The Plague
by Albert Camus (1947)
“I'm in a bad way”
As the title suggests, The Plague is about just that – a four-part novel about a sickness afflicting the French-Algerian town of Oran, and the resulting lockdown that takes place (sound familiar?). Part I was a bit slow, but it’s needed, because Parts II-IV really ramp up in both story and overall tone. Part III was probably my favorite – there were some beautifully written passages, and it is here that I really started to sympathize with the characters in what they were going through.
An interesting note on tone: while the town goes through the horrors of the plague, the unknown narrator takes on quite a calm voice, an interesting choice by Camus. But I think it helped to understand the narrator better – for example, in the absolute depths of the plague, when the town had to burn bodies instead of hosting funerals (due to the sheer volume of deaths each day), the narrator essentially keep their cool when in the depths of it all – but it stuck out to me as more of a defense mechanism than indifference:
“True, one could always refuse to face this disagreeable fact, shut one's eyes to it, or thrust it out of mind, but there is a terrible cogency in the self-evident; ultimately it breaks down all defenses.”
It's a dense book, and while it may seem like there is a lot of filler in the novel, it is necessary to understand each of the characters, as this book is just as much of a character analysis as it is a novel. As such, the plot will take a backseat at times to go in detail of what characters are thinking, feeling, and how they are reacting to the events unfurling around them – something that I did not appreciate until I finished the novel.