I’m curious to hear what readers make of the priest’s sermon, which goes on for four pages, quite a bit of real estate in the novel! What comment might Camus be making here about the ways the plague can potentially be moralized? The priest literally says ‘my brethren, you have deserved it’ – he likens them to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, to the population before the flood (and who else shivered at the reference to Lombardy, Italy, ‘ravaged by a plague’), implying that the plague has been visited on them because of their sins, then arguing that somehow, “‘through the paths of death, anguish and sighs, [it] still guides us toward the silence of God and the principle of all life.'” I wonder what will come of this sermon in the rest of the book, if it is here to show us an example of how suffering can be “used” in various ways, or if Camus will take it back up later and somehow show this thinking to be untrue (Perhaps Paneloux himself will get sick)? 

FOR TOMORROW: Read next 7 pages, to end of the paragraph that begins “On the other hand, when Tarrou came back…” 

In today’s pages we see the toll that the work is starting to have on Rieux. The “abstraction” (for those reading the French, I’m curious if this is the correct translation?) of the disease, and of the personal suffering that follows it, is taken up, the “monotony” of the plague and life under its tyranny. And we see Rieux’s capacity narrowing, in perhaps the most heartbreaking few sentences in the book so far: “[He] found his only consolation for these exhausting days in this feeling of a heart slowly closing around itself. He knew that it would make his task easier. That is why he welcomed it.” I wonder how many of us — healthcare providers or not — recognize ourselves in this statement?  “To struggle against abstraction, one must come to resemble it a little.” This is a statement that makes so much sense, and yet it seems clear this numbness, this “abstraction,” is exactly what we must continue to resist. 

FOR TOMORROW: read next 7 pages, to the section break, paragraph beginning with “But the sounds of running feet returned.” 

This quote made me think about the many ways we’ve seen populations of people around the world respond to our plague, swiftly or not-so-swiftly accepting “the idea of the disease.” In today’s pages Camus continues to explore the beginning stages of the way this is hitting Oran — shops and offices close, and “many people, …reduced to inactivity, …filled the streets and cafés.” They go to the movies! And the grocer who “stockpiled supplies so he could sell them at a large profit,” found with tins of food under his bed when they took him to the hospital. We have all been seeing behaviors that echo these (as well, of course, as behavior that is in effect the opposite). I was touched too by the conversation with the journalist who is now trapped in Oran, separated from the woman he loves — “‘I wasn’t put on this earth to make reports; but perhaps I was put on earth to live with a woman.'” We are all also experiencing now, for better and worse, the ways our moment is forcing us to wrestle with what really matters; also how difficult it can be to grasp these things, even if we can recognize what they are.

FOR TOMORROW: Read next 7 pages, up to the end of the paragraph that begins “Outside the rain…”

In our first meeting today (thank you again to all who joined!!) we spoke about how Camus’ book, written as an allegory, reads so eerily today as a realistic playbook. Today’s pages were astounding again in this light: here the narrator speaks of “exile,” the citizens of the town cut off from each other and from their loved ones elsewhere, “prisoners” in their quarantine. “…That unreasonable desire to go backwards or, on the contrary, to speed up the march of time, those burning arrows of memory – all this really did amount to a feeling of exile.” He writes of the strange sense of time we are all dealing with — hope for the future, without knowing when the future will arrive, creates despair, but then the lack of  imagination for the future is a different kind of prison. “Impatient with the present, hostile to the past and deprived of a future, we really did then resemble those whom justice or human hatred has forced to live behind bars…But, though this was exile, in most cases it was exile at home.” 

FOR TOMORROW: Read next 7 pages, up to, in dialogue, “‘Perhaps you don’t realize what a separation such as this means for two people who are fond of one another.'” 

Rieux tells the Prefecture that what they are doing is not enough. In response, the Prefecture says he will ask for “instructions” from the State government, to which Rieux responds with the above. I am struck by the word “imagination” here – is this the correct translation, for those reading the French? – and wonder how Rieux means it. Today’s pages seemed to me to be all about fear – the theme comes up again and again. Rieux is afraid, and pushes it away; the sick are afraid; the townspeople are beginning to be afraid; and at the end of Part One, it seems the State government is afraid, issuing the edict to “close the town.” Somehow I feel that word “imagination” is going to continue to reverberate as we move forward, a need that is perhaps likely to be unmet…? 

FIRST ZOOM CALL TOMORROW AT 2pm EASTERN on the Narrative Medicine zoom: https://zoom.us/j/3572167251 Join us! All are welcome. 

FOR SUNDAY (but not before the meeting!): Read to the end of the first section in Part II.