Luís's Reviews > A Peste

April 194 .., The Plague settles in Algeria in Oran, and everyday mortal cases multiply. Yet the prefecture is slow to declare "the state of the plague" because it does not want to worry public opinion. But a few weeks, in the face of the emergency, the prefect ordered the city gates to be closed.
Oran is isolated, separated, and cut off from the rest of the world. As a result, the inhabitants become "prisoners of The Plague"; the city resembles a condemned to death.
The epidemic progresses. The plague strikes everywhere and keeps the city folded underneath it. It becomes a "collective affair," and even those who do not carry "that sickness" bring it into their hearts.
The plague opens the eyes of the inhabitants and forces them to think and react. Each individual chooses his camp and adopts an attitude peculiar to himself.
Albert Camus illustrates his narrative with key figures such as Rieux, the doctor, and Cottard, the trafficker. Grand, the clerk of the town hall; Paneloux, the priest. Tarrou, the chronicler; Rambert, the journalist; etc. Each of these protagonists incarnates a different morality facing the Scourge. Yet, even if these men disagree on different levels, they turn out to be "men of goodwill" who act to defeat the plague together.
Camus compares (without citing it) the plague with war, the rise of Nazism, and the struggle of men against the Scourge to represent resistance.
In his book, men occupy a prominent place as if the plague only concerned men. Therefore, it can deduce that conflicts are only a story of men! The woman has second place, effaced. It sometimes appears as sweetness, comfort, or support for the man, not a thinking being.
In his work, the author depicts a community that shares the same struggle, demonstrating that the effects of the Scourge on a man can change mindsets, feelings, and worldviews. It shows, above all, that We are all equal before death.
A work of high quality, some passages are of a terrifying realism, the progression and the ravages of the plague described in the minor details.
The scene of the child's agony is one of the most painful passages, for we are helplessly witnessing his suffering and inevitably at his death.