Topic 9: La Peste (The Plague) by Albert Camus

La Peste (The Plague) by Albert Camus

Brecht’s warning is echoed in the 1947 novel, The Plague (La Peste) by Albert Camus. Set in Oran, Algeria, in 1940, it describes an outbreak of plague (that is, the plague of fascism) that overtakes the city. Rats carrying the bubonic plague bacillus appear and die in the streets of the city. Allegorically, Camus tells how the city’s residents want the city authorities only to operate the crematorium when the wind is blowing away from the city. He is saying that too many of the citizens of Nazi-occupied France preferred not to know what the Nazi-backed Vichy regime was doing in their name.

The final lines of Camus’ novel indict our insouciance in the face of evil:

“And indeed, as he listened to the cries of joy rising from the town, Rieux remembered that such joy is always imperilled. He knew what these jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks and book-shelves; and perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it roused up its rats again and sent them forth to die in a happy city.”

Reminder: In the words of the 17 July 1817 edition of the Vermont Gazette, ‘Eternal vigilance is the price we pay for liberty’, but, as the British Medical Journal pointed out in 1996, 50 years after the Nuremberg Tribunals,“ …. the records of these trials have also left us with a legacy we still shrink from confronting.”

Group and class activity:

Think about current and recent events with which you are familiar in light of the data in this Module.