Father Paneloux Religion

Even though God may be allowing it to happen, He is not the one causing the affliction. Once again, God will not cause suffering until the time of tribulation. Proof of this can be found in the book of Job where God calls Satan and has him afflict Job with nearly every affliction possible. Clearly, just like his first sermon, Father Paneloux’s second sermon displays his terrible understanding of the nature and actions of God and causes even more people to turn away from God.

Religion has always been a major theme in history, and even now does not fail to play an important role. The desire to gain more believers and convert people makes up the base of the reason for the differences in Muslim and Christian responses the Black Plague. As Gabriele de Mussis, a Christian chronicler during the Black Death, states, “I am overwhelmed, I can’t go on!...The hand of the Almighty strikes repeatedly to greater and greater effect.” On the contrary, Muhammad al Manbiji, an Islamic scholar, said that “…the plague is a blessing from God; at the least, a Muslim should devoutly accept the divine act.” (doc. 4) These two viewpoints of the plague are complete opposites; Christians are overwhelmed that their population is dying out while Muslims are accepting it as a blessing that their rival religion is suffering. These documents were combined to emphasize the contrast between

A book of horrors, fear and death. “The Plague” is a book by Albert Camus which weaves these emotions and events into one suspenseful tale. Each paragraph and section is written and structured in such a way as to give the reader insight into the feelings of the victims of the plague, and to show somewhat of a theme. The passage from section 4, part 4, line number 1 to line number 35 gives us a glimpse of the melancholy of the people of Oran to their dead loved ones to the extent that they do not attend All Souls' Day, for they were thinking of them too much as it was. Albert Camus fills this passage with figurative devices, including, diction, personification, pathetic fallacy, metaphors, irony and a turning point. The first two paragraphs

For example, some people believed that “this pestilence was caused by infection of the air and waters” (Venette). As a result of this assumption, those who practiced the Jewish religion were persecuted; they were violently charged and blamed for intentional the infection of the wells and corruption of the air. The whole world cruelly turned against them; to the rest of the world, the Jewish people were the reasons why their loved ones became sick and died. Jews all over the world were burned, massacred and slaughtered mercilessly by Christians. Many Jewish families, out of pure fear and foolishness, made some rash decisions. For example, “mothers hurled their children first into the fire that they might not be baptized and then leaped in after them to burn with their husbands and children” (Venette). On the contrary, it is also said that many bad Christians poisoned the wells. Although the matter was assumed to be true, Venette reasoned otherwise. He stated that if the Christians actually carried out these said poisonings, they “could not have caused so great a plague nor have infected so many people”. If anything, these poisonings, had they followed through, would have “reinforced [the] causes” (Venette) of the contamination of the air and water. Additionally, Venette referred to other apparent reasons for the Plague: “the will of God and he corrupt humors and evil inherent in air and earth”. Whatever the reason and cause of the Plague, it left behind abundant physical and emotional turmoil and

According to an Italian lawyer at the time, Gabriele De Musis, the Almighty God has “looked down from on high upon the entire human race and saw it sinking and sliding into all kinds of wickedness” and has thus sent “the quivering spear of the Almighty, in the form of a plague” killing most of those in its path . This goes to show that the people believed that infliction and death by the plague is just a way of paying for their sins. Although holy punishment was the general reasoning of many, some still question why would God set upon such a cruel state to his people? Italian Renaissance scholar, Francesco Petrarch, had questioned God’s love for mortal men, stating that of all the years of human sins, why did the plague arrived at that specific time and place? Despite this claim, Petrarch also re-evaluated the fact that if God does not love mankind, then men would have been in worse situation than being struck by the plague. Their existence would have been all together seized and yet some still survived, which must have meant that the Almighty Father still somewhat cared . This, then, left Petrarch the question of what has the people of his time done to receive the cruelest among cruel sentences from

One highly esteemed student at Susquehanna University describes Moliere 's Tartuffe as “an attack, not on religion, but on people who hide behind religion and exploit it” (Sodd 1). Aside from this central theme, Moliere develops the plot and characters of the play in a way that makes an even more significant social observation. His writings leaned on the ideas of reason and ordered structure of society from the Enlightenment period. “Writing during the Enlightenment, his plays satirized a great many aspects of society, from hypochondriacs to hypocrites (Lawall 11). Most importantly, Moliere’s Tartuffe gives readers a taste of the

“St.Cyprian on Epidemic Disease in the Roman Empire” was written by St. Cyprian. In the source the argument is the plague epidemic is liberating Christians from the world filled with diseasing and pain. The author stated “The epidemic is a pestilence for the Jews and the pagans, but for the servant of God it’s a welcome event” . Many Christians weren’t afraid of the afterlife, they believed Christ will welcome them with open arms as a gift for their suffering. Those who follow Christ will have everlasting refreshment and protection. The source is questioning evil, and those who don’t believe God. For example, “It requires great loftiness to stand firm amidst the ruins of the human race, not to concede defeat with those who have no hope in God, but rather to rejoice and embrace the gift of the time” . The Christians during this time had to have a

This well, my friends and fall to your knees.” Father Paneloux believes strongly in his faith that the plague is there to teach the people a lesson, either you repent for sins or suffer from the plague. “If today the plague is in your midst that is because the hour has struck for taking thought. The just man need have no fear, but the evildoer has good cause to tremble. For plague is the flail of God and the world His threshing floor, and implacably He will thresh out His harvest until the wheat is separated from the chaff?”

ere many, though hardly were lost to sword or arrow. Will and James, two comely men from England who had befriended Henri early on their quest for holiness had both died by the plague. Marc who came from a town just a day’s ride away from Henri had fallen to starvation, which seemed to hurt the most in the man’s burdened heart; for no cure could be brought by the plague, but the food withheld from the men of God brought the death of the only fellow Frenchman Henri had enjoyed in conversation and cups

The beach is closed to the public, and outdoor meeting areas, like the football field, are turned into camps for the ill. The Nazi’s agenda is to oppress the people and make them feel imprisoned and ill equipped to fight back. This is what the plague does to the people in Camus’ text. Tragically, the Nazi’s effectively oppresses the people, fictional and the citizens of France, into believing their journey has

In The Stranger by Albert Camus, the main character, Meursault, is an absurdist who lives in the moment and refuses to be distracted by societal norms. He views the world as random and is indifferent to it. But to many French people living in Algeria, religion, social order and character are intertwined and are imperative to human life. Camus uses the crucifix and the courtroom to convey the idea that religion is man’s desperate attempt to create meaning in life where there is none.

In its most basic sense, absurdity addresses the meaninglessness of life, with special attention directed to divine disavowal.” Jared White utilizes Absurdism to highlight the thoughts and meanings that go from individuality to the community. Absurdism is defined as the philosophy that humans live in essential isolation in an irrational and meaningless world. White says that when people realize their time has almost no value in the large scale, they give it up to the remainder of the world. He also claims that despite of the humans’ absurd settings, personal gains are favored. White makes clear that, taken literally, the plague of rats is an epidemic, but, symbolically, the plague of humans is a pandemic. The smaller outbreak only parallels the massive disease that people are infected with. White also argues that The Plague is in part a historical allegory, in which the plague signifies the German occupation of France from 1940 to 1944 during World War II. “In a deft narrative act, Camus allegorically uses the plague to consider not only his personal situation--sick, exiled, and restricted--but also the European conflict. Bernard further elaborates that Camus wrote La Peste with the plague as an obvious reference to “the kind of imprisonment [. . .] the Germans imposed on occupied France” (165).” Oran is cut off from the outside world, which is equivalent to France; the different attitudes of the

When Sartre says, “Hell is other people” (No Exit 45), Camus will remind him that there is no hell and none of it matters. Objectively, if hell means death, then to both protagonists in the philosophers’ works, hell is indeed other people. Meursault, the stranger in Camus’ book and to morality, passively observed his life until his inability to fit into a moral rubric sends him to a guillotine. His life and eventually his death describes absurdity and subjectivity, but never a moment does he appear to live them. On the other hand, Garcin, a sinner in hell confronts these existential values in Sartre’s No Exit. Unlike Meursault, he actively interacts with his emotions and the society. Yet no matter how different they are from each other, in an unbreakable system, it is other people who determine their fate. Actively and passively, Garcin and Meursault live their life only to find no escape. Through No Exit and The Stranger, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus voice their similarities and differences in their philosophies of absurdity and subjectivity through their protagonists in forms of dialogues, decisions, and actions.

In his novel The Plague Camus creates characters who are forced to think, reflect, and assume responsibility for living as they battle an epidemic of bubonic plague that is ravaging the Algerian port of Oran. For ten months as the outbreak isolates the city from the rest of the world, each of the citizens reacts in a unique way. Camus’ main characters undergo both individual and social transformations.

Albert Camus is a famous writer who discusses a wide variety of topics in his works. His account of the myth of Sisyphus touches on a topic that most writers are either afraid of or unwilling to talk about. This is the issue of suicide and how to deal with it as an individual and as a community. The principal point in the story by Camus is the presence of absurdity in our very existence. The presence of life and all living things that we are aware of is an absurdity according to Camus, who questions the plausibility of some people considering suicide to be the best solution to this absurdity. Having an understanding of the elements of nature that make up our world does not mean that it will ever be possible to understand—and fully appreciate—the reasons why our world is as it is. Whether one believes in God and the creation account, in the evolution process or in the Big Bang Theory among others is irrelevant because of the underlying absurdity to all of these scenarios (Camus 3). He writes that it was his intention to find the relationship between suicide and the absurd. This essay by Camus leads the reader to make an assessment of life and arrive at a suitable decision. This paper will provide a further understanding of these thoughts. This paper will show that life is simply meaningless but must be appreciated nonetheless.