The Pandemic and Albert Camus’ ‘The Plague’
Tags: Covid 19 Crisis, Pandemic, Creative Writing

Albert Camus opens his famous 1947 novel by describing the routine business of life of the people of Oran, a port-town on the Algerian coast,

“The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits. Our citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich. Their chief interest is in commerce, and their chief aim in life is, as they call it, “doing business.” Naturally they don’t eschew such simpler pleasures as love-making, sea-bathing, going to the pictures. But, very sensibly, they reserve these pastimes for Saturday afternoons and Sundays and employ the rest of the week in making money, as much as possible. In the evening, on leaving the office, they forgather, at an hour that never varies, in the cafes, stroll the same boulevard, or take the air on their balconies.”

In a town laden deep in monotony and stagnant lifestyles and whose banality seems to be an endless overhaul to nothingness, the sudden arrival of the pestilent ‘plague’ of the title is no less a cause for hysteria.

The banality of this town’s normal life was not very dissimilar to our modern existence — until the pandemic happened. If somehow we collectively were (dis)illusioned into thinking that the nature of time and life is to move forward only in cyclical repetitions of every day, the Coronavirus Pandemic came as a timely blow to refute the claims that modern existence bases its foundations on. With the pandemic, life came to us stripped down to its sheer fragility and unknowability — a sudden rift in the hitherto linear progression of life, a break in the predictability of what is to come, an existential problem of sorts. And because it happened on a global scale, the impact made itself even more profound; without doubt, emotionally and psychologically the humanity has evolved.

Now whether the pandemic was for the good or worse is the eternally irresolvable question of whether the glass is half empty or half full. It has undeniably been a crisis and a most dreary one at that, but it is also true that the world will not ever be the same again and there is something positive to it. It is as if the usual affairs of chasing ambitions, recklessly fretting over unfulfilled expectations, putting up a pretence of a personality, degeneration of relationships — things that had adopted a garb of ‘normalcy’ — all came to an abrupt halt.

Albert Camus, in writing about the Oran plagued by disease and decay, anticipates most of what has been occurring since the past 10–11 months — quarantine, social distancing, the vulnerability of the frontline workers, panic-stricken populations, prevailing feelings of uncertainty and isolation, escalating death rates and of course, the furious spread of the plague itself that affects first the rats, and subsequently the population of the town of Oran — all this occurs in Camus’ fictional account, just as the virus is sapping the life out of people presently.

One can then, put stress on the terrifying yet, striking similarity that this brilliant piece of existential fiction offers with contemporary times. Camus wrote this narrative in the 1940s as a scathing critique of the Nazi occupation of France; he wrote to represent that trivial markers of class, caste, race, religion that had resulted in severely horrid wars are actually so futile, for we are all basically trapped in the same existentialist limbo. Our foremost identity is that of being a ‘human’ and our shared existence, its sufferings and our common fate of impending death transcend the categories that we have created to divide us. Without any moralizing indictments, Camus tells us and rightly so, that the disease strikes all, it does not discriminate and there can be no better testimony to why ‘human’ concerns supersede that of any other. The pandemic similarly revealed to us that in a world that is decaying from outside, we can choose to cultivate the soils within. It has taught people to pause, introspect and acknowledge the impact that they have had on the environment, on one other and on themselves. It has compelled us to look at ourselves as a society, in the mirror and acknowledge our own doings, the goods and bads of its consequences. And now when we are already living the new normal, although little seems changed — but there is indeed, a positive transformation.

Albert Camus’ fictional epidemic culminates in a similar strain. As he writes,

“Silent as ever by day, the streets filled up at nightfall with the usual crowds of people, now wearing overcoats and scarves. Cafes and picture-houses did as much business as before. But on a closer view, you might notice that people looked less strained, and they occasionally smiled. And this brought home the fact that since the outbreak of plague no one had hitherto been seen to smile in public.”

Collectively, we have evolved to be more compassionate, empathetic and desirous to form real humane connection. Despair, death and decay is what then, has resulted in a rejuvenation of life, a revived hope and most of all, it has exhumed the buried humanity from the fertile soils of the heart. Evil and destruction are a feature of this world that we reside in and although evil never wins but neither does it end forever. As long as there is human existence, there will also be evil, suffering and destruction — at times active, at times dormant; but as Camus seems to suggest, none so powerful will ever overpower the redeeming potential of human love. Human love, in all its essential forms — kindness, generosity, care, compassion, empathy, nurture, — is at the centre of life and is its governing principle; it is in fact, life itself and without the possibility of it, life itself is impossible. Indeed, it is human love alone that made possible the bearing of the many epidemics that have occurred in various forms and the many that are to come.