The Plague an Authentic Interpretation

All of Camus' writings may be viewed as a quest for meaningful values in a world of spiritual aridity and emptiness. He begins with man's despair, estrangement, fear, suffering and hopelessness in a world where is neither God nor the promise that He will come- the fundamental absurdity of existence- but ultimately affirms the power of man to achieve spiritual regeneration and the measure of salvation possible in an absurd universe. This radical repudiation of despair and nihilism is closely bound up with his concept of an artist. Camus conceives of art as a way of embracing a consciousness of the absurdity of man's existential plight. But art becomes a means of negating that absurdity because the artist reconstructs the reality, endowing it with unity, endurance and perfection. By taking elements from reality that confirms the absurd existence, an artist attempts to correct the world by words and redistribution. Thus the artist never provides a radical transformation of reality but a fundamental reinterpretation of what already exists. He provides a new angle of vision of perceiving reality. That is why, for Camus, an artist is a recreator of myth. He teaches humanity that contemporary man must abandon the old myths that have become otiose, though once defined his existence. The artist liberates man to live in his world by redefining both man and the condition in which he exists. In this regard, it is important to point out that, for Camus, the traditional opposition between art and philosophy is arbitrary. It is because they together become most effective to create the redefinition: the philosophy awakens the consciousness and the art, propelled by such a radical discovery, ...

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...ion could be taken both to find the guilty (those who send the plague and those who allowed it to arrive) and to prevent the same thing happening again. The acceptance that evil will return in the ending of The Plague is a clear indication that evil resides outside the human soul: man is good enough when he is an existentially conscious being. Only the perplexed and inactive man may consider man as evil as the case is with Paneloux and the asthma patient. One may question, why Tarrou calls himself a carrier of plague-germ. The answer is that Tarrou perceives dehumanized doctrine in the name of humanization- an inevitable result of the dogmatic humanization. But once he finds `real saint' in a rebel, his total conception becomes modified. Tat is why, The Plague can be taken as a celebration of human dignity in the face of absurd existence in which evil is superimposed.