After Nazis occupied his homeland of France, Albert Camus fought fascism with his deadliest weapon: the pen.
Camus’ 1947 novel “The Plague” begins with Dr. Bernard Rieux discovering large numbers of dead rats in his hometown of Oran, Algeria. Rieux soon begins treating countless patients, all showing signs of the bubonic plague.
Mayhem ensues. Trains are shut down. Armed guards are placed at the gates, and town officials order a complete quarantine of the coastal city, all while citizens continue to die daily.
“The Plague” then explores how the people of the city react, eventually ending with a lift of the quarantine and a return to normalcy in Oran.
Readers today, of course, can draw many parallels to their own lives, given the complete shutdown of the world during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
The work is extremely dense and loaded with Camus’ absurdist philosophy. What makes this novel so beautiful, though, is its powerful allegorical message that encapsulates the decades of the 1930s and 1940s.
Camus uses the plague as a metaphor for the rise and spread of fascism: sudden, destructive, and indifferent to human life. Like fascism, the plague divides, isolates, and paralyzes entire communities with fear, just as Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco did when they seized power so aggressively.
But “The Plague” is ultimately a novel about resistance. The characters who stand out are not those who fear monger and preach how the world is ending, but those who act.
Dr. Rieux stands as a symbol of rationality and responsibility, doing his part to help the people of Oran by providing medical aid.
Camus himself participated in the French Resistance during World War II. His novel reflects his belief that, even in the faced with seemingly unstoppable evil, people must resist.
As the plague fades, Rieux notes that the disease may return when the townspeople least expect it. So, too, can fascism, attacking a society when it least expects it, dividing man against man, preaching a gospel of hatred, bigotry, and arbitrary superiority.
“The Plague” serves as Camus’ constant reminder to the world that the fuel for fascism – or any ideology that preaches hate – is the silence of good people.
