Detail of ‘The Triumph of Death’ (ca. 1562) – Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Jean-Paul Sartre famously defined existentialism as “merely an attempt to draw all the conclusions inferred by a consistently atheistic point of view”. In The Plague, an elegantly written and gripping novel, Albert Camus explores this central tenet of existentialism (though, as is often pointed out, Camus never accepted the label of existentialist). Set in the coastal town of Oran, Algeria in the 1940s, the novel illustrates the various ways in which humanity responds to the very immediate threat of death. The town’s fight against a ferocious and indiscriminate plague reveals the human capacity for good, just as it reveals the human capacity for evil, weakness and inaction. Camus is making a distinct moral statement that defends, in fact celebrates, what he regards as our essentially good nature. We should help others, even if it means risking our own death. And we should do this not because it is ordained by some higher power, but because doing good is what makes us human. In other words, this novel is a humanist celebration of goodness for goodness’ sake.
Originally published in 1948, The Plague is often read as an allegory for German occupation of France during WWII. Interest in the novel has recently been renewed due to the emergence of grave “existential threats” like Ebola, ISIS and even “a destructive, hyper-materialist, turbo-capitalism“. But as Roger Cohen points out, if we accept the definition of plague from Webster’s Dictionary — “anything that afflicts or troubles; calamity; scourge” — then Camus’ most celebrated novel takes on an even broader meaning. The Plague isn’t just a moral condemnation of literal indifference to disease, or metaphorical indifference to fascism or religious fundamentalism or unfettered capitalism. Instead, according to Tony Judt, Camus’ The Plague should be read as a moral condemnation of “dogma, conformity, compliance and cowardice in all their intersecting public forms”. In this sense, Camus offers a reflection on the constant challenges that existence throws at us. This broader meaning of plague becomes evident near the end of the novel when Rieux, a local doctor and the novel’s main protagonist, pays a visit to an elderly patient suffering from asthma. Upon learning that Rieux’s colleague had succumbed to the plague, the old man offers these thoughts: “All those folks are saying: ‘It was plague. We’ve had the plague here.’ You’d almost think they expected to be given medals for it. But what does that mean — ‘plague’? Just life, no more than that.”
There are certain enduring themes that underpin the novel. The theme of love is omnipresent and Camus explores it most profoundly through the character of Rambert. A young Parisian journalist trapped in Oran, Rambert initially attempts to escape from the plague-ridden town, which for precautionary reasons, has been sealed off from the rest of the world. Invoking deep love for his wife back in Paris, Rambert tries to justify his decision to Rieux and Tarrou, a vacationer also trapped in Oran who volunteers to help Rieux treat those inflicted with plague. Rambert insists that his desire to escape isn’t borne out of a lack of courage; previously he’d risked his life fighting in the Spanish Civil War. But what the war taught him is that courage and conviction cannot be abstract idea. Dying for an idea, he claims, is heroism, and it is heroism in which he no longer believes. For Rambert, life is about “living and dying for what one loves,” and his concrete love for his wife, he insists is what really matters.
The doctor Rieux counters that “man” — whether in fighting war or fighting disease — isn’t merely an abstract idea and that his own actions aren’t about heroism, but common decency and doing one’s job. But in any case, Rieux reassures Rambert that his decision to leave is “absolutely right and proper”. Rambert insists he’s putting love first and that it’s easier for Rieux and Tarrou to stay and fight the plague because they have nothing to lose. Assuming that both of them are alone, Rambert claims it’s easier “to be on the side of angels”. But when his efforts to flee are delayed and he’s forced to witness the suffering brought on by the pestilence, Rambert is forced to re-think his position. His views are further challenged when Rambert discovers that Rieux is married and that his wife is in quarantine with plague. Upon learning of Rieux’s wife, Rambert gives up his efforts to escape and courageously volunteers to help the fight. In short, Rieux becomes empathetic. And empathy is really a form of love for humanity. So in the end it’s not a question of putting love first, ahead of some other cause, but about embracing a broader and deeper form of love that encompasses yet transcends Rieux’s love for his wife.
The theme of justice also runs throughout the novel. The plague is indiscriminate. Rambert seems to be rewarded for his courage and is eventually reunited with his wife. Yet at the same time, an innocent child dies. Tarrou, despite great courage, also succumbs to the plague, as does Rieux’s wife. Grand, a man who wastes his life revising the first line of his novel, miraculously recovers. These examples highlight the absurdity of existence and the fact that we cannot rely on the benevolence of some external force to ensure just outcomes. For justice to be served, we must take matters into our own hands. Thanks to the brave actions of a small group of people, the plague is eventually defeated. And at the end of the novel Cottard, an opportunist that had profited from shady dealings during the outbreak, feels the wrath of justice at the hands of a mob of frustrated townspeople.
Faith is perhaps the most important theme of the novel. The Jesuit priest Father Paneloux is the embodiment of religion, which is anchored in the certainty of faith. Rieux is the embodiment of humanism, which is anchored in the uncertainty of existence. Once the town finally realizes that the scourge killing off its population is indeed the plague, Paneloux responds by giving a dramatic sermon. As a “stalwart champion of Christian doctrine at its most precise and purest,” Paneloux proclaims that the plague has come to “strike down enemies of God”. The plague is God’s way of punishing townspeople for their sins. Those that have lived a pious life need have no fear, but for those spared of the plague’s wrath will not be thwarted through the normal acts of Sunday church-going and penance. Paneloux encourages the congregation to pray and allow God to sort out the rest.
With tongue planted firmly in cheek, Camus depicts a local magistrate’s reaction to the sermon, who describes it as “absolutely irrefutable”. But for the most part, Paneloux’s fiery rhetoric doesn’t seem to have any positive effect on the townspeople. People either continue about their ordinary or they panic, trying to escape from the walls of the town that, as a precautionary measure, have been erected to prevent the disease from spreading elsewhere.
A brilliant interaction between Rieux and Tarrou, a vacationer now trapped in Oran, captures the humanist view. Tarrou wants to volunteer with Rieux in his heroic efforts to aid the townspeople, but Rieux implores him to fully consider the potentially deadly consequences of this decision. Tarrou then turns the challenge back on Rieux, confronting him to explain his motivations for risking his own life to fight the plague. When Rieux responds negatively to Tarrou’s question of whether he believes in God, Tarrou insists that this is what divides the doctor Rieux and the priest Paneloux. But Rieux expresses doubt. For Rieux, what separates him from Paneloux isn’t belief in God, but the fact that Paneloux, as a scholastic type, has never had to deal in any tangible way with human suffering and death; that’s why Paneloux believes in Truth (with a capital T).
But those priests and others of faith that have come in contact with death, Rieux insists, would behave exactly as he does: “He’d try to relieve human suffering before trying to point out its excellence”. In other words, those that have to confront death in real life, must by necessity abandon the certainty that comes from their faith (Truth with a capital T). To make this point, Rieux resorts to logic: if a person “believed in an all-powerful God he would cease curing the sick and leave that to Him. But no one in the world believed in a God of that sort; no, not even Paneloux, who believed that he believed in such a God. And this was proved by the fact that no one ever threw himself on Providence completely”.
So if not faith, then what is the motivation for risking one’s own life to help others? Here is where Rieux expresses uncertainty (perhaps trust with a lower-case t). He admits that pride might have something to do with it, but that is by no means the only motivation. Rieux insists that there is something inherent, perhaps something inexplicable, in the experience of human suffering that compels us to act. This inherent motivation can only be understood when we experience another human being’s fight, until their last gasp, against death. It is this innate fight against death (“fighting against creation” — as Rieux calls it) that animates our good intentions. The spectre of death is one thing that unites us together. This centrality of death to the human experience leads Rieux to a profound observation: “since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn’t it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him and struggle with all our might against death, without raising our eyes toward the heaven where He sits in silence?”.
The unfolding of events provide confirmation for Rieux’s assertions. As predicted, the priest does eventually join Rieux’s team of volunteers and finally comes into first-hand contact with human suffering. But later on, one of the novel’s most heart-wrenching scene provides a test of the uneasy truce that has united believer and non-believer. The magistrate that described Paneloux’s sermon as “absolutely irrefutable” sees the priest’s message refuted right before his eyes. How can we believe Paneloux’s assertion that the plague was sent to strike down enemies of God when the magistrates own young son, too young to have lost any of his innocence, succumbs to an agonizing death at the hands of the plague? In witnessing the mercilessness with which the child is taken by the disease, even Paneloux pleads with God to spare him. Rieux then lashes out at the priest, proclaiming that Paneloux knew full well of the child’s innocence. Paneloux responds by imploring Rieux to “love what we don’t understand”, to which Rieux counters that he could never love something that puts children to death. Rieux tries to downplay the schism by noting that God had in any case united the two of them together in trying circumstances. But Paneloux leaves the conversation disappointed that he hasn’t managed to win Rieux over to his way of thinking.
The events cause a change in Paneloux. In reaction to the challenge the child’s death poses to his faith, Paneloux holds a second sermon. While the first sermon was filled to the rafters, the second one is nearly empty, as the enduring strength of the plague has led the people of Oran to embrace superstition. Preaching to a sparse congregation, Paneloux’s second sermon lacked the conviction of the first; he took on a kinder and gentler tone, he spoke in terms of “we” rather than “you” and he was “noticed to be stumbling over his words”. And yet the content of Paneloux’s sermon did not forfeit the “seemingly excessive standard of Christian virtue”. Rather than capitulate in the wake of the child’s death, Paneloux intensifies his devotion to a higher power. He proclaims that religion in times of plague is different from everyday religion and that extreme times call for extreme faith. Faced with death at every turn, people had to exercise full faith or no faith at all. Paneloux acknowledges that a child’s painful death is a trying test from God. And in this case, it’s not just a matter of giving oneself over to God in resignation or humility; it is a matter of giving oneself over to God, willingly, in complete humiliation. The child’s death, Paneloux concludes, was God’s will and, as such, we should will it ourselves.
As the congregation exits the church, we learn from a conversation between two members of clergy that Paneloux is working on a new pamphlet, which argues “that it’s illogical for a priest to call in a doctor”. While we never learn of the contents of the pamphlet, we see it stunningly played out in Paneloux’s own life. The priest falls ill and initially refuses any medical help. But as Paneloux deteriorates more and more, the elderly woman with whom he resides finally calls upon Rieux. An examination of Paneloux reveals no clear symptoms of plague and so it is difficult for Rieux to give a proper diagnosis. Rieux nevertheless insists that Paneloux be taken to an isolation ward in the hospital to be treated and tries to reassure the priest by offering to keep him company. Meeting the news with indifference, Paneloux refuses Rieux’s offer with the following: “Thanks. But priests can have no friends. They have given their all to God.” The priest passively submits to treatment and asks only that a crucifix hanging on the wall be placed in his hands”. Clutching the crucifix, Rieux slowly fades and his eventual death is recorded as a “doubtful case” of the plague.
In coming to the aid of others, Paneloux did abandon his faith in an all-powerful God. But when it came to his own suffering and demise, his faith remained unshattered. A “doubtful case” indeed.