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Albert Camus The Plague

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The Plague, by Albert Camus, is a story following a man named Dr. Rieux living in the town of Oran on the coast of Algeria, which was a French owned territory in Africa. In this town, a plague begins, similar to that of the Bubonic plague in Europe, and the town is quarantined. The story shows how the residents cope and try to create a cure while surrounded by dying people and a lack of supplies and entertainment. In this novel, he uses the format of a Shakespearean play, with five acts and from the point of view of an audience looking in, rather than from a first-person view. He also points to the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, where Orpheus goes against all odds to the underworld to rescue his love, Eurydice, who was taken from him by …show more content…

Shakespeare’s plays often start out with a narrator describing the scene and the events to come in the story. Unlike most novels, plays somewhat describe the plot in its opening, which can be seen here where the narrator says “our fellow citizens had not the faintest reason to apprehend the incidents that took place,” showing how the narrator is telling of future events. This allows the reader to connect to the characters by being able to follow them through the events that the reader now knows are coming. Another example is when a young boy is dying in a hospital while being surveyed by the main characters to test a possible cure: “Tarrou had been keeping watch and noting, stage by stage, the progress and remissions of the malady” (213). Like a play, Tarrou is watching “stage by stage” the progression of this child’s death; Camus is comparing the boy’s illness to the structure of a story, he is pointing out components within his own novel. His illness starts out slowly, and throughout his stay in the hospital his condition “progresses and remissions” like that of a plot that gains in action and resolution. A final example is when Cottard and Tarrou are at the performance of Orpheus within the novel: “Some rather jerky movements he indulged in gave our connoisseurs of stagecraft an impression of clever, if slightly overdone, effects, intended to bring out the emotion of the words he sang” (200). The actor playing Orpheus over performs his scene, …show more content…

When Orpheus is being done inside the novel, an actor plays his part: “And as though the singer had been waiting for this cue…he chose this moment to stagger grotesquely to the footlights, his arms and legs splayed out under his antique robe, and fall down in the middle of the property sheepfold” (201). In this case, the actor playing Orpheus can be seen as the actual Orpheus in the myth because he goes to do what he loves, acting, even though it is risky for him because it is assumed that he is sick with the plague. Although the actor does die from the plague, he still went to dangerous lengths to achieve his passion, like Orpheus actually does in the myth when he goes to retrieve Eurydice. In addition, the reader can now see that Orpheus and Eurydice represent all of the couples throughout the novel, and is able to see examples earlier in the novel of characters going against extreme conditions, and the possibility of death because of circumstances against their will, to be with their love. An example of this is when the town is first closed off, because citizens are not allowed to leave, only come in, and only one person does decide to enter: “At the height of the epidemic we saw only one case in which natural emotions overcame the fear of death in a particularly painful form…The two were old Dr. Castel and his wife...But this

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