The Plague

Summary

The Plague is a chronicle of an epidemic of bubonic and then pneumonic plague in Oran, a commercial port on the Algerian coast, in an unspecified year of the 1940s. The narrator, who reveals himself only at the end as the physician Bernard Rieux, writes as an impartial witness, drawing also on the notebooks of his friend Jean Tarrou. Part I begins in April, when dead rats appear on stairs and in the streets. Rieux has just sent his ailing wife to a sanatorium in the mountains. The concierge Michel dies of a fever with swollen glands, cases multiply, and Rieux and the elderly Dr. Castel name the disease that the authorities are slow to admit. The prefect finally proclaims a state of plague and the town gates are shut. Part II follows the shock of separation and exile within the walls. Raymond Rambert, a Paris journalist caught by the closure, schemes with smugglers to escape to the woman he loves. The Jesuit Father Paneloux preaches that the plague is a scourge sent by God upon a sinful city. Tarrou, a visitor of independent means, proposes volunteer sanitary squads, and Joseph Grand, a modest municipal clerk who spends his evenings polishing the first sentence of a novel, keeps their statistics. Rieux insists to Rambert that the work is no matter of heroism but of ordinary decency. Part III, the height of summer, describes heat, wind, mass graves, the crematorium and the deadening routine of a city that has lost its memories. In Part IV Rambert, on the point of escape, decides to stay and join the squads. Rieux, Tarrou, Paneloux and Castel watch the agonizing death of the magistrate Othon's small son, the first patient given Castel's serum. Paneloux, shaken, preaches a second sermon calling on Christians to accept or reject everything, and soon dies of an illness his doctors cannot classify. Tarrou tells Rieux how, as the son of a prosecutor, he turned against capital punishment and now seeks to become a saint without God; the two friends swim at night in the sea. Grand falls ill and recovers. The petty criminal Cottard, who had tried to hang himself at the start, prospers through the epidemic and dreads its end. In Part V the plague recedes in the new year. Tarrou is among its last victims, dying in Rieux's house. A telegram tells Rieux that his wife has died at the sanatorium. In February the gates open amid celebrations; Cottard fires on the crowd from his window and is arrested. Rieux resolves to record what men learn in a time of pestilence, knowing that the plague bacillus never disappears for good. Gallimard published the novel in Paris in June 1947 and it won the Prix des Critiques. Stuart Gilbert's English translation appeared in 1948. The library holds no text; the novel is under copyright.

Plot or Argument

• Part I: The rats and the closing of the gates

  In April dead rats appear across Oran; the concierge Michel dies; Rieux, Castel and a reluctant administration finally recognize plague, and the town is sealed by prefectoral order.

• Part II: Exile within the walls

  Citizens separated from loved ones live as exiles. Rambert seeks a way out through smugglers; Paneloux preaches that the plague is a divine chastisement; Tarrou organizes volunteer sanitary squads with Rieux and Grand.

• Part III: The height of the epidemic

  Through August heat and wind the death toll peaks. The narrator records the closing of cemeteries, burial in pits, the crematorium, the camps for isolation, and the town's descent into routine without hope or memory.

• Part IV: The child, the sermon and the swim

  Rambert chooses to remain. Othon's son dies slowly despite Castel's serum. Paneloux preaches his second sermon and dies. Tarrou confesses his life to Rieux on a terrace and they swim together at night. Grand recovers from the disease.

• Part V: Deliverance

  The epidemic wanes in January. Tarrou dies; Rieux learns of his wife's death. The gates reopen in February, Cottard is arrested after shooting from his window, and Rieux reveals himself as the chronicler.

Characters

• Dr. Bernard Rieux, physician and narrator

  Doctor of about thirty-five who leads the medical fight against the epidemic and is revealed at the end as the chronicle's author.

• Jean Tarrou, friend and diarist

  Visitor to Oran who keeps notebooks, organizes the sanitary squads, and hopes to become a saint without God.

• Raymond Rambert, journalist

  Parisian reporter trapped in Oran who tries to escape to the woman he loves and finally stays to fight the plague.

• Father Paneloux, Jesuit priest

  Learned preacher whose two sermons mark the change in his understanding of suffering; he joins the squads and dies.

• Joseph Grand, municipal clerk

  Modest, conscientious clerk who keeps the squads' records and rewrites one sentence of his novel endlessly.

• Cottard, petty criminal

  Grand's neighbor, wanted by the police, who attempts suicide, thrives on the black market during the plague and fears its end.

• Dr. Castel, physician

  Older colleague of Rieux who develops a serum in Oran.

• M. Othon, magistrate

  Stiff examining magistrate whose young son dies of plague and who later volunteers at the quarantine camp.

• Madame Rieux, mother

  Rieux's quiet mother, who comes to keep house for him and nurses Tarrou.

Lessons

• Decency rather than heroism

  Rieux refuses to call the work of the sanitary squads heroic. For him it is simply a doctor's job and a citizen's duty. Camus gives his highest praise to Grand, the clerk who keeps the figures faithfully, as the insignificant hero of the story.

  • Why does Rieux reject the word heroism when Rambert uses it?
  • Why does the narrator single out Grand as a model for the reader?
  • Does doing one's job well count as a moral achievement?

• Two sermons and the suffering of a child

  Paneloux's first sermon explains the plague as just punishment; after he watches Othon's son die, his second sermon admits that the suffering of a child cannot be explained, and calls Christians to an all-or-nothing faith. Camus presents the priest as sincere and brave in both.

  • What image of God does Paneloux present in his first sermon?
  • How does the death of Othon's son change him?
  • Is Paneloux's second sermon a deeper faith or a weaker one?

• Exile and separation

  The closing of the gates turns every citizen into an exile, separated from absent loved ones or from the future. Rambert's attempts to escape and Rieux's silent separation from his dying wife show two ways of living with that loss.

  • What reasons does Rambert give for wanting to leave, and why does he stay?
  • How does Rieux bear his separation from his wife?
  • Is there a duty to stay with a suffering community when one could leave?

• The plague within

  Tarrou tells Rieux that everyone carries a kind of plague, the readiness to consent to the death of others, and that he has resolved to take the side of the victims. His confession links the epidemic to capital punishment and political violence.

  • What did Tarrou witness at his father's courtroom?
  • What does he mean by a saint without God?
  • Does Tarrou's idea of inner plague resemble the Christian idea of sin?

Context

Camus wrote the novel during and after the Second World War, much of it while living in occupied France, cut off from his wife in Algeria. Readers at once took the closed city as an image of the German occupation and the sanitary squads as an image of the Resistance, and Camus confirmed in a 1955 letter to Roland Barthes that the struggle against Nazism was among the book's meanings; he also intended it as a picture of any collective evil and of the human condition. The city of Oran, where Camus lived in 1941–42, was a real port of French Algeria.

Composition

Camus began taking notes on plague in 1941, reading historical accounts of epidemics, and worked on the book through the war years, revising heavily. The novel's epigraph is drawn from Daniel Defoe, who wrote of representing one kind of imprisonment by another. Gallimard published it in June 1947, and it became Camus's first major commercial success.

Reception

The book won the Prix des Critiques and sold widely in France and abroad. Roland Barthes criticized it for replacing human enemies with a natural disaster, while other readers praised its restraint and its ethics of solidarity; Christian readers have discussed the portrait of Paneloux as both critical and respectful. Stuart Gilbert's 1948 translation was standard for decades; Robin Buss (2001) and Laura Marris (2021) produced newer versions. The novel found many new readers during later epidemics, including COVID-19 in 2020.

Comparisons

• the-history-of-the-peloponnesian-war

  Thucydides's account of the plague at Athens in 430 BC, with its collapse of custom and burial, is the classical model for literary descriptions of epidemics; Rieux recalls Athens among the historic plagues.

• robinson-crusoe

  Camus took the novel's epigraph from Defoe, the author also of A Journal of the Plague Year, and shares his sober chronicle manner in describing a city under plague.

• narrative-of-yellow-fever-1793

  The Philadelphia account of the 1793 epidemic, with its volunteers, nurses and disputes over flight, gives a historical counterpart to Oran's sanitary squads.

• the-brothers-karamazov

  Ivan Karamazov's refusal of a world in which children suffer is the question Paneloux faces at the bedside of Othon's son; Camus wrote about Ivan in The Rebel.

• camus-the-stranger

  Meursault's lonely absurd and his rejection of the chaplain give way in The Plague to solidarity and a respectful portrait of a priest who works among the dying.

• sts-roch-and-sebastian

  The saints invoked by Christians against plague offer a devotional response to epidemic that Paneloux's sermons echo and that Tarrou's saint without God answers.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The rats in Part I and the slow official recognition of the disease.
• Paneloux's two sermons, one in Part II and one in Part IV, and the change between them.
• Rambert's attempts to escape and the moment he decides to stay.
• The death of Othon's son and the conversation between Rieux and Paneloux that follows.
• Tarrou's confession on the terrace and the night swim with Rieux.

Key terms and names

Oran

Port city on the coast of French Algeria where the epidemic takes place and where Camus lived during the war.

Bubonic and pneumonic plague

The two forms of the disease in the novel: the first marked by swollen lymph glands, the second attacking the lungs and spreading by breath, which appears as the epidemic worsens.

Sanitary squads

Volunteer teams organized by Tarrou to disinfect houses, transport patients and keep records.

State of plague

The emergency declared by the prefect that closes the gates and places the town under quarantine.

Serum

The treatment Castel prepares locally and first tries on Othon's son.

Saint without God

Tarrou's description of his aim: to live for the victims and refuse any part in killing, without religious faith.

Chronicle

The form the narrator chooses: a sober record of events as an eyewitness, whose author is named only at the end.

Content note

Recommended for older high school students with guidance: the novel describes mass death, the agony of a dying child, a suicide attempt and graphic symptoms of disease.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What signs announce the plague in Part I, and why are officials slow to name it?
2. Comprehension What is Rambert trying to do in Part II, and what does he finally decide?
3. Comprehension What happens to Tarrou, Paneloux, Grand and Cottard by the end?
4. Interpretation Why does Camus make Grand, the clerk with his single sentence, the hero of the chronicle?
5. Interpretation How does Paneloux's second sermon differ from the first, and why?
6. Interpretation What does the plague stand for besides itself: occupation, evil, death, or something else?
7. Big Question How should a person of faith, or of no faith, respond to the suffering of an innocent child?
8. Big Question What do we owe our neighbors in a time of contagion?

Faith Connections

• Exodus 9:13-16 (Scripture)

  Paneloux's first sermon draws on the plagues of Egypt as signs of divine judgment, the reading he later reconsiders.

• John 9:1-3 (Scripture)

  Asked whether a man's blindness came from his sin or his parents', Jesus answers that neither sinned; this teaching stands against the simple equation of suffering and guilt in Paneloux's first sermon.

• Matthew 25:36-40 (Scripture)

  Christ identifies himself with the sick who are visited; the sanitary squads, believer and unbeliever alike, enact this care.

• Cyprian of Carthage, On the Mortality (Church Fathers)

  Writing during the plague of the 250s, Cyprian urged Christians to face death without fear and to care for the sick, a pastoral answer to epidemic that sets Paneloux in a long tradition.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: If suffering and death cannot be explained or justified, then the only honest response is to fight them as far as one can and to stand with the victims; the doctors, volunteers and even the priest of Oran show that such solidarity is possible and is what makes people more admirable than despicable.

Rhetorical device: allegory. The closed and quarantined city of Oran, with its curfews, deportations to camps and volunteers working in secret danger, has been read from its first publication as a figure of occupied France.

Debate: Resolved: that Rambert was right to stay in Oran rather than escape to the woman he loved.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Argue whether Rieux or Tarrou is the moral center of The Plague, using the swim in Part IV and Tarrou's death in Part V.

Comparison with The History of the Peloponnesian War: Compare Thucydides's account of the plague at Athens with Camus's Oran: how does each describe the collapse of custom and the conduct of those who cared for the sick?

Medical Lens

The novel is one of the fullest literary accounts of epidemic medicine and public health. It follows the stages of an outbreak: an animal epizootic (the rats), a first human death, clinical recognition by physicians, official reluctance to name the disease, a prefectoral declaration, quarantine of the city, isolation of patients and contacts, requisitioned hospitals, volunteer sanitary squads, statistical reporting, mass burial and cremation, a locally made serum of uncertain value, and a slow decline. Rieux's work is described in practical detail: lancing buboes, diagnosing the pneumonic form, ordering isolation against families' wishes, and the fatigue and protective numbness of a doctor who sees more deaths than he can grieve. Camus's own tuberculosis, diagnosed at seventeen, lies behind the absent figure of Rieux's wife in a mountain sanatorium. Readings of Cottard's suicide attempt and his relief during the epidemic are psychological interpretations, not clinical histories. The book has been read widely in medical ethics teaching for its account of professional duty, the limits of treatment and the moral weight of public-health orders.

• Part I

  The appearance of dying rats in buildings and streets, the concierge Michel's fever and swollen glands, and his death.

  Plague Epidemic Fever Infection
• Part I

  The health committee at the prefecture, where Rieux and Castel press officials to name the disease and adopt the regulations it requires.

  Public Health Sanitation Physicians Doctors Medical Ethics
• Part II

  Tarrou's proposal of volunteer sanitary squads and the discussion with Rieux and Rambert about duty, decency and the doctor's job.

  Nursing Caregiving Public Health Sanitation
• Part III

  The summer peak: the closing of cemeteries, burial in lime pits, the crematorium and the trams carrying the dead at night.

  Death Dying Public Health Sanitation
• Part IV

  The death of Othon's young son after an injection of Castel's serum, watched at the bedside by Rieux, Castel, Tarrou and Paneloux.

  Plague Epidemic Death Dying Medical Ethics
• Part IV

  Paneloux's final illness, which the doctors record as a doubtful case because it lacks the usual signs.

  Fever Infection Physicians Doctors
• Part V

  Tarrou's death in Rieux's home, nursed by Rieux and his mother, and the telegram announcing the death of Rieux's wife at the sanatorium.

  Nursing Caregiving Grief Tuberculosis Consumption
• Part I and Part V

  Cottard's attempted hanging at the start of the epidemic and his breakdown and arrest when it ends.

  Suicide

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Compare Paneloux's two sermons and explain how the death of Othon's son changes his understanding of suffering.

• Fiction

  Write a page from Tarrou's notebook describing a day with the sanitary squads, in his ironic, observant style.

• Classroom

  Chart the stages of the Oran epidemic from the rats to the reopening of the gates, and compare them with the stages of a historical epidemic studied in class.

Further Reading

• A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe

  Defoe's 1722 fictional chronicle of the London plague of 1665, a forerunner of Camus's method.

• The Rebel, Albert Camus

  Camus's 1951 essay on revolt, which develops the ethics of Rieux and Tarrou.

• Albert Camus: A Life, Olivier Todd

  Biography covering Camus's years in Oran and occupied France when the novel was written.

• The Black Death, Philip Ziegler

  Narrative history of the fourteenth-century plague in Europe.