Albert Camus provides a unique look at humanity and the intricacies of living in an absurd world full of hopeless suffering in “The Plague.” Many facets of Camus symbolism within the book can only lead the reader to ponder “Should I kill myself?” while leaving them with the answer “No, life is worth it if I make it worth it. I can overcome suffering.” First, Camus use of parallelism to atrocities, specifically war, function to highlight that death and suffering derives from both humanity and nature. Second, to Camus, humanity needs to stare death in the face by questioning the usefulness of existence and if it is justified to live even if you are suffering. Third, to Camus, god is dead, he is just a tool for humanity to give their lives meaning. …show more content…
Camus philosophy, existentialism, focuses itself around the idea of facing death. For example, another existentialist, Martin Heidegger, believes that to become authentic beings, humans need to surround themselves with death, and even goes as far to say that humans needs to spend time walking through graveyards to realize their inevitable death. This is especially important when we reach a cycle that Heidegger calls “everydayness,” which is living each day the same as the last, yet still waiting for the next day to come. In “The Plague,” according to Christopher Capewell at the University of Birmingham, “The people of Oran were so accustomed to a lifestyle of routine, never having to face the anguish of their own existence that one is prepared to argue that they were already dead before the plague arrived.” Camus writes on page 4 “The truth is that everyone [in Oran] is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits. Our citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich. Their chief interest is commerce, and their chief aim in life is, as they call it, ‘doing business.’” For an existentialist, these people are no longer living, they are simply fulfilling their routine to move on to the next day. These people were stripped of life before they were able to realize it; they were living in the
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.
After reviewing the work of David Hume, the idea of a God existing in a world filled with so much pain and suffering is not so hard to understand. Humes’ work highlights some interesting points which allowed me to reach the conclusion that suffering is perhaps a part of God’s divine plan for humans. Our morals and values allow us to operate and live our daily lives in conjunction with a set of standards that help us to better understand our world around us and essentially allows us to better prepare for the potential life after life. For each and every day we get closer to our impending deaths and possibly closer to meeting the grand orchestrator of our universe.
"Thus the first thing that plague brought to our town was exile."(p.71). The first exile Camus writes is the physical exile of a diseased town from the world, and consequently, the exile of the town's people from the kingdom of everyday. The particular torture of this exile is memory; once expelled from a kingdom, the kingdom ceases to exist, living on only as "a memory that serves no purpose... ha[s] a savor only of regret."(p.73). Thus the townspeople are haunted by memories of their distant loved ones and their interrupted lives, creating islands of their own exile- an exile intensified by years of monotonous selfish habit. "The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits."(p.4). The pea-counter is the ultimate representation of this exile; he is completely removed from the reality of man, measuring his life in the perpetual repetition of an absurd activity. Through the character of Rambert, Camus defines plague as precisely this selfish exile of habit, this doing "...the same thing over and over and over again..."(p.161).
Edgar Allen Poe, in the short story “The Masque of the Red Death”, shows how people may try to outsmart death and surpass it, but in the end they will die since death is inevitable. He reveals this in the book by showing all the people closed up in the abbey that belongs to Prince Prospero. They are trying to escape the “Red Death” and think that they can escape the death by hiding away in the abbey. They manage to stay safe for six months but in the end they all die after the stroke of midnight during the masquerade ball Prince Prospero puts on from the Red Death itself which appears after midnight and leaves no survivors in the end. Poe develops the theme of how no one can escape death through the use of the point of view, the setting, and symbolism.
Despite its prevalence, suffering is always seen an intrusion, a personal attack on its victims. However, without its presence, there would never be anyway to differentiate between happiness and sadness, nor good and evil. It is encoded into the daily lives people lead, and cannot be avoided, much like the prophecies described in Antigone. Upon finding out that he’d murdered his father and married his mother,
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...
In "Per Repitio Nos Studiare: The Struggles of Abraham and God," Ryan Priester also explores how one learns through repeated suffering. Instead of examining human apathy or submission in the face of pain, however, his examination of the binding of Isaac introduces us to the role of human rebellion and resistance. Both The Waste Land and the relationship between Abraham and God revolve around the human response to excess and extremity.
The interesting concept of the absurd hero is classically presented by the author, Albert Camus in many of his novels, including The Plague. An absurd hero is a person who does what he has to do regardless of whether or not he can control that situation. Dr. Rieux, a physician in the plagued town, for example, still performs his job daily and just as diligent as he ever has, instead of caving in to the worry and fear that his town experiences because of this widespread epidemic. Camus uses this concept of the absurd hero to develop the four main characters, Tarrou, Rambert, Grand, but especially Dr. Bernard Rieux.
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.
Albert Camus was a French writer who was very well known all over the world for his different works but especially with the idea of “absurdism”. Camus believed that something that was absurd was not possible by humans or logically. It was beyond ridiculous and therefore impossible. This was the basis of one of his most famous works, The Plague. The Plague is a novel that explores aspects of human nature and condition, destiny, God, and fate. The novel is about a plague that takes place in Oran, Algeria that is fictional, but it’s believed to be relatively based on a cholera outbreak in the mid 1800’s in Oran that killed thousands of people. Dr. Bernard Rieux is the protagonist but also is the narrator. However, he doesn’t admit to being the narrator until the end of the novel. Camus writes in the beginning that the instances in Oran are being told by witnesses of the plague. In The Plague, Camus wants his audience to read the book unbiasedly not knowing the narrator in order to take sides with the characters that one wants to and not to be persuaded by the narrators telling of the events.
I will discuss the novel, the Outsider by Albert Camus and the relationship between Absurdism and the elements of death, freedom and physical gratification. Absurdism is the most prominent motif expressed in Camus novel, in order to successfully understand its full meaning and prominence throughout the novel; we must firstly understand the motif of absurdism and its relationships with other prominent themes within the novel. The themes that relate most strongly with the concept of absurdism within the novel are death; this plays a central role throughout the novel in relation to absurdism as Camus shows us the conflicting and arbitrary treatment of death within society. A treatment, that leads to the confusion of Meursault’s actions and which ultimately reveals the nature of the absurd prevalent within the novel. Freedom; Camus shows the relationship between absurdism and freedom within the novel as dependant variables, dependant on one another as through absurdism, freedom is achieved and through freedom alone the absurd may be realised. And the physical; Camus displays the relatio...
Albert Camus posed the question, "Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?" It was in this question that my intellectual curiosity was truly awoken as a tenth grader. My fascination stemmed both from the absurdity of the question and upon further insight from the absurdist interpretation. If everything results in death what is the meaning in our daily actions? My response to this question changed twice before I came to a personal conclusion to Camus' seemingly rhetorical question. At first I conveniently believed that having a cup of coffee was the correct answer. However, after exploring absurdism I began to understand Camus' viewpoint and quickly switched to having no response, because even though I began to comprehend the 'meaninglessness'
Absurdity, why does one event occur, yet the most obvious doesn’t? Many philosophers question absurdity and how it affects our everyday lives. But no matter how much it is analyzed, there is no explanation of the absurd. Even as pleasant as the world can be at times, there is no order and there is no reason for the events that occur. Albert Camus, the accomplished author of many amazing books knew about this idea and understood the meaning, which in turn influenced many of his great novels. One of his excellent novels, “The Plague,” exhibits the ideas of absurdity in many aspects. One being the idea of an absurd hero, or someone who realizes that the world lacks order, yet through that spectacular revelation continues through their respected life. Camus develops the characters in “The Plague,” to represent the characteristics of an absurd hero. One main character, Dr. Rieux is one of the best characters to describe the basis of the absurd hero. He understands that the world is absurd, but continues his work nonetheless.
Death is a great wave whose shadow falls upon the lives of all beings below Olympus. Amidst this shadow and its immediacy in war, humans must struggle to combat and metaphysically transcend their transitory natures. If they fail to forge a sense of meaning for themselves and their people in what often seems an inexorably barren world, they are lef...
In the original play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, Hamlet is funneled into a situation where he feels obligated to avenge his murdered father. Disease imagery is evident all throughout the play ranging from the beginning with the King’s ghost, to the end with Hamlet’s confrontation with his mother. Through disease imagery, William Shakespeare illustrates the human nature of corruption that drives an individual to benefit his own greed at the expense of others.