In today’s pages we see a lovely scene of friendship between Rieux and Tarrou; the two go for a moonlit swim together, a moment of joy in the midst of plague. Tarrou explains his philosophy to Rieux – his steadfast striving to not “become a plague victim,” that is, the metaphorical plague of causing death to others through your actions. “‘What is natural is the microbe. The rest – health, integrity, purity, if you like – are an effect of will and a will that should never relax.'” When asked “the road that one should follow to arrive at peace,” Tarrou responds: “‘sympathy.” 

FOR TOMORROW: Next 7 pages, to the end of the paragraph that begins “The population lived in this secret” in the first section of Part V. 

Is today’s section the first time in the book where “the plague” is used literally as a metaphor for larger societal ills? Tarrou starts his monologue, telling Rieux about his background and his relationship to his prosecutor father; how Tarrou resisted the condemnation to death of an accused man, then the death penalty in general — “my business was the hole in the chest” — all of this perpetrated by “plague sufferers” who, as I read it, seem to be each of us? I wonder if there is a way to exist, in this view, without being a plague sufferer? As we near the end of the book, the larger allegorical vision is beginning to come more clear…

FOR TOMORROW: Next 7 pages, to, in dialogue, “‘We must go back,'” in section 7 of  Part IV. 

Please join us for our last book club group meeting to discuss Albert Camus’ The Plague on May 3rd. We will be joined by a very special guest, Laura Marris, poet and translator working on a new translation of The Plague, forthcoming from Knopf. She recently published this OpEd,  “Camus’s Inoculation Against Hate,” in The New York Times. We are excited she will join us!

PLEASE SUBMIT ANY QUESTIONS FOR LAURA IN THE COMMENTS BELOW. 

All are welcome to attend the Zoom session, even if you haven’t read along so far! See you Sunday! 

Image Credit: Joan Wong/NY Times

More resonances in today’s pages: supplies run low, and speculators jump in to offer “vital necessities” at “huge prices.” The plague, though it kills with “efficient impartiality,” “heightened the feeling of injustice in the hearts of men”: the poor and the rich do not fare equally. The plague settles “comfortably into its peak” but experts warn that “the history of epidemics showed that they could flare up again unexpectedly.” And we visit a stadium, once the home of soccer matches, that has now been taken over, as many public spaces in Oran have, as an isolation facility. The population there is eerily quiet. “Since they could not always be thinking about death, they thought about nothing.” 

 FOR MONDAY: Next 7 pages, to the end of the paragraph that begins “‘In any case, my business was not argument,'” in section 6 of Part IV.

JOIN OUR MEETING TOMORROW AT 2 PM! Visit https://narrativemedicine.blog/blog/narrative-medicine-book-club/ to register. 

In today’s pages we see the conclusion of Paneloux’s second sermon, and then his death following soon after. In his sermon he argues that “there is no middle way” — you cannot accept only certain aspects of the plague, of evil, but rather you “one must believe everything or deny everything.” As Tarrou says: “When innocence has its eyes gouged out, a Christian must lose his faith or accept the gouging out of eyes.” How fascinating, to juxtapose this sermon, so different from his first, with the priest’s death immediately after, a “doubtful case” of the plague. What is Camus doing here, with this death for Panaloux? 

FOR TOMORROW: Read section 5 of Part IV. 

NEXT ZOOM CALL SUNDAY 2pm! Visit https://narrativemedicine.blog/blog/narrative-medicine-book-club/ to register. 

Rieux and his colleagues, including the priest, witness the terrible death from plague of a young child. Rieux, in his exhaustion and grief, argues with the priest, who still believes that the plague is punishment for sin: “that one, at least, was innocent, as you very well know!” These pages are very interesting – Camus writes of how “superstition” and “prophecies” have taken the place of religion for many townspeople, these prophecies read with “as much eagerness as the love stories” found in newspapers “in times of health.” This resonated, as so many of us search the news for definitive projections of how this will all end, and so many people put forth theories and plans – both careful and reckless – to move forward. The priest, it seems, has been both changed and not by what he has witnessed; looking forward to discussing with you all the way Camus contrasts his second sermon with his first. 

FOR TOMORROW: Read to the end of section 4 in Part IV. 

In today’s pages Rambert finally decides to stay in the town; “if he went away he would feel ashamed.” Rieux says there is no shame in happiness — Rambert answers, “But there may be shame in being happy all by oneself,” as “this business concerns all of us.” This exchange made me think of those currently protesting orders to stay at home – the false idea that one lives in an unconnected universe where achieving what one wants is possible without the help of others, or without putting others at risk. And another wise statement by Rieux, on the ability to understand and process what one is living through in the moment of living it: “One can’t heal and know at the same time. So let’s heal as fast as we can.” 

FOR TOMORROW: Next 7 pages, up to “It was everything or nothing,” in section 4 of Part IV.

In today’s pages we get one of the strangest moments of the book so far: the opera company of Orpheus & Eurydice, trapped in Oran, performs the opera over and over again every week for months to a packed house. In the third act, a singer collapses, presumably of the plague, and the audience files out leaving their “fans and lace stoles” behind, “luxury that had become useless.” We also pick back up with Rambert’s quest to get out of the town, “choosing happiness,” as Rieux says. Somehow I still feel sure that Rambert is not going to get out … 

FOR TOMORROW: Next 7 pages, to the end of the paragraph beginning “The light spread through the ward,” in section 3 of Part IV

At the beginning of Part IV we get a discussion of the exhaustion that has taken over the town, and the way that without a cure for the plague, Rieux’s role has gone from that of “a healer” to that of “a diagnostician.” He has “just enough heart” to “use it to bear the 20 hours a day in which he saw men dying who were made for life.” An exhaustion has set in that numbs them all, against the suffering but also against the very precautions that are meant to protect them against the plague. An eery statement, in our moment: “It was the very struggle against the plague that made them more vulnerable to the plague.” An interesting piece about Cottard, too, whom we spoke about in our meeting on Sunday: a character who is thriving, in a way, under the Plague, because he is no longer isolated, instead united with everyone else in the condition of hardship. 

FOR TOMORROW: Next 7 pages, up to “Tarrou looked at him and smiled suddenly,” in the second section of Part IV. 

At the end of Part III Camus explores the flattening of the plague, the way “exile and separation” leads the townspeople into “the very system of the plague,” which is  “mediocre.” “No one among us experienced great feelings any more, but everyone had banal feelings.” His description of how everyone is reduced to the present tense is so resonant; I have been thinking about that myself these last days, faced with impossible decisions about a family member. How do we make decisions when we don’t know the future? “In other words, they no longer made choices…Everything was accepted as it came.” This statement too is a frightening one, a warning, a reality we must fight hard against, as we can: “The truth must be told: the plague had taken away from all of them the power of love or even of friendship, for love demands some future, and for us there was only the here and now.”

MEETING TOMORROW AT 2 EST! Visit https://narrativemedicine.blog/blog/narrative-medicine-book-club/ to register. 

FOR MONDAY: First 7 pages of Part IV, through with the paragraph that begins “It often happened that Tarrou would go out…”