NOTES ON READING THE PLAGUE

By: Bob Corbett

WHAT IS THE PLAGUE?

  1. Simply that, a plague. On this view this is not an allegory, but a straight forward tale.
  2. World War II.
  3. Inauthenticity. (If so, then the plague of Oran [even read it as WWII] is an historic moment of such intensification that the plague becomes more visible than at other historical moments. Thus the novel calls attention to such a moment in history.)

    One this view it is important to note page 250.What happens after the plague, after the extraordinary historical moment? Cottard talks with Tarrou: "Was it supposed, he asked, that the plague wouldn't have changed anything and the life of the town would go on as before, exactly as if nothing had happened? Tarrou thought that the plague would have changed things and not changed them; naturally our fellow citizens' strongest desire was, and would be, to behave as if nothing had changed and for that reason nothing would be changed, in a sense. But -- to look at it from another angle -- one can't forget everything, however great one's wish to do so; the plague was bound to leave traces, anyhow, in people's hearts."
  4. A compression of human existence with an emphasis on the role of death in life.
  5. The plague may be different things for different people.

THE MAJOR CHARACTERS to make sense of

  1. Dr. Rieux
  2. Tarrou
  3. Raymond Rambert
  4. Grand
  5. Cottard
  6. The old asthma patient
  7. M. Othon
  8. Father Paneloux
  9. Dr. Castel

NOTES ON THE TEXT ITSELF:


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