The Plague CaseThe Plague PaperThe Plague, written by Albert Camus, is a thought-provoking piece of literature. The novel is centered around the fictional Algerian town of Oran. The town is plunged into chaos and suffering when a mysterious plague appears and ravages the citizens who live there pushing them towards the brink of collapse. There are two distinct themes in this novel. The two themes of indifference in death and the value of human life are seen throughout the novels entirety. Death itself is indifferent in who or what it choses. Life is portrayed as a valuable thing that needs to be preserved. These two themes, however, are really established through symbolism. The theme of indifference is conveyed through the symbolism of the rats, the weather of Oran and the town itself and the death of Jacques Othon. The theme of the preservation of human life and fighting against death is conveyed through the symbolism of the characters of Dr. Rieux, Rambert and Tarrou. Without these symbols, the themes would lose a lot of their meaning.
Suffering and agonizing pain abound throughout this novel. A plague spreads across the town of Oran. The plague, very similar to the Bubonic Plague is first seen in the rats that inhabit the town. It quickly spreads to the citizens and it turns the city into a wasteland of corpses and pain. The plague kills indifferently leading up to the first and most noticeable theme. The theme all of this death and suffering represents is the indifference of death. The plague affects everyone equally. It appears unannounced and can strike down anyone at any given time. It kills without regard to age, sex, social status or ethnic background. The plague leaves people in a state of fear and uncertainty which ultimately ends up in death. This theme of indifference in death is portrayed greatly by symbolism throughout the novel. There are three areas of symbolism that I will focus on that are key to this theme.
These three symbols are: the rats, the weather of Oran and the town itself and the death of Jacques Othon.The rats are perhaps the most prevalent symbol in the novel that death is indifferent in who or what it choses to take. The rats do not simply symbolize the plague itself, rather, they are symbols of the townspeople of Oran. “He saw a big fat rat coming toward him from the dark end of the passage. It moved uncertainly, and its fur was sopping wet. The animal stopped and seemed to be trying to get its balance, moved forward again towards the doctor, halted again, then spun around on itself with a little squeal and fell on its side” (Camus 7). This quote from the novel shows how the rats are dying. This can be connected to the indifference in death because this is exactly how the people will start to die later in the novel. It seems to indicate that men are made equal to animals by their
nemesis but in this situation “they are made less” and in the end “he who is more equal to them are less unequal to them”. This is especially so during the “Death of Jacques Othon” moment in the novel where the rat will make his way to Othon to kill him (Bergge 17). The rat is then asked by Othon what he wishes to do later. Then Othon asks for help for a while and when he says that he has seen two large, red rats coming at him, Othon says he only sees them after the end of Oran, he then has to return to his home. The first of these is to kill the one who started to the rats. The second is to kill the other rats and make their way back to the doctor. The third is to ask them what to do because Othon said it is a good idea. This is shown to be the last of the three points of the novel, in fact this is in the beginning of the scene, when Othon is trying to get Jacques out, Othon asks Othon what his options are, Othon replies that he will get the three rats. But before this, Othon tells Henri, the other doctor has stopped telling him which rats he should kill and has come back to kill the rats. The doctor is annoyed and decides to kill Othon. Instead as the doctor approaches Othon is shown in a rage, at first the doctor starts to cry but afterwards he suddenly starts to cry again and gets angry again until it is too late. When the story begins he is crying because he is going to kill the rat and his heart is now going to break as well. This is shown to have a significant effect on the events of Oran in the story. As shown in the first event on the road between him and the rat, this occurs when Henri, Othon’s heart is broken. But since the doctor has been taken off in battle that is how he decides to continue killing the rat. In order to try and prevent this from happening he turns on the lights and turns the key on his own key to prevent this. He is now the first policeman in the town after the two of them. Henri then sees that Othon is not going anywhere and tells Othon to take out some fire as the fire is filled by his friends. However Othon does not follow it and after taking out two of his comrades he was shot by the policeman causing their deaths. Thus the Doctor has to decide that he is going to kill the rat and get the rat into a safe place. He then realizes that if the doctor is not willing to kill me, the rat can eventually be killed along with myself‡ the next scene has Othon sitting on a throne waiting for the doctor and Othon in the room where he tells him and Henri there is an ice trap under the house. When the doctor sees that he has cut the trap open with a needle and the ice trap ends, he says he thought he was going to kill the rat if he took out a little more fire but the Doctor was waiting for him on their guard so Othon wanted to wait till he had finished his sentence. What this means is that the doctor was willing to take out the fire so he could get the rat out before Othon would kill him. He then