Comments

• Taylor

  Camus sets up our narrator in a very interesting way because he says that our narrator is a historian. I also find it interesting that we do not meet the narrator right away because it allows Camus to keep a secret that he is not ready to reveal and then adds more mystery to who our narrator is.

  3/2/2009 1:14:01 PM
• Taylor

  There are two passages on page 4 that I find very interesting! The first is, "the truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits. Our citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich." The second is, "But, very sensibly, they reserve these pastimes for Saturday afternoons and Sundays and employ the rest of the week in making money, as much as possible." I find these two passages very interesting because it reminds me of our capitalistic America. All we care about as Americans, for the majority, is making money and being on top of the other person on the corporate ladder. Our ideals of family have seemed to have gone on the back burner because of our worry about being better and richer then the other person.

  3/2/2009 1:20:53 PM
• Jared

  It seems like all hell breaks loose (a man tries to hang himself, everybody is dying of fevers), and the police are trying to respond as well.
  
  In the beginning, there are some speculations whether someone put dead rats in the hotel on purpose, but no absolute certainty.
  
  The epidemic/pandemic is like war, in the way that uncountable numbers of people die, and at the same time, the narrator exposes the fact that numbers are in fact weak in meaning. "....But what are a hundred million deaths....what man knows ten thousand faces?...." (35-36).
  
  The end of this section is somewhat enlightening in the fact that humans survive through luck or through adaptation.
  
  

  3/2/2009 9:24:14 PM
• Anna

  I like the way Camus starts out by being the narrator. Especially because he includes himself with the people. Like: "we were scared." It makes it all a lot more personal and realistic, and, well, scary, actually.

  3/2/2009 9:31:48 PM
• Anna

  Another thing: how could the doctor (or anybody else) not have realized that the rats would bring a plague??? I mean really. Even if the book wasn't called the plague and each chapter didn't have a grim reaper at the beginning, I think we would still be able to put two and two together. Right?

  3/2/2009 9:33:40 PM
• Jared

  The narrator contradicts himself. He says that numbers are unimportant, yet people were astonished by the number of rats that were collected and burned in one day. And how were they able to count that there were exactly 6,231 rats that they burned.

  3/2/2009 9:42:22 PM
• Jared

  There is optimism in all the ruckus. We still have human qualities such as love, that the rats the epidemic/pandemic cannot destroy (13).

  3/2/2009 9:49:39 PM
• Jared

  The quote, "At Oran, as elsewhere, for lack of time and thinking, people have to love one another without knowing much about it"(4-5), is explaining the modernism of the town. The narrator says that the cause of this modern, romantic way of life comes from lack of thought. The author in fact likes this attribute about the town. Why does the narrator value modernism?

  3/2/2009 9:57:13 PM
• Jared

  Working hard only to gain and loving without reason seems to be "good." Could the narrator be saying that the town has a good balance of reason and simple pleasures? Or could it be that the town uses reason to gain simple pleasures?

  3/2/2009 10:01:45 PM
• Anna

  I disagree with Camus when he says that in Oran as elsewhere, people don't have the time of the "thinking" to understand love. I believe that love is too intrinsically human for us to NOT understand it. How can love be something that we have to learn? That's not love.

  3/2/2009 10:03:57 PM
• Jared

  "The Plage" seems to be a first, second, and third hand historical piece of work, in that it has the general view and insight of people who went through the epidemic/pandemic as well as the facts such as numbers. The narrator fulfills his role of what a narrator should be.

  3/2/2009 10:06:16 PM
• Taylor

  Anna, I completely agree with your question about how the people could not figure out that the rats were bringing the plague! I ahve it written down as a question in my book early on if the rats are the plague so its not that hard to figure out! The people of Oran just don't have the intellect that we have!

  3/3/2009 6:20:38 PM
• bennett

  firstly my apologies. i grabbed the wrong book in my locker and so only began reading tonight.
  
  on taylors most recemt comment...
  i think its relativley clear that camus meant for the peopel to not recognize the dying rats for what they are. maybe possibly this ignorance is camus' whole point. as taylor pointed out its 'absurd' that they simpyl ignored it..man's stubborn resistance to accept the horriblenmess of truth..sorry dunno where im taking this

  3/3/2009 11:25:13 PM
• Taylor

  I totally agree Bennett. I think that Camus did not wantthe people to take the rats for what they are but, it is still hard to comprehend why he would choose such a simple thing to do that with. I think it would have been far more productive had he choosen something else that would have been harder for the reader to figure out for the people to be ignorant about!

  3/4/2009 7:49:32 PM
• Patrice

  I agree with both Taylor and Bennett. I too thought it a little ridiculous that it took Dr.Rieux and the other doctor that long to make a connection between the rats suddenly dying by the thousands, and people suddenly dying only days after. Especially when they BOTH exhibited symptoms like blood coming from their mouths. Though I also agree with Bennett that this 'absurdity' was Camus' intent as he writes that the concept of plague is simply one so huge and terrifying that it takes one off guard as it is difficult to comprehend. "Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves," (pg. 34). I think he is saying that man's arrogance is a sign of stupidity that is so detrimental that it is capable of blinding mankind from something as huge as a plague which is an example of life's absurdity.

  3/9/2009 12:28:38 AM
• Sarah Shelburne

  I am really enjoying this book so far. I think that camus' description of the narrators role is what really draws people into the origional story, becasue it is such an unorthadox approach, as are his descriptions of the subsequent events. by making the descriptions so unusual, and from so many different perspectives, the reactions of the coming plague as seen in the rats are anything but normal, however they seem normal because, in the eyes of the narrator, they are. SO as we try to interpret the actions and emotions of the characters, I think that we are biased by the narrator's view.

  3/10/2009 12:12:04 PM
• JLM

  It seems that there are many thoughts that strike the reader as odd. Noting that it is an existential book thusly anything goes, only because nothing matters. The Narrator describes the city as a pretty drab place, yet if the city is bad then the people are worse. It seems that they have no life except the life that they are content with. I have a hard time seeing the significance in a bunch of rats dieing with bloody eyes. I’m not judging this book, yet, in the beginning of this book there are all sorts of strange discrepancies. Like the patient saying that they rats were due to hunger, yet that just plain does not make sense when you think about it. And then there is the “pranksters that placed the dead rats in the building” I believe it was Cottard that said this. First everything gets blamed on the pranksters, and second this also does not make sense because the rats are all over the city not just his one silly building. And I want to close on this note of love, I would argue that love can not exist in such a city as Oran, because people are so set in there ways that they view love as an excuse to go make babies and have a family not true love.

  3/10/2009 11:19:28 PM
• Kyle

  Bennett makes a very valid point when he says that the towns people seem ignorant what is happening to all the rats. They just ignore it all together and start setting them out in piles to be picked up by the trash collectors. Bennett says that this may be Camus' whole point and i agree. Later in the novel, page 120, Camus' takes a step out of the action and lets the narrator add an impersonal opinion about what is going on. Here he rants about the vice of ignorance and that all malicious things in the world come from ignorance.

  3/13/2009 11:03:50 AM