Post-Plague
From the start there were many similarities between living through the plague in Oran and living through Covid now. The way people refused to believe a disease was actually coming, by extension not introducing enough preventative measures to stop it early on. The sense of longing for their life before the plague, and over time ceasing to be hopeful for the future, as there really wasn't a definite stopping point anybody could come up with. All these things acutely reflected the reality we're all living through, and so even from the beginning I was interested in seeing how the book would portray the end of the Plague, as that is something we unfortunately haven't yet reached with Covid.
In Part V, the death rate from the plague begins to drop. Although things are looking somewhat hopeful, people are still wary of expecting the disease to disappear. This is sort of the opposite of what happened in America when we saw cases from the first wave waning. A large portion of the population believed this meant a permanent decline, and took it upon themselves to ignore all the measures taken to stop or slow a second wave. Either way, once health officials in Oran gave some confirmation of a slowing down of the disease, the gates open and a few weeks later sanitation measures are lifted. It's hard to believe that the plague just disappeared from Oran entirely, and Rieux shows some of the same hesitations in the last line of the book, speculating that the same bacteria would come back after a few dormant years. I guess it could be possible, if the city actually imposed a good enough quarantine and if Castel's serum makes some sort of difference, however I can't see the same thing happening now with Corona. We're more interconnected than ever before, and it's not like the virus is locked within completely isolated towns.
Even if the way this virus slows doesn't match the Plague, it's still interesting to look at the characters afterwards. There were long lasting consequences of the disease in the character's personalities and situations. Rambert feelings towards his wife shift, Cambert feels threatened enough by the return of normal life to lock himself into his apartment and fire a gun into the street, Dr.Rieux loses his wife, and Grand finally writes that letter to Jeanne. At the same time, it seems like overall the public, after mourning the dead and acknowledging all the suffering the disease brought, can still go back to their old lives. Although The Plague is not by any means an all-knowing novel that accurately describes every pandemic, there's still hope that this same thing might happen post-Covid.
I agree with you. Given how much the COVID-19 pandemic has reflected events in the Plague so far, it is entirely possible that, post-COVID, we will experience similar results. Of course, many of us us will be changed in terms of outlook, attitude, feelings, and even personality, just like some of the characters from the book. These types of things do tend to give people a new perspective on life in general. However, despite the changes we will inevitably experience, I agree that, for now, there is still hope for us to be able to return to our normal lives eventually, just like the characters in Oran.
ReplyDelete"speculating that the same bacteria would come back after a few dormant years"
ReplyDeleteWhat's really scary is that the coronavirus has already created a more contagious variant so we don't even have to wait a few years for another wave. The new variant is already in over thirty countries and spreading up to 70% higher transmission in communities in Southern California, Colorado, and Florida. Like Castel's serum, maybe the vaccines will make some sort of difference in eradicating the virus.