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Narrative & Plot in The Plague

In his novel The Plague, Nobel Prize-winning author Albert Camus sets out his vision of life in a dramatic tableau that embraces both religious and humanistic versions of existentialism, his personal philosophy of choice. In the philosophy of existentialism as perceived by Camus, one is ennobled by making moral choices in the face of an indifferent, possibly even absurd, universe. That universe can be the creation of God - Camus is agnostic on that point in The Plague - or it can be an entirely whimsical chaos. Camus the artist is not prepared to make that final decision in The Plague, nor does he particularly imply that it matters. In The Plague the results are the same - whether God, Fate or Chaos rules. The only thing that matters is one's decision to act morally.

The plot of The Plague is fashioned as an episodic narrative recounting the progress of an epidemic as it develops, holds captive and, finally, departs from the fictional North African city of Oran in French Algeria circa 1936 or 1946. Although the novel was written and copyrighted in 1946-47, Camus is deliberately vague about the time frame: the colonial city he describes could be a pre-World War II locale or post-War. There is no mention of the War at all, which would seem strange coming from an author who was himself born in Algeria, was a journalist there, then went on to become a leader in the French Resistance in Paris, writing their underground newspaper. But the important issue of Camus' novel is not the War; rather, it is how people react to a period of prolonged, impersonal crisis. In The Plague, Oran is stricken by the bubonic plague; in order to counter the epidemic, the city is quarantined, left to its own ineffectual devices to resisted the disease, and is only released from exile when the plague resides from causes beyond human beings' scope of control.

The situation Camus evokes, of course, is reminiscent of the Nazi Occupation of France ...

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Narrative & Plot in The Plague. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 20:09, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1701320.html