“If nothing lasts, then nothing is justified; everything that dies is deprived of meaning. To fight against death amounts to claiming that life has a meaning. . .”
The above quote not only embodies the main theme of The Plague, but it is also a main theme in Camus’ philosophy. For Camus, the fact that “nothing lasts” renders life absurd. Like Nietzsche’s death of God, the absurd reality of human existence strips life of any guidelines, values or meanings that can come from without the individual. We are doomed to face the irrational, unreasonable nature of the universe throughout a life in which we are born to suffer and die. For Camus there are two ways in which a person can face the absurd. One can contemplate it and resist it like Camus, or one can flee in the face of it. The outbreak of the plague in the town of Oran, on the Algerian coast, separates all the characters in the novel from the rest of the world. Death becomes a brute facticity of life that all must confront daily. Some of the characters, especially Doctor Rieux who has been separated from his wife, fight against the plague. Most of the population spend their time trying to ignore the plague and deny its existence. They flee the facticity of the plague by drinking heavily until they exhaust the alcohol supply. In this brief discussion we have seen that the two ways in which people deal with the plague are the same ways people deal with the absurd. The Plague, like the absurd, renders life meaningless and separates humans from each other. This paper will compare and contrast the reaction to the plague between two of the main characters, Doctor Rieux and Father Paneloux.
Perhaps there are no clearer antipodes in the novel than Doctor Rieux and Father Paneloux. In this contrast we have the embodiment of the battle between science and faith. At the beginning of the novel, while Doctor Rieu
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