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Excerpted as printed, with one exception: all emphases have been added. Each highlighted passage, I myself have selected -- it's not how the original copy reads.
I also found the following page from Goodreads helpful in setting a context for those unfamiliar with Alain de Botton or The School of Life.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...school-of-life
Thanks in advance to everyone who chose to visit this topic. Comments are entirely optional, always appreciated.
Excerpted as printed, with one exception: all emphases have been added. Each highlighted passage, I myself have selected -- it's not how the original copy reads.
I also found the following page from Goodreads helpful in setting a context for those unfamiliar with Alain de Botton or The School of Life.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...school-of-life
Thanks in advance to everyone who chose to visit this topic. Comments are entirely optional, always appreciated.
In January 1941, the twenty-eight year old French writer Albert Camus began work on a novel about a virus that spreads uncontrollably from animals to humans and ends up destroying half the population of a representative modern town.
The book – written in sparse, haunting prose – takes us through a catastrophic outbreak of a contagious disease in the lightly fictionalised town of Oran on the Algerian coast, as seen through the eyes of the novel’s hero, a Doctor Rieux, a version of Camus himself.
As the novel opens, an air of eerie normality reigns. ‘Oran is an ordinary town,’ writes Camus, ‘nothing more than a French Prefecture on the coast of Algeria.’ The inhabitants lead busy money-centered and denatured lives; they barely notice that they are alive. Then, with the pacing of a thriller, the horror begins. Dr Rieux comes across a dead rat. Then another and another. Soon the town is overrun with the mysterious deaths of thousands of rats, who stumble out of their hiding places in a daze, let out a drop of blood from their noses and expire.
The inhabitants accuse the authorities of not acting fast enough. The rats are removed – and the town heaves a sigh of relief but Dr Rieux suspects that this is not the end. He has read enough about the structure of plagues and transmissions from animals to humans to know that something is afoot.
Soon an epidemic seizes Oran, the disease transmitting itself from citizen to citizen, spreading panic and horror in every street.
As the novel opens, an air of eerie normality reigns. ‘Oran is an ordinary town,’ writes Camus, ‘nothing more than a French Prefecture on the coast of Algeria.’ The inhabitants lead busy money-centered and denatured lives; they barely notice that they are alive. Then, with the pacing of a thriller, the horror begins. Dr Rieux comes across a dead rat. Then another and another. Soon the town is overrun with the mysterious deaths of thousands of rats, who stumble out of their hiding places in a daze, let out a drop of blood from their noses and expire.
The inhabitants accuse the authorities of not acting fast enough. The rats are removed – and the town heaves a sigh of relief but Dr Rieux suspects that this is not the end. He has read enough about the structure of plagues and transmissions from animals to humans to know that something is afoot.
Soon an epidemic seizes Oran, the disease transmitting itself from citizen to citizen, spreading panic and horror in every street.
Camus was drawn to his theme because, in his philosophy, we are all – unbeknownst to us – already living through a plague: that is a widespread, silent, invisible disease that may kill any of us at any time and destroy the lives we assumed were solid. The actual historical incidents we call plagues are merely concentrations of a universal precondition, they are dramatic instances of a perpetual rule: that we are vulnerable to being randomly exterminated, by a bacillus, an accident or the actions of our fellow humans. Our exposure to plague is at the heart of Camus’s view that our lives are fundamentally on the edge of what he termed ‘the absurd’.
Proper recognition of this absurdity should not lead us to despair pure and simple. It should – rightly understood – be the start of a redemptive tragi-comic perspective. Like the people of Oran before the plague, we assume that we have been granted immortality and with this naivety come behaviours that Camus abhorred: a hardness of heart, an obsession with status, a refusal of joy and gratitude, a tendency to moralise and judge.
The people of Oran associate plague with something backward that belongs to another age. They are modern people with phones, trams, aeroplanes and newspapers. They are surely not going to die like the wretches of 17th century London or 18th century Canton.
‘It’s impossible it should be the plague, everyone knows it has vanished from the West,’ says one character. ‘Yes, everyone knew that,’ Camus adds sardonically, ‘except the dead.’
Proper recognition of this absurdity should not lead us to despair pure and simple. It should – rightly understood – be the start of a redemptive tragi-comic perspective. Like the people of Oran before the plague, we assume that we have been granted immortality and with this naivety come behaviours that Camus abhorred: a hardness of heart, an obsession with status, a refusal of joy and gratitude, a tendency to moralise and judge.
The people of Oran associate plague with something backward that belongs to another age. They are modern people with phones, trams, aeroplanes and newspapers. They are surely not going to die like the wretches of 17th century London or 18th century Canton.
‘It’s impossible it should be the plague, everyone knows it has vanished from the West,’ says one character. ‘Yes, everyone knew that,’ Camus adds sardonically, ‘except the dead.’
At the height of the plague, when five hundred people a week are dying, one of Camus’s particular enemies in the novel steps into a view, a Catholic priest called Paneloux. He gives a sermon to the city in the cathedral of the main square – and seeks to explain the plague as god’s punishment for depravity.
But Camus’s hero Dr Rieux loathes this approach. The plague is not a punishment for anything deserved. That would be to imagine that the universe was moral or had some sort of design to it. But Dr Rieux watches a young innocent child die in his hospital and knows better: suffering is entirely randomly distributed, it makes no sense, it is no ethical force, it is simply absurd and that is the kindest thing one can say of it.
The doctor works tirelessly against death, he tries to lessen the suffering of those around him. But he is no saint. In one of the most central lines of the book, Camus writes: ‘This whole thing is not about heroism. It’s about decency. It may seem a ridiculous idea, but the only way to fight the plague is with decency.’ A character asks Rieux what decency is. Doctor Rieux’s response is as clipped as it is eloquent: ‘In general, I can’t say, but in my case I know that it consists in doing my job.’
But Camus’s hero Dr Rieux loathes this approach. The plague is not a punishment for anything deserved. That would be to imagine that the universe was moral or had some sort of design to it. But Dr Rieux watches a young innocent child die in his hospital and knows better: suffering is entirely randomly distributed, it makes no sense, it is no ethical force, it is simply absurd and that is the kindest thing one can say of it.
The doctor works tirelessly against death, he tries to lessen the suffering of those around him. But he is no saint. In one of the most central lines of the book, Camus writes: ‘This whole thing is not about heroism. It’s about decency. It may seem a ridiculous idea, but the only way to fight the plague is with decency.’ A character asks Rieux what decency is. Doctor Rieux’s response is as clipped as it is eloquent: ‘In general, I can’t say, but in my case I know that it consists in doing my job.’
Despite the horror, Camus (who in an earlier essay had compared humanity to the wretched character of Sisyphus but then asked us to imagine Sisyphus ‘happy’ ) maintains a characteristically keen sense of what makes life worth enduring. His Doctor Rieux appreciates dancing, love and nature; he is hugely sensitive to the smell of flowers, to the colours at sunset and – like Camus – adores swimming in the sea, slipping out after an evening on the wards to surrender himself to the reassuring immensity of the waves.
Eventually, after more than a year, the plague ebbs away. The townspeople celebrate, it is apparently the end of suffering. Normality can return. But this is not how Camus sees it. Doctor Rieux may have helped to defeat this particular outbreak of the plague but he knows there will always be others:
Eventually, after more than a year, the plague ebbs away. The townspeople celebrate, it is apparently the end of suffering. Normality can return. But this is not how Camus sees it. Doctor Rieux may have helped to defeat this particular outbreak of the plague but he knows there will always be others:
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