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.

Top 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Verified Quotes

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.

• Part I

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

• Part II

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

• Part III

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

• 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.

• Part IV

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

• 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.

• Part I and Part V

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