Today’s pages bring the beginning of the end of the plague. There is no clear reason for the plague’s demise; “one merely had the feeling that the disease had exhausted itself, or perhaps that it was retiring after achieving all of its objectives. In a sense, its role was completed.” Of course our own plague is far from over, but Camus’s description of the townspeople’s impatience with their hope still resonates, as we begin to wrestle with our own impatience and surmise about plans for how to live in the meantime. Our path out of this will not be as simple as that of the folks in Oran; still, one does hope for the day that we might smile in the street.  

FOR TOMORROW: Next 7 pages, to paragraph beginning “The doctor said that the same was true of Tarrou…”