it was no surprise that for so many people out there it had become a topic for
discussion and reviews. Camus had become relevant once again and this time his
book was flying of the shelves. Though I had a paperback edition dating forty-five
years ago and whose pages had also started aging along with me, it was lying in
my bookshelf in Chennai. I decided to buy the Kindle version which would make
it easier for me to review the book. And as I read through it, the characters
came alive once again, more real, and I felt as if I was also one of the many
unnamed characters in the book.
There have
been plagues and epidemics dating back to prehistoric times decimating millions
of people along the way. They have often resulted in changing the course of
history. If we just confine ourselves to the last hundred years starting with
the Spanish Flu which lasted from 1916 t0 1920 which claimed over 500 million
people, there have been five of them not counting the present Corona epidemic.
The Asian Flu, Ebola, H1N1, and Zika. But perhaps the one epidemic for which a
permanent cure is yet to be found is AIDS which first came to be noticed in
1981 and to this day is still prevalent, though medication has since been developed
in managing the virus. The fact is that we have learned to live with epidemics
and come back to our normal lives though with a change as to how to live again.
The Plague by
Albert Camus is an extraordinary odyssey into the darkness and absurdity of
human existence. Other than Camus’s book there have been a number of books on
pandemics of which Katherine Anne Porter’s book ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider’
written in the year 1939 based on the Spanish Flu, and Margaret Atwood’s ‘The
Year of the Flood’ written in 2009 in which she envisages a world devastated by
a virus immediately comes to mind. It’s our misfortune that we find ourselves in
the midst of something akin to what these authors prophetically wrote. There
will be books and there will be epidemics in the future also, but as always, we
shall carry on.
Coming back
to Camus and ‘The Plague’, there have been various interpretations. While some
find that the story is an allegory of the French Resistance to the Nazis in
World War II, others find a metaphor of something stealthily taking over our
lives and causing a change in our behavior.
The story is
woven around a plague pandemic that threatens the entire population of nearly
two hundred thousand in the city of Oran, a French colony of Algeria. The year
of the plague is not specific, it is in the spring of 194- that it first raised
its head and went on till February of the following year. The entire novel
is in the form of a narrative and it is only, in the end, we find out who the
narrator is. The first ominous signs of what is to follow appear early in the
book-
'On the morning of April 16, Dr. Rieux emerged from his consulting-room and came across
a dead rat in the middle of the landing.' It starts with the rats. Vomiting
blood, they die in their hundreds, then in their thousands. When the rats are
all gone, the citizens begin to fall sick. Like the rats, they too die in ever
greater numbers. The authorities quarantine the town. Cut off, the terrified
townspeople must face this horror alone. Some resign themselves to death or the
whims of fate. Others seek someone to blame or dream of revenge. One is
determined to escape. But a few, like stoic Dr. Rieux, stand together to fight
the terror. A monstrous evil has entered their lives, but they will never
surrender to it. They will resist the plague'.
The narrator
says – ‘In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in
themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in
pestilences. A pestilence isn’t a thing made to man’s measure therefore we tell
ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogey of the mind, a bad dream that will
pass away. But it doesn’t always pass away and, from one bad dream to another,
it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven’t
taken their precautions.’
The book is
replete with philosophical musings and each of the principal characters
represents an aspect of human character and behavior. There is one sentence
towards the end that tells us – ‘quite simply what we learn in a time of
pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.’
The principal
characters in the book are – Dr. Rieux, Jean Tarrou, Raymond Rambert, Joseph
Grand, Cottard, and Father Panelou. It is not my intention to discuss the role
of each character here. But I shall highlight certain passages and
conversations that take place between them, especially Rieux, Tarrou, and Father
Panelou. The essence of the book lies in these conversations and one cannot but
conclude that it is through Rieux that Camus speaks for himself. Rieux does not
believe in God but believes that he is doing what needs to be done in the
struggle against death despite the fact that the outcome is ultimately doomed
to fail. At the other end of the spectrum is Panelou a Jesuit priest who
believes that the plague is an act of God to punish those who have sinned but
offers hope that God is present to offer succor to those who believe in him.
Though towards the end he softens his stand, he is taken ill but refuses to
call a doctor, firm in his belief that God alone can cure him and dies.
The following
conversation between Tarrou and Rieux I feel is very much Camus himself -
“Do you
believe in God doctor?” Again, the question was put in an ordinary tone. But
this time Rieux took longer to find his answer.
“No, but what
does that really mean? I’m fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something
out. But I’ve long ceased finding the original.”
“Isn’t that
the gulf between Paneloux and you?”
“I doubt it.
Paneloux is a man of learning, a scholar. He hasn’t come in contact with death;
that’s why he can speak with such assurance of the truth, with a capital T. but
every country priest who visits his parishioners and has heard a man gasping
for breath on his deathbed thinks as I do. He’d try to relieve human suffering
before trying to point out its excellence.”
“My question
is this,” said Tarrou. “Why do you yourself show such devotion, considering you
don’t believe in God? I suspect your answer may help me to mine.”
His face, still in shadow, Rieux said he had already answered: that if he believed in an
all-powerful God, he would cease curing the sick and leave that to Him. But no
one in the world believed in a God of that sort; not even Paneloux, who
believed he believed in such a God. And this is proved by the fact that no one
ever threw himself on Providence completely. Anyhow, in this respect Rieux
believed himself to be on the right road in fighting against creation itself.
“I have no
idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when all this ends. For the moment
I know this; there are sick people and they need curing. Later on, perhaps,
they’ll think things over; and so shall I. But what’s wanted now is to make
them well. I defend them as best as I can, that’s all.”
In another
piece of the conversation, Rieux says -
“Since the
order of the world is shaped by death, mightn’t it be better for God if we
refuse to believe in Him and struggle with all our might against death. Without
raising our eyes towards the heavens where he sits in silence.”
Tarrou
nodded. “Yes. But your victories will never be lasting; that’s all.”
Rieux’s face
darkened.
“Yes, I know
that. But it’s no reason for giving up the struggle.”
At the other
end of the spectrum we have Father Panelou whose extreme faith in God is
brought forth by the narrator –
‘He, Father
Panelou, refused to have recourse to simple devices enabling him to scale that
wall. Thus, he might easily have assured them that the child’s sufferings would
be compensated for by an eternity of bliss awaiting him. But how could he give
that assurance when, to tell the truth, he knew nothing about it? For who would
dare assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment’s
suffering?
No, he,
Father Panelou, would keep faith with that great symbol of all suffering, the
tortured body on the Cross; he would stand fast, his back to the wall, and face
honestly the terrible problem of a child’s agony. And he would boldly say to
those who listened to his words today: “My brothers, a time of testing has come
for us all. We must believe everything or deny everything. And who among you I
ask, would dare deny everything?”
It is
necessary to discuss both Rieux and Panelou to understand Camus’s view of life.
when Rieux says ‘I have no idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when
all this ends. For the moment I know this; there are sick people and they need
curing’, it is about finding a purpose in life and pursuing it rather than
speculating on the meaning of existence. Despite the discussions on
existentialism and absurdism which center around the plight of the individual
in an irrational universe, we can try to relate the above sentence to what
Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita about Karma about doing one’s duty without expecting the fruits thereof. It is not
necessary to believe in God to realize the import of this statement; this only
defines a purpose in life. So, there is no anomaly when Rieux says he does not
believe in God. In the end, he has contributed more constructively by healing
and saving lives than Panelou did, but we cannot discount the fact that Panelou
served the devout in us and gave hope that atonement of one’s sins and placing
faith in God was the only way towards healing, though it may not have prevented
the deaths, it still left open a window of hope to those who were critically
ill.
In my
viewpoint the characters of Rieux and Tarrou give glimpses of Buddhism
especially doing what is required of an individual to attain liberation through
finding a purpose in life. Buddhism encompasses the basic existentialist view
that life is full of anxiety (Dukka). But it goes beyond, by identifying the
causes for this suffering and the path to overcome this and attain
enlightenment. Rieux works tirelessly throughout the epidemic, though he has
his own misgivings as to the final result. The final retreat of the plague is
perhaps is his redemption.
While Camus
never wanted to be dubbed an existentialist of the Sartre school of
atheistic existentialism, which believes that life is intrinsically meaningless
and is only the sum total of the choices one makes, in trying to make it
authentic, Camus’s Philosophy of the Absurd is reflected in the basic premise
that it is the innate tendency of an individual to find a purpose even though he
is not sure as to the final outcome. This is the absurdity that is explored in Camus’s
‘The Myth of Sisyphus’.
How relevant
is the ‘The Plague’ to the present scenario we find ourselves in? It is really
astounding that when you go through the book you realize that what is happening
now is very similar to what has been described in graphic detail decades ago.
Whether it is the fear psychosis, the measures taken to prevent the spread of
the epidemic, the dedicated and tireless work of groups of individuals in taking
care of the afflicted, the resistance to the imposition of stringent
regulations by the authorities and lastly the realization that we have to move
on but with a changed perspective and living a new life. The threat will always
loom over our heads but that is where new lessons are learned, new beliefs come
into existence. The concept of divine redemption may also undergo a change. Man
can never exist without hope and hope without faith. We will continue to pray
to the same Gods; and the temples, churches, and mosques will open again, but
hopefully this time with more understanding rather than blind faith.
