Years of Wonder: Surviving the Great Plague

Jayson Karuna
Micro 1420
Cen
Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague

Geraldine Brooks’ novel, Years of Wonder, revolves around a maid in her twenties named Anna Frith during the “Great Plague” in the village of Eyam. She is a widow after her husband’s untimely mining accident and has to take care of her two sons alone. As an independent woman, Anna works as a maid in a perish house. To earn more money during desperate times, she takes in a tailor named George Viccars. Quickly a love attraction blossoms between the two, only to get halted by the import of a bolt of fabric cloth. The cloth housed the “black plague” from London and was now ready to spread in Eyam. George soon dies thereafter and pleads for Anna to incinerate all the imported,

The psychological implications that a bacterial plague causes were completely defined in the novel. Without a feasible method of recourse, the tormenting effects of a wide spreading plague drive individuals to the trenches of their own emotions. The fear and constant looming outcome of death test the vary existence of one’s sanity. The miserable and worried, flock to answers they must find but never reach. Religious fervor and seemingly ridiculous forms of enchantment are legitimized for the sake of somehow terminating the impending doom. Days proceed and bodies just continue to fall, pessimistic conclusions are reached. There seemingly is no cure, no way out of the plague’s clutches. This gloom augments the worst fibers of the human spirit. Individuals have lost so much; they must attain some path of hope. Inhibited mental states and hysterical delusion are manifested in deplorable cruelty, such as the murders of those deemed guilty for causing such needless destruction. In Years of Wonder, the village of Eyam breaks into the brinks of craziness. Helpful apothecaries and caregivers are ironically executed for conditions they only hoped to solve. Conditions eventually became so terrible and encompassing, individuals eventually felt some wrathful deity must be punishing them. Villagers started to practice self-flagellation to make amends with God for the possible sins they committed. All of these miserable consequences speak volume

She feels loss from the deaths of her two sons. She becomes face to face with the conditions and symptoms of the plague as a health caretaker. Then she experiences a direct confrontation with the rising lunacy caused by the plague when her stepmother slashes one of her closest friends to death before killing herself. It’s remarkable that after all this pain and suffering, someone can endure the way she had. It was far from simple or easy, as the plague truly tested her wits to the core of her emotions. However, she prevailed in the end and had enough strength to live on in the name of all those in her life she lost. As previously stated the dire consequences resulting from the disease brought everyone to a mental state of survival. Everyone tried to display strength when their lives were at their most fragile. Whether in the form of not allowing the plague to spread by quarantining themselves or by trying to find a solution through spiritual violence, no one wanted to simply pledge fealty to King Bubonic. Despite experiencing loss, addiction, and wrongful love, Anne Frith lives