He is announcing the deaths of many people, common people, and as spectators, we will wait, watch, hear, and perhaps learn from the consequences of the everyday Oedipuses and Creons of Oran — citizens warned again and again of their fate to die, yet who choose to be unbelieving, antagonistic, and indifferent to the warning. However, Camus' novel declares that this rebellion is nonetheless a noble, meaningful struggle even if it means facing never-ending defeat. The plague is just one incarnation of death, which is an omnipresent “collective disaster,” so the hierarchies were basically absurd before the plague as well. Holed up in his room, he pours over volumes of philology. Empty phrases that he gropes forward with — phrases like "his grim resolve" and "his secret grief," phrases that border on being clichés. As he does, Rieux is staring at the cliffs, the piece of bay, the sky — at nature, at creativity; he says "plague" to himself, and his thoughts of impending death create a polar contrast with the free, natural scene before him. Both men are, strictly speaking, nobodies — statistics, figuratively; actually, counters of statistics. Explore Course Hero's library of literature materials, including documents and Q&A pairs. Some of Camus' descriptions of the rats in this chapter are worth brief notice. The Outsider, The Plague, And The Fall By Albert Camus Analysis 1774 Words | 8 Pages. And a snail's shell of indifference and ignorance is hiding the townspeople and even Rieux's colleagues from the truth. Plague never enters his head. Camus refutes this armchair attitude; he characterizes the town as filled with bored people, people who have cultivated habits, people whose chief interest is "doing business." As the plague gently begins its slaughter, Dr. Rieux discovers in Chapter 4 that he must battle another plague-like phenomenon — the so-called red tape of bureaucracy. He is somewhat of an oddity in Tarrou's album of sketches. Being poor, Grand is not charged for the doctor's visits. Before, they simply took their loved ones for granted. When the epidemic wears on for months, many of Oran's citizens rise above themselves by joining the anti-plague effort. Camus’ The Plague shows us the worth of “the path of sympathy” in these troubling times or, as Rieux says, that “a loveless world is a dead world”. Rieux is also convinced that the victims of the unidentified fever should be put in isolation, yet he is stopped because of his colleagues' insistence that there is no definite proof that the disease is dangerously infectious. Tarrou says he is only interested in acquiring peace of mind. He is suddenly animated, amiable, and altogether not himself. Once he set the novel in the hot region of North Africa and had captured our belief in its existence, he began recreating Oran and its people in Western terms. The Plague, is a novel by Albert Camus, published in 1947, that tells the story of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran.It asks a number of questions relating to the nature of destiny, and the human condition. In his volume of essays, The Myth of Sisyphus, published five years before The Plague, he says that contrasts between the natural and the extraordinary, the individual and the universal, the tragic and the everyday are essential ingredients for the absurd work. Cuizon, Gwendolyn. He will tell, he says, "what happened." The story is narrated to us by an odd, nameless narrator strangely obsessed with objectivity, who tends to focus on a man named Dr. Bernard Rieux. In his volume of essays, The Myth of Sisyphus, published five years before The Plague, he says that contrasts between the natural and the extraordinary, the individual and the universal, the tragic and the everyday are essential ingredients for the absurd work. All imaginations cope ineffectually with such a figure, but the doctor's problem is compounded by the fact that he deals daily in death and has seen the raw damage that statistics are charted from. Leaving Grand, Rieux tends more patients. Here is a point, brief as it is, of normalcy to weigh later against the extreme. He now eats in luxury restaurants and flourishes grand tips. Referring once more to Oran's position on the sea, he says that it is humped "snail-wise" on the plateau. Grand seems paradoxical. In earlier works—notably the play Caligula (pb. It is only when they are separated by quarantine from their friends, lovers and families that they most intensively love them. Plague is proclaimed. (Camus 44) Rieux stays, faces his fear of death, and stays altruistic to fill the duty of being a doctor. And if fatality is wretched normally, imagine what discomfort will be encountered during the pages of this long chronicle of death. Albert Camus's novel The Plague is about an epidemic of bubonic plague that takes place in the Al-gerian port city of Oran.When the plague first arrives, the residents are slow to recognize the mortal danger they are in. Love, for Camus, is a mixture of "desire, affection, and intelligence." It provides a thorough exploration of the novel’s plot, characters and main themes, including war, guilt and disease. He is still in vague, unbelieving awe, as if the word had barely left his open mouth. The sea, of course, is a striking symbol for life, richly and lushly lived. In contrast to his quandary in this chapter, the natural beauty of the outside beams healthily. 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