Reading Camus’s The Plague After Surviving A Plague

When COVID-19 struck, I, like most people, felt out of touch with the world around me. The few months of quarantine now feels like a distant memory, but at the same time, I can still vividly remember how out of place I felt during self-isolation. In an attempt to conceptualize my feelings, I did what I always do when I feel anxious - I picked up a book.

After reading a summary of The Plague by Albert Camus and expecting to further my anxiety about COVID, I instead found that it did the opposite: it oddly became my own outlet of catharsis. It was striking how the book so clearly mimics what we experienced with COVID: the fear and panic that our loved ones would contract the virus, the mental drain of being in isolation and human interaction, the front line workers risking their lives to save ours, and even the select few who politicize or legitimize the virus. For a book written over 70 years ago, its continued relevance slaps you in the face, making you wonder if Camus was some sort of prophet predicting the future.

In parts one and two of The Plague, Camus introduces us to the fictional French-Algerian city Oran, where piles of dead rats have begun to infest the city’s streets, and a series of unexplainable deaths have plagued the town. As the death toll continues to rise, more townspeople become accepting of the fact that there was a possible epidemic haunting the city, and yet some authorities are still slow to see the mysterious illness as serious and deadly: there is much debate about how to handle the current situation. All while the authorities continue to fight about what to do, tons of lives are being lost at the same time. Oran is eventually put into lockdown, and new quarantine and cleansing rules are put in place. People begin to isolate themselves, and there is an overwhelming sense of loneliness and anxiety surrounding Oran as people start to stay in their homes for extended periods of time.

Almost all the events in part one and two of The Plague resonate with what I was experiencing in early 2020, where months of quarantine had made life extremely alienating. Camus perfectly encapsulates the strange feeling of being isolated when he says “thus each of us had to be content to lie only for the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky” (Camus 36). Humans are social creatures and not being able to interact with people day to day makes us feel periodically disconnected from reality and disassociated from society. Reading Camus’s descriptions of how the Oran townspeople felt made me feel better about my own anxiety because it emphasized how isolation is almost a universal experience during global catastrophes. It was comforting as well as a reminder that my feelings were completely normal. I was also inspired to reflect on my own privileges during the pandemic, where I was freely able to access technological devices and stay connected to the people that I am close to, whereas the people of Oran were almost shut out from each others’ lives. While my life could remain somewhat normal - everything just had to be done virtually - not everyone is as lucky as I am and ultimately had to put their life on halt when the pandemic first struck.

Each character reacts differently to their situation in the book. Some devise plans to reunite with their loved ones, others politicize the plague and try to use the current fear landscape to set a certain political agenda, and some focus on saving lives. As the situation continuously gets worse, there is an increasing amount of violence, crime separation anxiety, and overall devastation in Oran. Many families are separated, and the uncertainty is almost unbearable to some.

The initial shock that prompts people to react differently, and the political discourse that followed in the plague mirrors that of real life in the United States, when the pandemic unfortunately struck in the midst of a partisan war as the country was more politically polarized than ever. In the beginning, authority figures citing the strict lockdown saw it as a political move, and continued to downplay the severity of the virus despite CDC and WHO guidance. Certain citizens even saw mask wearing as the beginning of a shift towards eventual fascism, where in the future, their every behavior would be controlled by the government. This has even carried on to this day for a select group of people, who have carried their belief about mask wearing to getting the vaccine. This same behavior is reflected in The Plague, where characters fear mongle, and defy common practices to keep their “freedom”.

After a period of great distress, part 4 and 5 of The Plague marks the end of the seemingly endless nightmare. As a vaccine becomes distributed, life slowly goes back to normal. Eventually the plague is just a mere collective memory for the townspeople. The townspeople reflect on what they have lived through together, to which Camus comments, “what we learn in times of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise” (Camus 150). The people or Oran have ultimately learned to survive with each other. We are currently in this stage: as more people get the vaccine, our lives are slowly reverting back to the way things were. However, as we return to normalcy, there are still lasting impacts that prevent us from completely reversing back to our lives: the death and destruction that we have witnessed for the past year. While we slowly continue to open up our country, we are still being plagued with thousands of deaths every day. Among all the uncertainty, at least one thing remains clear: there is hope of normalcy after a period of utter disturbance.

After reading The Plague and feeling better about my anxieties, I've come to realize that when disaster strikes, books can be our knight in shining armor. They offer us solace during times of uncertainty and can even help us make sense of the unknown - like when 1984 book sales peaked after Trump was elected in 2016, or when women’s reproductive rights activists referenced The Handmaid’s Tale at their protests after Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed in the Supreme Court. The stories from books written years or decades ago still remain relevant today.

From The Plague, we learn how disruption is inevitable and that human compassion is one of the strongest antidotes to challenges. Through the hard work of all the citizens, they were able to defeat the enemy together, and we could do the same. During tough times, Camus challenges us to remember “a loveless world is a dead world” (Camus 127). So the next time you feel confused or lost, try picking up a book, and it just might help you make sense of the world around you.