The traumatizing scenes a man experiences during a plague probably haunt him throughout his life – if he manages to survive. In Jack London’s 1912 novella, “The Scarlet Plague”, London brilliantly narrates the life of an elderly man, “Granser” who managed to survive the lethal hands of the plague that decimated millions sixty years ago, reverting the once “colossal civilization” to cave-man existence. (16) Granser recounts the emergence of the Scarlet Plague and its catastrophic impact on society as he tells his savage grandsons the world before and after the epidemic. London’s use of imagery offers a graphic appeal to open the reader’s eye and ears to the physical pandemonium of the plague, evoking the reader’s soul to the themes the plague symbolizes: reclamation of …show more content…
nature, reversion to barbarism and savagery and social disintegration.
Jack London makes sure his readers grasp the magnitude of the plague’s destruction through inclusion of vivid, sensory details, making the past incident a present terror in the reader’s mind. London, through Granser’s narrative, discusses how the plague intensifies from a “scarlet rash spreading over a person’s face” and body, (19) marking the presence of the plague, to decaying bodies lying everywhere. This shows how a mere rash, which no one seemed to be bothered about before, has turned millions of people into corpses, all within a span of an hour. London then describes the chaos the people in large cities are suffering. No one is spared alive, even the government officials who are supposed to be preventing the deadly disease, resulting to ceasing of law and order. Insanity and irrationality become prevalent, as described by “mobs of the hungry poor … pillaging the stores and warehouses”, “murder and robbery [being] everywhere”, and sounds of rioting and of pistol shots.” (22) Because of the plague, people are resorting to all these irrational acts, disregarding the concept of right and wrong, only in attempt to escape.
Similarly, London stimulates the reader’s sense of hearing by including phrases such as “moaning and crying out for help” and “a woman’s voice calling shrilly for help”. (26) These phrases effectively create the feeling of fear and desperation of the people, which leads to the readers perceive the extent of the plague’s destruction. Moreover, the author also provides hellish images of San Francisco, “spouting smoke and fire from a score of vast conflagrations … like many active volcanoes”. (29) The comparison of the scene to erupting volcanoes allows the reader to imagine the degree of explosion the citizens of San Francisco had to witness. It can also make the reader imagine the sky being filled with smoke from the burning city, replacing the city’s once bright glow to gray clouds of ashes, an image usually produced after a volcanic eruption. London produces a sense of terror of the plague by including apocalyptic images that brings the plague into the reader’s mind. London freely intersperses images of the novella’s environment during and after the occurrence of the pestilence, emphasizing nature reclamation as one of its prominent theme. Right from the beginning, the readers are introduced to a picture of abandoned railways, with the “forest swelling up the slopes of embankment” and “rotten timber[s]” blocking the path. (1) This sets up the reader’s mind to the said theme, and allows the reader to identify with the story. The phrases used represent how without man’s care, nature will take over. The theme can also be recalled through several passages showing scenes of the devolution of animals.
The book jumps to a distressing story about Peter Los in 1970 in West Germany who became ill due to smallpox. After ten days he was hospitalized but medical staff did not realize he had smallpox, which is highly contagious. Preston gives vivid descriptions of the disease and how it ravages the body. Los survived his illness, but caused an epidemic that killed many others that had become exposed to him. “Today, the people who plan for a smallpox emergency can’t get the image of the Meschede hospital out of their minds.
Some things are not as they seem. “Ring Around the Rosie” seems like a pleasant children’s nursery rhyme, but many believe it is actually a grisly song about the Black Death in Europe. The Black Death was a serial outbreak of the plague during the 1300s. During the Black Death, more than 20 million Europeans died. One-third of the population of the British Isles died from the plague. Moreover, one-third of the population of France died in the first year alone, and 50% of the people in France’s major cities died. Catastrophic death rates like these were common across all of Europe. However, just like the poem “Ring Around the Rosie”, the true effects of the Black Death differed from what many people believed. Though tragic, the Black Death caused several positive societal changes. Specifically, the Black Death helped society by contributing to the economic empowerment of peasants and disempowerment of nobility that led to the decline of manorialism, as well as by encouraging the development of new medical and scientific techniques by proving old methods and beliefs false.
Kira L. S. Newman, “Shutt Up: Bubonic Plague and Quarantine in Early Modern England,” Journal of Social History, 3, (2012): 809-834
Pamela K. Gilbert, “’Scarcely to be Described’: Urban Extremes as Real Spaces and Mythic Places in the London Cholera Epidemic of 1854,” Nineteenth Century Studies 14 (2000): 149-72.
Even today, children innocently chant this old nursery rhyme, bringing the old saying into reality, “Ignorance is Bliss”. It’s eerie, to think that this old rhyme in fact gives a perfect description of one of Europe’s worst nightmares, the Great Plague. Many people forget the horrors of the Plague, and when they do remember and think about it, Public heath is rarely a factor that plays a big part when people start to think things through.
Think of a North America without electricity, no running water, no government, almost no buildings left intact, and ravaged by a Chinese manufactured plague, even though it’s hard to imagine that's what happened in Jeff Hirsch’s The Eleventh Plague. In Jeff Hirsch’s Eleventh Plague a family made up of the Dad, Mom, Grandfather, and son are trying to survive in a North America ravaged by a Chinese Plague , But then the mom and grandpa die and dad and Stephen are left on their own, but when the dad gets injured running away from some slavers, A Town named Settlers Landing that seems too good to be true takes them in. Then Stephen befriends a girl named Jenny, and when they play a prank that sends Jenny, and when they play a prank that sends the town into chaos. A war is started and it is up to them to help stop it. I thought that The Eleventh Plague was a believable piece of Speculative Fiction because of Hirsch's use of elements of Conflict, Theme, and Red Herrings.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is one of the most respected and admired novels of all time. Often criticized for lacking substance and using more elaborate camera work, freely adapted films usually do not follow the original plot line. Following this cliché, Roland Joffe’s version of The Scarlet Letter received an overwhelmingly negative reception. Unrealistic plots and actions are added to the films for added drama; for example, Hester is about to be killed up on the scaffold, when Algonquin members arrive and rescue her. After close analysis, it becomes evident of the amount of work that is put into each, but one must ask, why has the director adapted their own style of depicting the story? How has the story of Hester Prynne been modified? Regarding works, major differences and similarities between the characterization, visual imagery, symbolism, narration and plot, shows how free adaptation is the correct term used.
...sease. The medieval outlook on the plague, mingled with feelings of hysteria and greed, was a fearful one.
Since Plagues and Peoples covers several subjects of knowledge, he helps the reader understand key concepts by fully explaining parasitism and its dependence on humans and animals. People in the field of history, which make up a majority of this books audience, would need more insight into epidemiology to grasp its key concepts. It would not be likely for a historian to be knowledgeable in a branch of medical science that deals with the incidence, distribution, and control of disease in populations.
The Plague (French, La Peste) is a novel written by Albert Camus that is about an epidemic of bubonic plague. The Plague is set in a small Mediterranean town in North Africa called Oran. Dr. Bernard Rieux, one of the main characters, describes it as an ugly town. Oran’s inhabitants are boring people who appear to live, for the most part, habitual lives. The main focus of the town is money. “…everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits. Our citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich. Their chief interest is in commerce, and their chief aim in life is, as they call it, 'doing business’” (Camus 4). The citizens’ unawareness of life’s riches and pleasures show their susceptibility to the oncoming plague. They don’t bother themselves with matters not involving money. It is very easy for the reader to realize that they are too naive to combat the forthcoming calamity. The theme of not knowing life is more than work and habits will narrow the people’s chances of survival. Rieux explains that the town had a view of death as something that happens every day. He then explains that the town really doesn’t face towards the Mediterranean Sea. Actually it is almost impossible to see the sea from town. Oran is a town which seems to turn its back on life and freedom. The Plague was first published in 1948 in France. “Early readers were quick to note that it was in part an allegory of the German occupation of France from 1940 to 1944, which cut France off from the outside world; just as in the novel the town of Oran must close its gates to isolate the plague” (“The Plague” 202). When the plague first arrives, the residents are slow to realize the extreme danger they are in. Once they finally become aware of it...
The plague affected people not only on a physical level but a mental one as well. The mental health of the citizens of Oran was amongst the plague's many victims, it suffered of exhaustion as well as being forced to handle mental confrontations. When the citizens dealt with these issues, some people lost their capacity to love as intently, but overall the general capacity of people to uphold their devotion remained resilient to the challenges the plague provided.
Camus’ book “The Plague” demonstrates the fight between a community and the bubonic plague. Camus creates a range of characters that deal with the plague in their own individual ways; the only hero among them is Jean Tarrou. Dr. Bernard Rieux comes close to being a hero but he falls short of this by the fact that he is doing his duty as a doctor, which is expected of him. Camus uses Jean Tarrou to speak to the reader on how to heroically deal with death. Jean Tarrou is also used as an example of heroes who get crushed by fate for rebellion.
In his piece, The Scarlet Letter and Revolutions Abroad, Larry J. Reynolds aims to link Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, to historical revolutions both past and present. He explains that one can draw parallels between the story and revolutions by examining the structure, themes, setting, language, as well as characterization within the story. As to why these parallels are present, Reynolds doesn’t give much explanation but justifies his claim by saying the revolutions and disrupts abroad were constantly on Hawthorne’s mind.
Cantor, Norman F. In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made. New York:
Albert Camus’s The Plague is a novel about an ordinary town that is suddenly stricken by plague. A few of Camus’s philosophies such as the absurd, separation, and isolation are incorporated in the events of the story. The absurd, which is the human desire for purpose and significance in a meaningless and indifferent universe, is central to the understanding of The Plague. In The Plague, Camus uses character development and irony to show that even through the obvious superiority of the universe, man is in constant effort to outlive the absurd. The Plague is crafted around the belief that humans live life in search of a value or purpose that will never be revealed to them because it does not exist.