The Plague - Albert Camus

writing: @borrowed_pages

Can you imagine an existentialist philosopher being photographed for a fashion magazine? Well, you don't have to. Because Albert Camus graced American Vogue in 1946. But that's the least interesting thing about this French-Algerian.

Although he never liked being called a philosopher, this mid-20th-century writer has revolutionized modern philosophy. According to him, life has no meaning and the universe is indifferent to us. Any attempt to attribute meaning to our individual life or to think that we are born to serve a divine purpose is absurd pure and simple. Moreover, searching for the meaning of life is like looking for answers in an answerless world!  But having a life that has no meaning does not mean we need to succumb to despair. Because a life however meaningless it may be is worth living. It is worth living for love, nature, friendships, sun, food, cool breeze, unexpected rain, tasteful art, the sight of birds; you can guess where I am going with this! So this is my understanding of Camus and his theory of philosophy, let's get to the book now.

The Plague chronicles a bubonic epidemic that broke out in the fictionalized city of Oran. By his own admission, Camus wanted to explore what a plague meant for humanity with this novel. People of Oran disregarded the pestilence in its early stage because like typical humanists they could not fathom that a disease originating from an inferior animal could harm a far superior being like them. But a catastrophe discriminates none. The plague 'killed off all colors and vetoed pleasure'. Suffering as an unethical force got randomly distributed.  People were left with nothing but the memories of a simpler past which only grew painful to recall with each passing day. Towards the end of the novel, one of the characters remarks, "everyone has inside it himself this plague, because no one in the world, no one, can ever be immune". Which means that we are always surrounded by a perpetual plague that has immense power to disturb the order of our life and it does not have to be a contagious disease.

At one point in the novel, Camus mentions, "Pestilence is so common, there have been as many plagues in the world as there have been wars..." And this point has got me thinking that even when wars and epidemics have been historically occurring at the same frequency why are we always ill-prepared for epidemics but always ready for war.  We can go endlessly investing in defense and making a global show of our arsenal while competing to be the next nuclear superpower. But why isn't the healthcare system given the same importance when the casualties and aftershocks from both these events are of an equal degree. I personally feel that had it not been for this negligence, we would have been better prepared for the present pandemic.

How has Camus influenced you?