The Plague Essay Research Paper Albert Camus — страница 2

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whats going on around them. Riley claims that “Then the brutal statistics awaken them, and they psychologically gird for battle”(Riley 93). Throughout part one, there is a sense of urgency and frustration. Death is seen throughout the novel and we are among the few to realize what is happening as the toll increases. The frustration, however, is not wholly a life and death matter. Now, besides lives, there are values, which are being destroyed. Rhein declares that “But Camus is structuring an irony. Death does not seem as important as knowledge does”(Rhein75). We do not feel horror when the plague is acknowledged; the horror of the disease had already saturated us. We can see its ugly symptoms-the heaps of rats’ bodies and the blood-and pus-swollen sores. The plague is

already very real to the characters and to us. Spritzen observes that “When the designation is officially announced the news seems good, for it means that although death, for awhile, is the victor, at least ignorance has been defeated. We read of the acknowledgement of the plague with a sense of relief. Truth has victory. A lucid evaluation of the crisis has been achieved, the enemy has been revealed and can now be confronted”(Spritzen 72). We now see Oran’s new environment and the adjustment of the townspeople toward it. They are taken by surprise and caught unprepared. Riley comments that “This new environment of Oran is like a world turned upside down-by accident, loved ones are away from the city, there are no letters, no telephone calls, no word from the Out

There”(Riley 93). Few Oranians adjust to this. For most of the citizens there are two ways of coping with the quarantine. At first some people surrender; others invent diversionary escapes. Knapp notes that “Of particular interest is how the plague binds men together and then, ironically, cuts them apart and rebinds each man within himself. Each man is as trapped as his neighbor; no one has special consideration under the plague’s regime. There is an immediate leveling of social distinctions”(Knapp 80). All of the citizens are equally in trouble, but they cannot comfort one another because they have never done so before. They have never expressed traditional emotions, and thus it is frustrating and useless to speak of the extreme emotions that the plague produces. The

people talk past one another. They are trapped in Oran and in themselves. Dr. Rieux suggests that the Oranians are lucky. Bloom comments that “This is a strange statement, but it has its genesis in Camus’ fondness for irony. The Oranians are lucky because their suffering is selfishly and limitedly personal. Because no one feels great compassion, they escape the deepest distress”(Bloom 112). In Part two we see a concern of the role of the Church during the plague-what its attitude was and how it battled Oran’s murderous enemy. Rhein points out that “Here Camus presents Religion versus Plague. The Church has defined: the plague has a beginning and, ostensibly, an end. It has originated in the sin of Oran, its purpose is punishment, and its termination is dependent upon

repentance”(Rhein 142). Father Paneloux is the priest in Oran. Throughout the novel he delivers two sermons. Bloom comments that “The first one is given in part two and affirms that the plague is a punishment sent by God and that the people of Oran must repent and do penance”(Bloom 109). After the Sunday sermon, Oran begins noticeably to change; Rieux says, “panic flares up.” At the root of Oran’s panic is probably the resurgence of fresh deaths. Death has vivid bloody traces; it is visual. A sharp rise in its death will stir panic before preaching will. The plague is no longer an irritant or even a coming danger. It is a fact and it has firmly embedded itself around Oran’s perimeter. The suburbs have continually felt its growth and have become part of “a

tightening belt of death that draws together toward the center of the city”(Knapp142). Moreover, the disease is no longer merely “plague.” It begins to have a diversity and an adaptability belonging to the philosophy of adapting and surviving. The plague has separated Oran from the outside and many of the Oranians from their loved ones, but it has begun to unite men of different temperaments and philosophies and to create a feeling of common humanity among them. In this third section, no isolated actions are described. The individual revolt of the first week of the plague is replaced with a vast despondency in which nothing is left “but a series of present moments.” Riley states that “In this third part of the novel the citizens of Oran are crushed both physically and