I had a good time reading portions of Albert Camus’ ‘The Plague’ (originally 'La Peste' in French and translated to English) last month and wrote an essay for my Humanities and Social Science course at IISER Mohali. The theme of my essay revolved around some of the many similarities that occurred during the plague that hit Oran and the current COVID-19 pandemic we are caught in. Give it a read and share your thoughts below. Attaching an e-copy of the book below for those of you who'd like to read the novel.
A constant thought running in my head the past few weeks as I have been reading Albert Camus’ ‘The Plague’ is its relevance to the life we are leading right now - life amidst a pandemic. I ask myself if I would have been able to relate to this book as much as I have right now, had I read this any other time, and I think the answer is an obvious no. For this reason, I plan to compare the instances quoted in the book to the life we have been leading for the past 10 months, and show how similar they are.
Before we get into specific instances from the story and my observations/ experiences I’d like to begin by defining what an epidemic and a pandemic are. In very simple terms both an epidemic and a pandemic involve a disease that affects people. An epidemic applies to a large number of people within a community, population or a region who are affected by a disease whereas a pandemic is an epidemic spread across multiple countries or continents. So for all practical purposes, I think I’m making a reasonable comparison between the plague that hit Oran and the COVID-19 virus that has hit the entire world.
The first similarity between these two instances is how the disease comes to us uninformed and how we don’t realize the severity of its onset until we see its effects. We see in ‘The Plague’ how people initially do not feel threatened to recover dead rats from different parts of their house. They do find it absurd, but I don’t think they ever realize that something is seriously wrong until people are affected by the plague and its symptoms are visible, like the ganglia and fever. Some like M. Michael are in denial to find a dead rat. Quoting M. Michael, the concierge at Dr. Rieux’s apartment, “There weren't no rats in the building, so someone must have brought this one from outside. Some youngster trying to be funny, most likely.” Had Monsieur Michael or anyone at Oran foreseen they were going to be affected by the plague, I think they definitely would have taken different measures, but of course hindsight is 20/20.
People go on about their lives as if it were just something insignificant and I think we have witnessed the same attitude from all of us folks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Did we think a cold would become a fever that would lead to our death? Or did we think that a virus that was affecting people in China would spread all over the world and cause thousands of deaths on a daily basis? I definitely didn’t think so! If we were to know that we were going to see and hear about deaths on a daily basis, would we have been frolicking at the malls every weekend knowing that a tiny virus was holding our lives at its mercy? I highly doubt it.
Another similarity I find, is expressed so well in the book just through one sentence. “No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and the emotions shared by all.” How very true this is to both us and the folks of Oran! The people at Oran had no more control of their lives and so don’t we, rather our destinies are controlled by the disease itself. They all shared the same thought. “When will this plague go away from us and when will we go back to the times of normalcy?” The same applies to us. Our materialistic lives are no more the center of our attention and desire. All we want is to be able to freely walk the roads without the worry of death trodding behind us. Our destinies are far from our reach!
Another striking similarity between the plague and COVID-19 is how funerals were dealt with. Quoting the text again, “Formalities had been whittled down, and generally speaking, all elaborate ceremonial suppressed.” Families were not allowed near the deceased, all ceremonies were out of question and the families were put into quarantine if the deceased lived with them. If they were not together when the victim died, then the family was given a specific time to view the body, only once it had been washed, put in a coffin and before it left for the cemetery. Even in our case, anyone in close contact with the victim is immediately put into quarantine and during initial stages of the pandemic, a funeral was not even in question and neither was getting to see the deceased before cremation/burial. In both cases, the process was shortened and sped up to reduce risk, exposure and contamination.
Once more I choose to quote the text for another resemblance I find between these two events. “For there is no denying that the plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship.” In the story, we notice how lovers are pining for each other's presence, folks like Rambert try with all their might to flee from Oran to meet their loved ones and try so hard to get in touch with them. But as time passes, the plague sort of changes one's mind and thoughts in such matters and has the total opposite reaction. As the narrator says, “They lived for the moment only.” meaning they have forgotten the relationships they had and are currently indifferent to them. I think we also have gone through a similar phase (I will elaborate from a friend’s point of view). At the beginning, when lockdown was imposed, I had video chats with my friends discussing fond memories and complained about the inability for face to face meets. These video chats gradually became texts and finally I have totally lost touch. Yes it’s true, there are so many friends I haven’t heard from in quite a few months. What the reason is, I’m still trying to figure out. But I think you’ll agree that this pandemic has given us a new view of who we should actually trust, who will truly stand by us and has tested human endurance.
My final comparison between the plague epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic is going to highlight the immense effort put in by different people to help improve our situation. Doctor Rieux is such a wonderful example to mention at this juncture. Even without the plague, we see how he is constantly on his feet either treating people at the hospital or visiting the homes of his patients. During the plague he selflessly treats the infected people and never do we see him hesitate to treat an infected individual fearing for his life, which is something to commend and applaud. He works odd hours and barely gets any sleep and yet I don’t think any of this reflects in his work or reduces the quality of his work. I would also like to mention Jean Tarrou’s efforts at this point. I feel it is a great initiative to have thought and conceptualized the idea of voluntary groups and be selfless enough to be a part of the activities of this group too. Tarrou brought to the people of Oran ‘sanitary squads’ who courageously helped fight the plague by performing various chores.
And of course it is not surprising to see the same selfless efforts even now. Be it doctors treating patients or social workers from various NGOs trying to help people or scientists working on treatments for COVID-19, all of them are working for the greater good than for their personal well-being.
I can go on and on about various similarities between the plague and COVID-19, but I’ll stop here and add a few personal thoughts and questions. Isn’t it high time we understand the impermanence and fragility of our lives? Yesterday we were leading an oblivious and blissful life but today we are trapped in a pandemic not knowing what to do and where to go. How long is it going to take us to understand the need to let go of materialistic pleasures (not entirely, but we need to have a limit), the need to live a harmonic life between humans and nature, because I really think this pandemic has doomed on us as a pay back for our inhumane actions.
Saying so, I will sign off with a quote by Dave Hollis, “In the rush to get back to normal, use this time to decide which parts of normal are worth rushing back to”.
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