Rating: 
Summary: Healing Amidst Death
Review: "The town itself, let us admit, is ugly." So says Dr. Bernard Rieux, the narrator of Albert Camus', The Plague.The Plague takes place in Oran, a small Mediterranean town in North Africa. Not only does Dr. Rieux find Oran ugly, he find its inhabitants boring people with little involvement in the actual business of living. One day, Rieux steps on a dead rat, then another and another. Soon, he sees them everywhere, littered among the bloated corpses of Oran's inhabitants. Rieux and the Oranians ignore the problem at first, blaming the sanitation bureau for neglecting its duties. However, they soon discover that the dead and dying have a far more sinister tale to tell. Although Rieux is the narrator of The Plague, several other main characters do exist. Jean Tarrou is a hapless man who has the misfortune of wandering into Oran during the plague. He quickly becomes a friend of Rieux's and his chronicles of Oran's ordeal appear throughout the book. Raymon Rambert is a French journalist who simply ends up in Oran during the time of the plague. Although longing to return to his beautiful wife in Paris, Rambert is forced to remain in Oran. Jospeh Grand is a writer eking out an existence in Oran as he attempts to write the perfect book, while Cottard is a prisoner who is using Oran to hide from the officials who want to execute him. Oran is quarantined and its citizens must find various ways of dealing with this catastrophe. Some simply accept the inevitable and wait for the disease to strike while others turn a blind eye in the hope that if they do not see the plague, the plague will not see them. One problem, however, affects all of the town's inhabitants--money. For the first time, Oran's port is closed. They cannot buy nor can they sell. They struggle to survive on their own with little fresh food and basic medical supplies. Only Cottard is happy, because while Oran is under quarantine, Cottard can consider his dismal life spared. As the situation in Oran worsens, and little can be done, Father Paneloux, the town's priest, tells its inhabitants that the plague has come to punish the sinners of Oran and further tells his congregation that the plague will cease upon the town's repentance of its sins. After a long and forceful sermon by Paneloux, the town does, indeed, change. Grand begins to have problems writing even one sentence containing a conjunction. He trembles, mutters, gulps and exhibits other qualities of a man on the edge. Rambert attempts to escape to France, first legally, then, when that fails, illegally. The two men finally calm themselves and join Rieux and Tarrou in their dedication to overcoming the plague. Paneloux, himself, finally joins in these efforts. Strangely, the plague, which has come to kill, has served in uniting men of different beliefs and visions in one life-affirming quest. Once Oran becomes united, the plague begins to level off. Another victim dies, however. Father Paneloux becomes ill after witnessing the slow and agonizing death of Jacques Othon, a young, innocent boy. Chastised, Paneloux retracts his earlier, sophomoric message and decides that the plague is part of a plan that must be accepted. As the survivors celebrate, the plague claims one last victim, the man who was its greatest enemy. While this man's life is gone, the others who have battled the plague find their lives forever changed. The very first chapter of The Plague is short but filled with immense foreshadowing and extensive descriptive passages. We find it easy to see why Oran becomes such an easy target for death and disease. Oran is not only ugly and ordinary, it is built so that its back is turned to the sea. In fact, the changing seasons in Oran, says Rieux, must be discriminated in the sky, for the town is an unrelieved monotony of grayness and its inhabitants are already living on the fringes of life. Ignoring the simple pleasures of life, Oranians are nevertheless hard workers, but ones for whom money has no meaning beyond its mere possession. Love, too, is foreign to the citizens of Oran. They marry and have children but the concept of love for love's sake is unknown to them. Their very inauthenticity and narrow views make them prime targets for the plague and when confronted with it, they have precious few resources for dealing with the calamities it presents. The greatest piece of foreshadowing, however, and the one that sets the book's theme is the sense of alienation and entrapment. Both the living and the dead remain trapped behind the walls of Oran. Freedom, truth and beauty all lie within a stone's throw, but, until the plague forces them to look, the Oranians remain blind to the beauties of the world outside. The message of Oran is as clear as the sea that sparkles within reach of its walls. Beauty and truth are always ours for the taking. If we choose, however, to turn our backs on the riches that are ours, disease and death await us and only the luckiest among us will survive.
Rating:
Summary: The Plague IS NOT EQUIVALENT TO The Stranger
Review: This is a fantastic book and there's a lot to be said about it, but I'm writing simply in response to the review (and, I think, a pervasive belief) that The Plague is basically an elaboration/expansion on The Stranger. This is flatly untrue: The Stranger espouses individual integrity and The Plague espouses social solidarity. A fairly clear proof of this is that the protagonist of The Plague is a doctor while the protagonist of The Stranger is a murderer. I think that, once Camus had formalized his theories of the absurd in Myth of Sisyphus and The Stranger, he observed and considered their implications on actual life in modern society. Such consideration was unavoidably catalyzed by his life under German occupation in World War II (which Camus said was the basis for the idea of the plague). The basis of ideas--humans confronted with a strange and Godless universe, unaided by obsolete systems of ethics--is the same, but the conclusion is different: people can only forge new morality in conjunction with other human beings, and only by aiding each insofar as each is capable. Also, it is worth saying that The Plague is, on a literary level, a really good book: it has good drama (the first plague death, the ominous atmosphere of the first rat), comedy (the old man whose goals is to live to an extremely protracted age and looks forward to watching the riots; Grand's novel), and poignancy (Grand's note to Jean, Rambert's strengthening of heart).
Rating: 
Summary: Disaster and the human spirit
Review: This is a a magnificent novel from a wise, understanding and compassive writer. The story is simple: the city of Oran is stricken by a terrible (and metaphorical) plague spreaded by rats. As soon as it is universally acknowledged, the inhabitants start trying to survive, both physically and emotionally. But each one does it their way, often hanging on to the past which is all they have left in the face of the hideous present and the very uncertain future. The main character is Dr. Rieux, who takes charge of organizing the medical response. He is helped by a curious and moving character, Grand, a man who is trying to write a novel but gets stuck rewriting forever the first sentence, always remembering a lost love and growing to be resigned to his future. There is Cottard, who enjoys the odd situation created by the plague, after trying to kill himself: it seems the plague has given him something meaningful to live for. And Rambert, the foreign journalist who tries time and again to escape the city, only to be deterred by his conscience. The female presence is notoriously scarce. The tone is apparently cold and distant, but it is written with a mastery which gives us a glimpse of the humanity of the author. It's hard and real, and the human spirit in the face of such a disaster shines through. Interestingly enough, this novel seems to contradict Camus's manifested existentialism, such as the one portrayed in "The Stranger". Strange that an existentialist would write a novel where he seems very clearly to send the message that life exists and is important, that it has a meaning, even if obscure for us mortals, but that somehow it is valuable and deserves to be preserved even by sacrifice. Camus seems to have grown up by the time he wrote this great parable.
Rating:
Summary: The Plague is not about a plague.
Review: Camus' The Plague is one of the most profound and important literary achievements of the last century. It is an allegory for the human capacity to inflict the ultimate iniquity, taking one's life. If you know anything about the WWII and especially the death camps you will have a clearer understanding of this work, for that is what The Plague is really about. Suffering and random indiscriminate death, utmost lack of compassion and yet somehow survival of all that is good about the Man. It is a book that is not easy to understand if you're reading it and thinking that boubonic plague is an actual threat to the people of Oran (an allegory for mankind). Mankind is the greatest threat to itself. I wasn't supposed to tell you that. The book is self-explanatory. Camus didn't want the reader to delve into The Plague thinking that it was about the holocaust. He gradually and brilliantly makes it clear by his amazing use of descriptions (which are the apparent source of trouble for all the readers who don't quite know what the book is about). I had tears in my eyes at the end of the book just when Camus seemed destined to pronounce the inevitable human downfall but he left us with a ray of hope. Camus was a genius. It is not easy to understand his work, especially when he chooses not to be easily understood. It is not a work of existentialism. It is a loud plea for existence and the consummate triumph of life. This is not a book for everyone. It is a must read, however, for people whose IQ's are in triple digits.
Rating:
Summary: Frightening and uplifting.
Review: Of course there have been more than enough positive reviews of The Plague to make any effort on my part sound rather like preaching to the choir. What I would like to add is that, reflecting what another reviewer mentioned, this book is radically different in both its message and delivery from Camus' other masterwork, The Stranger. While I think the latter is ultimately the more effective and groundbreaking of the two, Meursault and the 'absurdity' which governed the context for his execution never reached me with the kind of explicit emotional honesty we see here displayed in Dr. Rieux. The Stranger is a thinly veiled philosophical treatise on man's powerlessness while The Plague is a book which recognizes other, more crucial, aspects of man: namely, empathy, compassion, fraternity and bravery. I found each of these characters, from the deeply conflicted Rambert to the frighteningly psycopathic Cottard, intricately sketched and almost tangibly real. As a side note, and to finally address why this book is given four stars instead of the full five, I would just mention that Camus' fictional style has always seemed a bit bloodless and guarded to these eyes. He is a master philosopher and an utterly engaging social phenomenon, but as a writer of prose he pales in comparison with people like Faulkner and Graham Greene.
Rating:
Summary: A harrowing account of the human condition
Review: Perhaps in more subtle ways than "The Stranger," Camus' "The Plague" offers both a revealing look into the emergence of French existentialism as well as a very personal account of human suffering and compassion. The novel develops very real characters, for whom our sympathy grows as the plague ravages Oran. In creating these characters, Camus establishes the idea that man is subject to his own apathy and the inevitable sufferings which the world we create offers. Definitely a most profound book.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting & well written but too dull for me
Review: Set in North Africa on the Mediterranean in the 1940's, the town of Oran becomes infested with bubonic plague, at first the authorities pursue a path of denial, finally the town is put under total quarantine for months until the disease has run its course. People are dying by the hundreds each week, some trying to escape or smuggle, some engaged in the most heroic acts of their lives, no one can leave and no one can come into the town as though under a siege.
Unfortunately, I found this to be the dullest thing I've read since Naipal's "A Bend in the River". In spite of the horrific events continually taking place in the book the story went on in the same monotone, passionless style from beginning to end. There is much philosophical insight in the behavior of humans in times of exile and stress from continual fear, but I think this author should have stayed away from fiction and stayed with philosophy or perhaps documentaries. This book was like reading an extremely well written composition but it never engaged my emotions.
Rating:
Summary: An Unseen Enemy
Review: An overwhelming feeling of meaninglessness is the enemy in all of Camus' work. The Plague is a parable about living with this spiritual dilemna which puzzles and threatens existence. But it can be read on a number of levels at the same time. You can read it as symbolic of Nazi occupation of France, or French occupation of Algeria, or any such condition where men feel hopeless in the face of historic events, time, the universe. Camus' characters are often close to surrender or indifference but some basic human need urges them on and makes them continue despite awareness that there is little chance of success. Camus loved the pure earth best of all and his scenes which place a man alone looking at the sea for instance have an instinctual feel that sets him apart from someone like the exclusively cerebral Sartre. It is a book which changes each time you read it. What is happening in the world at the time you are reading it affects your interpretation of what this book is saying. Parables are powerful because they work on you in ways that are not always specific, like myth. They feel real or they don't. This book captures the feeling that existence is an ongoing struggle against(and perhaps this is part of the book power and appeal)an ultimately unnamable and unidentifiable foe.
Rating:
Summary: The Plague
Review: In 194-, an illness begins to form in the ordinary town of Oran. At first rats in their thousands die and strange occurrences begin, but the doctors and learned men shy from declaring a plague; the social and economic stigma of such a word makes them apprehensive and indecisive. Soon though, as the deaths mount to nearly a thousand a week, the city is quarantined, emergency procedures are put in place, and the novel truly begins. The Plague is structured as an impartial account of six disease-ridden months. We are never given any insight into the thoughts or motives of the few named characters, rather we are presented with numerous essay-like sections on the gradual dehumanising of the populace and the often extreme measures put into place. All the same, there are various sections devoted to this or that character - one trying to escape the town to meet his wife, another struggling with his own private moral code, still another profiting from smuggling. This serves to give us both aspects of what a plague does to a city, though more time is spent discussing the broader aspects of it. This might sound macabre, but the novel would have benefited from more characters dying. As it is, there are only a handful of character that leave any lasting impression, and these are mostly the doctors caring for the sick. By dint of their profession and intimate knowledge of the plague, the story must remain clinical and cold. This works to give a greater picture of the events happening in Oran, but unfortunately severs any real emotional attachment, save for a a very few characters, four in my mind. Perhaps if greater time was spent developing some other characters and their relationships - and then having them die - a more personal connection could be made. But that is not the point of the novel. Many times throughout, it is stressed that the people are not special, that it is the community that lives and dies in plague times. At one point it is argued that men who volunteer and help should not be honored above others, for what man would not do such a thing? To help dying men and women in a quarantine situation does not require courage so much as an acceptance of what it means to be a human, to follow the responsibilities set forth by having life. This message, while at first seeming negative, is actually an overwhelming positive of the human race as a whole, and should not be discounted merely because it fails to glorify the few. Naturally, the story's focus is the Plague, and when it breaks, so too does the narrative. We are sent through the numbing lows and artificial highs of such an event, and while it is somewhat impersonal, this book serves as an invaluable account of the emotional flow and ebb of a community as a whole, and what it means to be a part of a group.
Rating:
Summary: THOUGHTFUL TAPESTRY OF THE COMPLEXITY OF WAR AND COURAGE..
Review: My first read of this book a few years ago had left me with the impression that it made for a sordid case of existential disenchantment. Camus to me was the hero of life's pointlessness, the murky messenger of resistance and its impossibility, the contemporary writer who proved that life was a plague and its victims were condemned to an endless cycle of futile revolt. On the second read, however, the book is nowhere near as despondent as I recall it. Far from it. It is about courage, about engagement, about paltriness and generosity, about small heroism and large cowardice, and about all kinds of profoundly humanist problems, such as love and goodness, happiness and mutual connection. It weaves a complex hope offered by resistance and the urgency of understanding the long, deep reach of war's corrupting power. A very, very satisfying and thought provoking read.
|
