Life and death in a city under quarantineThe Plague, a novel by Algerian-French author Albert Camus, was first published in 1947. Camus would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature a decade later. The Plague is probably Camus’s second-best-known work, after The Stranger. Though the two books are unrelated, they share a similar bleak tone. Both novels take place in Algeria, where Camus, the grandson of French colonists, was born.
As The Plague opens, the city of Oran is being overrun with rats. They appear in droves, only to die in heaps in the streets. The cause of their demise is the bubonic plague, which soon, by way of the rodents’ fleas, spreads to the city’s human inhabitants. As the death toll climbs, and the nature of the pandemic is determined, the entire city of Oran is placed under quarantine, cut off from the outside world. The book follows the lives of a handful of characters living under these conditions. Most prominent among them is Dr. Bernard Rieux, a physician who eventually ends up leading efforts to halt the spread of the disease.
For most of its shelf life, I’m sure The Plague was a very powerful and disturbing novel. For today’s readers, however, the book has lost some of its impact due to the simple fact that we recently lived through a real plague-and-quarantine scenario with the COVID-19 virus. I would imagine death by bubonic plague is more gruesome than a COVID death, but the fear, paranoia, isolation, and grief engendered by one fatal epidemic is comparable to the other. In both cases, many people were separated from their loved ones for lengthy periods of time. In some ways, the COVID lockdown was even worse than what Camus describes in The Plague. Here Oran is isolated from the outside world, but its citizens are still free to go out and mingle in public spaces, seemingly oblivious to possible contagion. (Granted, there was no internet in the 1940s, so they couldn’t very well work from home or shop online). No mention is made of masks being worn except for one instance late in the book. Camus gives due attention to the hardships and overwork faced by medical personnel, both professionals and volunteers, but unlike in real life his doctors and nurses seem immune to the disease they’re treating.
The plague itself is not so much the focus of the book, but rather the psychological effects of living in isolation under the constant threat of death. Although the novel does include some scenes of realistic melodrama involving illness, death, and grief, the overall tone, as one might expect from Camus, is one of deadpan fatalism. While the characters try to cling to the illusion that they have some control over their own destinies, Camus emphasizes that their lives are at the mercy of indiscriminate nature in the form of the lethal plague bacteria. Each character in his own way tries to find meaning and dignity in this rather meaningless extermination of human life.
The novel’s most unforgiveable fault is its lack of female characters. Camus writes the book almost as if women don’t exist in Oran, but for one main character’s mother who plays a minor supporting role. Some of the male characters are separated from their wives and lovers, who are off in faraway cities. This allows Camus to address the issue of romantic relationships interrupted by quarantine, but it makes for a rather abstract way to go about doing it. There is no example given of a couple undergoing the plague together, nor is a single case of a woman’s experience of the plague presented at all. Even Hemingway would have included at least a nurse. While Camus perspicaciously analyzes his five male leads in admirable psychological detail, that very same narrowness of focus makes the reader feel like he’s getting a rather limited view of the scope of this catastrophe.
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A meaningful testament to meaninglessnessAlbert Camus, winner of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in Algeria to French parents when the North African nation was ruled as a colony of France. Algeria also serves as the setting for his 1942 novel The Stranger. Its protagonist, Meursault, was born in France and has settled in North Africa with his mother. In his adopted homeland, Meursault lives as a Frenchman and only associates with other European settlers. This makes him “L’Étranger”—the French title of the work, which can be translated as the “foreigner,” “The Outsider” (the book’s British title) or “The Stranger” (its American title). Only a few Arab citizens of Algeria appear in the book, and they remain unnamed, referred to only as “the Arab,” thus emphasizing Meursault’s (and France’s) detachment from his colonial home.
Meursault’s indifference, however, is not directed at any particular race or demographic, but rather at the world and life in general, making him somewhat of a stranger to humanity. Under almost all circumstances, he demonstrates himself peculiarly incapable of feeling empathy or emotion, whether anger, fear, or love. Meursault narrates the novel in a detached, deadpan style that almost mocks everything that happens in the plot. He relates his dramatic saga of crime and punishment, love and sex, life and death in short, choppy sentences of bareboned syntax as if he were mentioning the most mundane of occurrences. This linguistic style is aptly evocative of Meursault’s apathetic attitude towards life and the world around him.
Likewise, the universe itself treats Meursault with harsh indifference. As if driven towards an inevitable fate by random variables beyond his control, he commits a crime almost unthinkingly. The circumstances of the crime exhibit some characteristics of self-defense and some of premeditation, leaving the outcome of his trial uncertain. During the actual court proceedings, however, Meursault finds that he is not being tried for what he has done but rather for who he is. The judge, jury, and courtroom crowd judges him for the very unfeeling personality that characterizes his nature. The details of his life are scrutinized as evidence of his otherness, his indifference to the way people are supposed to be, his status as a stranger among normal humans who dutifully love their mothers and worship God. Despite this negative turn of events, Meursault greets this persecution with his characteristic lack of concern, because life really doesn’t matter anyway.
Camus manages to convey all this in a tone that’s relentlessly bleak but with touches of absurd humor. Though Meursault’s narration remains dispassionate for most of the book, the plot does culminate in a climactic outburst, through which Meursault’s (and presumably Camus’s) philosophy of the absurdity and meaninglessness of existence is revealed with harsh and brutal frankness. Even so, this outlook of pointlessness is oddly liberating. The Stranger is one of the twentieth century’s most thought-provoking works of philosophical fiction. It certainly is no “feel-good” book, however, and it makes for a reading experience that’s obviously not to everyone’s taste. If you just don’t “get” The Stranger, then chances are you’re a rather happy, optimistic, and well-adjusted person. Congratulations!
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