Initial Thoughts on The Plague

    So far I've really enjoyed The Plague. Since there is a lot happening in the book at the moment, I felt that it would be more productive to just write about my first thoughts and impressions instead of focusing on a specific moment or aspect of the book. So here we go:

    The way Camus illustrates the city of Oran is super interesting, and I really like how he describes many of the side characters, for example the Old Spaniard who pushes peas around, Cottard, and the old man who spits on cats. Also, it seems like this book is going to be more plot driven than the ones we've read so far. Instead of just following a character through a day or a few days in their life we are (hopefully?) going to see the events that occur as a result of the plague progressing. This is definitely closer to the style of book I was used to reading before 20th century literature, and in my opinion it will definitely make the book more interesting and meaningful.

    One thing that I noticed pretty early on is the unique narration style, at least in certain places. It feels like the book takes breaks to comment on how the narrator should be telling the story, or to explain where the narrator is getting his information from. This meta narration is pretty different from anything we've read so far. It makes the book seem like more of a historical account of a plague rather than a fictional story about one. These little interruptions feel very abrupt, and the narrator even interrupts himself within the text: "He also proposes... But perhaps the time has come to drop preliminaries and cautionary remarks and to launch into the narrative proper." This feels so on the nose that it becomes almost comical, and it's definitely not something I would expect in a book written in 1948 and entitled "The Plague." I'm interested in seeing how this narration style will pan out, and whether the book will settle into just describing the events of the narrative or if this transcending narrator interject at some point later in the novel. Apart from this the narration style is also very fact-oriented, kind of like The Sun Also Rises. Right before describing M. Michel's death in gruesome detail, Camus writes, "Next day, April 30, the sky was blue and slightly misty. A warm, gentle breeze was blowing, bringing with it a smell of flowers from the outlying suburbs" It seems like the narrator is completely disconnected from the dozens of deaths or even at the beginning all the dead rats piling up in the streets.

    Most of the characters in The Plague refuse to acknowledge that this thing that's happening is actually a Plague. And those that do realize it's a Plague early on, like Rieux, expect it not to be a big deal, and assure themselves that "the outbreak would die a natural death." I guess it makes sense that without more information about the disease or how it spreads people would remain optimistic and continue believing that life would just continue as normal. Even after hearing stories or historical accounts of something similar happening in other places, it's still hard to imagine that thing actually happening to you. This is very similar to most people's early reaction to Covid. Sure, scientists were warning us about the possibility of a pandemic even back when we first heard about the virus in December, yet it was still unthinkable in February or March, at least to me, that it would affect everyone's life so much and for so long. I think this is definitely similar to the thought process of the people in Oran. Although logically many could probably deduce that this had to be a Plague and that it was just going to get worse, it was still hard to imagine that it completely demolish normal daily life. Along with that I'm not sure what percentage of the public was actually aware of the full scope of this "malignant fever." Although Rieux and other doctors seemed to have access to case numbers early on, it seemed like the newspapers reported way more information about the rats dying than they did people dying from this disease. So the public might be remaining calm simply because they don't really know what's going on.