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Title: The Plague by Albert Camus ISBN: 0-679-72021-9 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 07 May, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.39 (95 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Disaster and the human spirit
Comment: This is a a magnificent novel from a wise, understanding and compassive writer. The story is simple: the city of Oran is stricken by a terrible (and metaphorical) plague spreaded by rats. As soon as it is universally acknowledged, the inhabitants start trying to survive, both physically and emotionally. But each one does it their way, often hanging on to the past which is all they have left in the face of the hideous present and the very uncertain future.
The main character is Dr. Rieux, who takes charge of organizing the medical response. He is helped by a curious and moving character, Grand, a man who is trying to write a novel but gets stuck rewriting forever the first sentence, always remembering a lost love and growing to be resigned to his future. There is Cottard, who enjoys the odd situation created by the plague, after trying to kill himself: it seems the plague has given him something meaningful to live for. And Rambert, the foreign journalist who tries time and again to escape the city, only to be deterred by his conscience. The female presence is notoriously scarce. The tone is apparently cold and distant, but it is written with a mastery which gives us a glimpse of the humanity of the author. It's hard and real, and the human spirit in the face of such a disaster shines through.
Interestingly enough, this novel seems to contradict Camus's manifested existentialism, such as the one portrayed in "The Stranger". Strange that an existentialist would write a novel where he seems very clearly to send the message that life exists and is important, that it has a meaning, even if obscure for us mortals, but that somehow it is valuable and deserves to be preserved even by sacrifice. Camus seems to have grown up by the time he wrote this great parable.
Rating: 5
Summary: The lost battle for our own minds and spirits
Comment: 40 years ago Camus was all the rage.
The forgotten student union coffee shop and Greenwich Village Expresso debates of the first half of the 60s weren't all over Communism, unilateral nuclear disarmament (by the US), whether the US had any business in Southeast Asia, what 'we' should do about Cuba' and how enlightened young whites could best help blacks attain the middle-class goals of better living conditions, radios, equal access to public education, housing, restrooms and voting booths. All the various soon-to-be-dead Kennedys were alive, Communism as an ideal was still arguable (though lousily manifested in the USSR and PRC) and Martin Luther King was unknown, both for his 'dream', and for his purloined doctoral dissertation. The value of Christianity was still up for grabs in most of our young minds. An effective Village pickup line was a sneering, "What? You don't believe in Free Love?" In that hallowed atmosphere we discussed Camus, Sartre and Existentialism. We generally missed the point.
Nevermind Existentialism. The Plague is a good book. A great book about humans, stress, isolation and the human condition. A French seaport town stricken by plague finds itself isolated and dying for most of a year. The narrators watch the developments and phases of the epidemic within individuals, the government and the stricken. After a recent re-reading of this book I wonder why we never simply appreciated it for what it is, instead of using The Plague as one of the several platforms for debate in the battles with and for our spiritual selves. I wonder why we refused to see the virtue of the book without forcing it to be something less obvious than it is.
I recommend this book for anyone. I suspect it can't be read from any level without appreciation.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Immortal Masterpiece
Comment: The suggestion that Camus's classic is as timely as it is timeless is not an expression to be taken glibly. At its core, The Plague is as much a tale of hope as it is about death. Amid its stark and grim descriptions of despair, lies the rediscovery of common purpose, of brotherhood, sacrifice, and above all, life. Yet, there is nothing in this story of redemption to imply a pivot of righteousness or god-willed forgiveness. No, the veritable truth of this account is the reconciliation of those uncontrollable forces that commandeer us, nature, God, death with those whimsical, human impulses that define us, love, desire, fear. In the end it is to guide us towards understanding significance and belief, both of our individual and collective selves, in the worlds that we create and that create us.
The story unfurls by recounting a morning like any other morning in the sleepy and listless town of Oran. Yet, this seemingly unconvential day is marked with the odd profusion of dead rats within the city. The harbinger of doom symbolized by these rodent corpses quickly turns from peculiarity to dread, and Camus's masterful reportorial passages landscape the cloud of panic and fear that literally and figuratively quarantine the town. At once both detailed and grandiose, Camus never loses focuses on his objectivity. His phrases are almost scientific when describing the physical ravages of the disease, and his honest and austere portraits of the psychology manifestations of Oran always retain the precision of the conscientious observer. Yet, even while constructing the setting with an eye of distance, Camus brilliantly juxtaposes them against his vivid character studies, ones that radiate their unflinching and, in many ways, life-sustaining humanity. From the devastating dedication of Dr. Rieux to the monumental heroism of the tongue-tied Grand, each individual materializes the many facets of morality and courage that emerge in the face of dire adversity. It is in these depictions that Camus's passion and pain thrive-tinted with the weight of his existential musings, these archetypes (as each can be reduced to an element of complete ethical composition) are men caught within a God-fearing, but Godless world, where their only respite is alleviation. In perhaps the most powerful soliloquy on compassion, guilt, and justice that I have ever read, Tarrou illuminates the plight of the "plague-stricken," of which we are all a part, and must somehow escape. It is an absolutely heart-wrenching and beautiful passage; the most sublime in a book replete with them.
Much more can be said about the uncompromising splendor of this novel-it is epic, in the most profound of ways, through its encapsulation of the ways in which we struggle and survive. Relevant for all ages, but conspicuously for ours, where empathy and understanding disappear regularly from our conscience, this is a living testament of perseverance. That truth is not beautiful, that pain will always be linked to us, these are our realities-but we cannot lose hope and balance in the face of them.
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Title: The Stranger by Albert Camus ISBN: 0679720200 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 13 March, 1989 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The Fall by Albert Camus ISBN: 0679720227 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 07 May, 1991 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: The Myth of Sisyphus : And Other Essays by Albert Camus ISBN: 0679733736 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 07 May, 1991 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Rebel : An Essay on Man in Revolt by Albert Camus ISBN: 0679733841 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 January, 1992 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, Lloyd Alexander, H. Carruth ISBN: 0811201880 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: January, 1975 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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