Reading The Plague in a time of pandemic

Last  night I finished reading Albert Camus’s The Plague. I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, but it deeply touched me.

On the last page, the fictional narrator states why he wrote:

“[he] resolved to compile this chronicle, so that he should not be one of those who hold their peace but should bear witness in favor of those plague-stricken people; so that some memorial of the injustice and outrage done them might endure; and to state quite simply what we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.” (p, 308)

Camus presents some stunning portraits of the people involved, with little commentary. If you haven’t read the book, you might want to put off reading this post. I will be revealing some important parts of the plot.

There are scenes that seemed almost sacramental – something one might not expect of the atheist Camus, but I guess he was so imbued by the Catholic culture of France that he could not fail to reflect them.  The discussion between Tarrou and Dr. Rieux seemed like a confession. After it was over, they went had swam in the sea. Confession and baptism?

Dr. Rieux is central to the account. But I found the smuggler Cottard and the journalist Rambert an interesting contrast.

Rambert keeps trying to find a way to leave the city and return to his love. With the help of Cottard, he waits for two guards who will get him out. Nothing works. Then he gets word that he can leave at midnight. But then he demurs and joins Rieux in the battle against the plague.

What happened?

He comes to feel that “It may be shameful to be happy by oneself.” (p. 209) And then, to explain himself more fully, he notes,

“Until now I always felt a stranger in this town, and that I’d no concern with you people. But now that I’ve seen what I’ve seen, I know that I belong here whether I want it or not. This business is everybody’s business.” (pp. 209-210)

He has been moved from the position of the outsider to one who is part of the others. He has come to see their communality.

Cottard, on the other hand, was an outsider. He was always fearful that the authorities would find out about his past and come to arrest him. He is a smuggler and who knows what else. He is an outsider, in fear. In some way, he seems to have rejoiced in the plague, because everyone, he thought, had become fearful of being caught, just like himself. His was not a solidarity of being together, but a feeling of a share commonness of being pursued. What a contrast with Rambert.

In the midst of the corona virus, who are we like? Rambert or Cottard?

Do we share the conviction that moves Dr. Bernard Rieux who oversees much of the work of resisting the plague? He tells Tarrou that, though he became more modest in his hopes for his work, “Only, I’ve never managed to get used to seeing people die.” Later the doctor tells Father Paneloux, “I refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture.” (p. 218)

Do we see, as Tarrou does, that the path to peace in the midst of the plague is “the path of sympathy”? (p. 254) I suspect, though, that he really means what we call “empathy.”

This book could stand as an examination of conscience in terms of how we respond to the plagues of our time.

Albert Camus wrote part of this novel in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon where he had gone in response to a bout of tuberculosis in 1942.

Le Chambon-sur-Lignon was a center of rescue for Jews, led by the Reformed Church pastor, André Trocmé and his wife Magda. I don’t know if Camus knew of this effort, but I’m sure he would approve. Pastor Trocmé would fit his description of a religious leader in tune with his people and the needs of the suffering. Camus’ Dr. Rieux remarks about the erudite Jesuit father Paneloux who seems to have given a justification for suffering: “He hasn’t come into contact with death….” But, Dr. Rieux notes “every country priest who visits his parishioners and has heard a man gasping for breath on his deathbed thinks as I do. He’d try to relieve human suffering before trying to point out its excellence.” (p. 126) To his credit, Paneloux later joins Rieux’s efforts and risks his life and health.

When I first read about Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, in Philipp Hallie’s Lest Innocent Blood Was Shed, I was fascinated by the efforts of Pastor Trocmé and his flock. But one incident still stirs me. His wife, Magda, heard a knock at the door of the vestry and opened the door to find a family of Jews at their doorstep. As I remember it, the family was a little reluctant to ask for shelter, but Magda, with all the naiveté of a simple believer, told them, “Come in. Come in.” For her it was natural and fundamentally human to welcome someone at the door. In  The Plague,  Grand agrees to stay with Cottard; “I can’t say that I really know him, but one’s got to help a neighbor, hasn’t one?” (p. 20)

That seems to me to be central to The Plague. One must be true to oneself and one’s humanity. As Dr. Rieux says to Rambert,

“It’s a matter of common decency. That’s an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fight a plague is — common decency.” (p, 163)

I cannot help recall the speech Camus made in 1948, a year or so after he finished The Plague, to a group of Dominicans at Latour-Maubourg. Fragments are found in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, an amazing collection of Camus’s articles.

I close this blog with a few citations from that speech, citations that have inspired me since I first read them, during the Viet Nam War.

“Perhaps we cannot prevent the world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children.” (p. 73)

“What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man. That they should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today.” (p, 71)

“And what I know—which sometimes creates a deep longing in me— is that if Christians made up their minds to it, millions of voices–millions, I say—throughout the world would be added to the appeal of a handful of isolated individuals who, without any sort of affiliation, today intercede almost everywhere and ceaselessly for children and for [humans].” (p, 74)

How will we respond to the plagues around us? Not only the corona virus pandemic, but the plagues of violence, poverty, racism, and more.

When the pandemic is over, will be return to the “normal” beforehand. Or will we seek, together with all people of good will, to begin to forge a civilization of solidarity, where the least are welcomed and the Magnificat (Luke 1: 46-55) of the Mother of the Lord becomes a reality, a God who has “lifted up the lowly” and “filled the hungry with good things.”

Albert Camus, The Plague. Vintage International, 1991. (© 1948)

Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death. Vintage Books, 1974 (© 1960)