This quote strikes as particularly poignant – acknowledgement that the promise of “deliverance” from the plague does not only bring joy with it, but also tears, the recognition of all that has been lost. In today’s pages Cottard and Tarrou talk about what happens when the plague is gone, whether it is possible “that everything would begin again as before, that is to say, as though nothing had happened.” The notion of “starting again” is raised a few different times; Cottard “imagined the town starting to live again from zero and wiping out its past.” Is such a thing possible? If it is, is it the thing to hope for? 

FOR TOMORROW: Read to the end of section 3 in Part V.