th (179).
So, too, with war - and it is here that Albert Camus uses the metaphor of the epidemic to symbolize the most autobiographical aspect of The Plague. The novel was written in 1946-47 (or so its original copyright indicates). The memory of World War Two was still fresh in Camus' emotional and intellectual memory - as it was in the memory of most Europeans who had just emerged from six years of war, defeat, occupation, oppression and, finally, relief. Albert Camus, it is often mentioned, was a member of the French Resistance during the War. In that capacity, he learned full well the responses of men and women to the ravages of such a "plague." The Plague is his very explicit account of those experiences of being.
To understand the metaphor, one must first understand the reason for using it. Following the War, France was dangerously close to being torn apart from within. Half of the country had been under the Nazi Occupation, the other half had remained free, albeit under the thumb of the collaborationist Vichy government. Despite wartime
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