01.18.2005 The Plague By Albert Camus Literary Fiction (c) 1948 (translation) 278 pages

I finished the last thirty-five pages of The Plague in a café, and I had to make an effort not to cry. Camus prepares you for a sad ending with the way he writes the story, so though it wasn't a surprise, it was sad nonetheless.

The main character of The Plague is more the plague itself than anything else. It's personified throughout the book, depicted more as an entity than a disease. I thought that was one of the more interesting aspects of the book -- that the characters take a backseat to the actions and personality of the plague. The characters themselves are defined by what's going on around them, so that everything and everyone becomes an aspect of the plague. In other words, it's present everywhere. I was still invested in the characters, though, and that's a credit to Camus. The scene where Rieux and Tarrou talk and then go for a swim is one of my favorites in the book.

Some of the translations were odd. I picked up the edition I read for $1 at a charity booksale, and it was translated in 1948, so I'll give the translator the benefit of the doubt and guess that they made sense in that time. I also wanted a bit more explanation of Cottard's situation. He was unique in that he was the only one who desired the continuation of the plague, but it wasn't clarified to satisfaction. Overall, though, it was a worthy read.

4/5 STARS

FAVORITE AMAZON REVIEW by M.G. Alcat
This book isn't overly engaging, it is somewhat shocking at times, and its prose is probably too dry. Despite that, I highly recommend it to you... Why?. Well, the reason is simple. The plot of "The Plague" is merely a way of understanding something that has to do with our everyday life, and the way we live it.
Succinctly, the story begins when a plague strikes the North-African town of Oran. People at first try to ignore the clues that show that something bad is happening. When they cannot help but recognize that things are seriously wrong, a quarantine is declared. For those inside the walls of Oran, reality changes: death is omnipresent, and loneliness and despair, feelings they must confront. Different people react in diverse ways to the same reality, and we get to know about them through the narrator of this book, that also happens to be one of the protagonists. The real question that most of the persons in Oran ask themselves sooner or later is whether is it worthwhile to fight against the plague, when the outcome in that unfair war is almost certain death...
I won't give you the answers they find, if any. For that, you need to read the book... However, I can tell you Albert Camus' opinion. Camus (1913-1960) thought that it is in the fighting against evil that mankind finds its greatness (and maybe justification, who knows), even if we face what might seem at first sight a desperate situation. In a way, I think that for Camus the plague was in this case an allegory of evil, and our attitude against it. That evil changes faces, but always reappears, and it is again time to make choices, and decide what kind of attitude we will take. It is only in the right decisions that we will find the meaning we were searching for.

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