Camus and The Plague

The determination of the state's absolute right to quarantine a city in the event of a plague is fundamentally determined by its impact on the right of the individual. Based on Albert Camus' description of the plague in his novel, The Plague, it is evident that the state's absolute right to quarantine a city violated the freedom of the individual in many ways. The most critical objection to the state's imposition of the quarantine was the key fact that uninfected members of the town risk catching the infection by remaining in this town. Because of the state's implementation of the quarantine, all these uninfected people were unable to travel out of the town where their chances of catching the plague would be decreased significantly. Exiled from the rest of the world, they were condemned prisoners, trapped in the town against their will (Camus 70-1).

Moreover, by imposing measures such as forcing reluctant patients suffering from plague to go the hospital and quarantining the people living in the same house (Camus 62), the state had clearly disregarded the rights of the individuals to their own privacy. Certainly, the sudden closure of the city gates and the termination of communication between the inhabitants of Oran and the outside world also imposed tremendous hardships on individual families. In cases when family members were visiting in another town, the prohibition of movement in and out of Oran resulted in the separation between family members (Camus 68). For ce

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