Parallel Between Corona Pandemic and ‘The Plague’ by Albert Camus

“And since a dead man has no substance unless one actually seen him dead, a million corpses broadcast (through history) are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.”

Albert Camus

‘The plague’ by Albert Camus (1947), narrates a fictional outbreak of epidemic in Oran where the people like every other modern town were cultivating habits of making money and spending weekends in the cafes. They were busy in their lives so much that when the disease break out, they wrapped themselves into disbelief about the existence of the disease, convincing themselves that it is a bad dream which will pass away. But it didn’t happen the way people hypothesized and from one bad dream to another it wasn’t the dream but the ‘men’ who passed away. The plague ravaged Oran because the people of the town had forgotten the modesty of life, they were convinced that plague is no more than a memory of medieval world.            

The same catastrophic reaction was prevalent when the Corona virus befell our amiable and industrious citizens, not to mention, who are living in the security of the biomedical advancement. They understand the science of virology which helps them to precisely understand the nature of the disease. So, when a few of us are dying of virus they have an explanation for it. Moreover, they have trust on scientific solutions, which make them to hypothesize an assurance of a single biological cure. Again, all the presumptions didn’t happen like the plague in Oran, the Corona virus started swallowing up everything and everyone. The emotions shared by the people started transforming from the individual destinies to a collective destiny. And it was only when some of the people were completely cornered, i.e., the word like “special arrangement”, “favour” and “priority” lost all their effective meanings, the people realized what it meant to be in the middle of a pandemic.  When everyone was becoming vulnerable of being randomly killed by the disease the people just like the town of Oran lost their fancied freedom. Moreover, it made them to understand that no one is free as long as there is a pandemic.

The Corona virus is out there in the public spaces, and the most of us are stuck within the four walls of our home. And for those who feel the meaning of their life at the work places, the pandemic brings the feeling of exile and a sensation of a void. When the longevity of the prison is increasing, the desire of figuring out a probable duration of exile is desisting. Out there the death rate is steadily rising in such a manner that it cannot be ignored and therefore the public opinion is becoming ‘alive to the truth’. In this ordeal the belief that pandemic is temporary and we will regain our freedom is the only hope that remains with us.           

In the perspective of Dr. Riaux (Protagonist of the novel), the belief that ‘we were free when there was no pandemic’ is questionable. Moreover, a pandemic is not a mere incident of the history, indeed it is a culmination of universal preconditions that make every one of us vulnerable to the fear of the end. Even if we are not in a pandemic the uncertainty of death and possibility of end is present there like a bacillus or a virus not infecting everyone. For Dr. Riaux, we all have a plague, even those who are better than the rest and could not keep themselves from killing or letting others killed because such is the logic by which we live.

            The recent history of epidemics reminds us that most of the diseases are successfully restricted from reaching those who are at the helm of the affair. And only when both they and we are equally threatened by a disease, they will have a sensation of it. Even when there was no pandemic many of us were dying because of the lack of hospitals but nothing was being noticed. At that time, they were busy in increasing the GDP and fighting wars, and we were in the servitude of helping them in building a totalitarian society for us. 

It is absurd to find that the people are dying due to lack of basic health facilities when we are living in the security of biotechnological advancement. If they have modesty, then it is a realization that technology is not a guarantee of freedom from absurdity of diseases, it only gives an illusion of the equality and affluence. Perhaps it gave them an arrogance of the security to degrade the socio-political infrastructure of public health. 

            We can think of this behaviour as a callousness and apathy but the Dr. Riaux did not share this view, for him humans are ‘more good than bad’. According to him, the most incorrigible vice in the world comes from ignorance which fancies that it knows everything and therefore it can claim for itself the right to kill. Good intention, therefore, may do as much harm as malevolence. And he suggested to deal with this disease by decency and modesty, not by the heroism.

 

This article is an attempt to contextualize ‘The Plague’ by Albert Camus in the present Covid-19 pandemic. The original work covers a number of themes with a philosophical undercurrent, out of which only a small part of it is represented here.

 

 By: Ankush Sharma