In 1947, the Algerian-born
French writer Albert Camus (1913 – 1960) published his book La Peste, subsequently
translated into English as The Plague.
At first blush, it is a chronicle of events that occurred in the port
city of Oran, in the north-west of Algeria, in the 1940s. An outbreak of a virulent strain of bubonic plague,
and fears that it would spread further afield, prompted the authorities to
close the city gates and so place the city’s entire population in
quarantine. This period of sequestration
endured for ten months. In the
chronicle, the narrator (whose identity is only revealed at the very end)
describes the medical, social and psychological impact of the disease on the
city’s inhabitants.
However, all is not quite as it seems. As a
matter of fact, there was no plague epidemic at Oran in the 1940s. The city, which is believed to date back to about
900 AD, had experienced severe visitations of plague in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Cholera also
wiped out a substantial proportion of the city’s population in the mid-1800s. Since then, plague has periodically returned
to the city (most recently in mid-2003: see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851531/). On these occasions, however, it was diagnosed early
and, with the benefit of modern prophylactics, the authorities were able to
contain it to relatively minor proportions.
There was no
significant incidence of plague at Oran in the mid-twentieth century. So we know that the events related by the mysterious narrator of The Plague are
fictitious.
Indeed,
Camus himself alerted the reader to the fact that the chronicle set out in The
Plague was not an account of events that had actually occurred at Oran, or
anywhere else for that matter. In an epigraph
on the title page, Camus prominently quoted from the preface to Daniel Defoe’s
epistolary novel Robinson Crusoe (1719): “It is as reasonable to
represent one kind of imprisonment by another, as it is to represent anything
that really exists by that which exists not!”
Thus we know that The Plague was not concerned with an actual
episode of plague, or with events that had actually taken place at Oran. And as the reader becomes absorbed in the
pages of the book she discovers that it is a multi-layered allegory of more
profound maladies afflicting human existence.
So, at a
primary level The Plague is concerned with the palpably deleterious
effects of the contagious disease, and of the resultant quarantine imposed on Oran,
on the city’s citizens. We read about
the municipal and medical authorities’ initial denialism in the face of growing
evidence that their community was being confronted by a potentially calamitous
outbreak of fatal disease. We read about
the authorities’ dilly-dallying in adopting half-measures to address the
growing crisis. (“Officialdom can never
cope with something really catastrophic.
And the remedial measures they think up are hardly adequate for a common
cold.”) We read about the selfless
activities of Dr Bernard Rieux and his squad of civilian volunteers who “roll up
their sleeves” in a seemingly hopeless campaign to deal with the medical
aspects of the spreading disease. We
read about the apprehension, and then the panic, that spreads among the city’s
inhabitants as the disease begins to claim an ever-increasing number of
lives. We read about the impact all of
this has on the daily lives, and on the minds, of the city’s population as they
finally have to face the uncertainty of being locked inside a disease-ridden
city for an indefinite period and without hope of medical security.
In the
early chapters of The Plague we read about rats dying in the streets of
Oran in unprecedented numbers. It was
only when the townsfolk began to show “signs of uneasiness” that the
municipality (which “had not contemplated doing anything at all”) convened a
meeting to discuss the situation.
Initially, not everyone was alarmed.
Some had “other things to think about.”
Others thought it was somebody else’s “headache” to deal with. After a brief period of “bewildering
portents”, the situation changed to one in which “the perplexity of the early
days gradually gave place to panic.”
Soon, panic gave way to fear.
Even when medical evidence pointed irrefutably towards plague, there was
a reluctance to acknowledge that, or even to use the word for fear of causing
“unnecessary” alarm. Gradually, medical
personnel began to recognise that “energetic measures were needed.” It was understood by some of them that the
deceased rats had emitted on Oran “tens of thousands of fleas which will spread
the infection in geometrical progression unless it is checked in time.” But even then the authorities hesitated to
take decisive action. Meanwhile, deaths
began to mount but doctors were still waiting for consignments of anti-plague
serum to arrive from Paris.
About that
time, the narrator tells us, the weather appeared set fair: “There was a serene
blue sky flooded with golden light each morning … all seemed well with the
world. And yet within four days the
fever had made four startling strides: sixteen deaths, twenty-four,
twenty-eight, and thirty-two. On the
fourth day the opening of the auxiliary hospital in the premises of an infant
school was officially announced. The
local population, who so far had made a point of masking their anxiety by
facetious comments, now seemed tongue-tied and went their way with gloomy
faces.” Only then did the authorities
begin “tightening up the new regulations.”
The next day serum was flown in.
There was enough for immediate purposes, but health bodies had
insufficient quantities of serum to cope with a spread of the disease. A request was made for additional supplies,
to which the response was that “the emergency reserve stock was exhausted, but
that a new supply was in preparation.”
But
the perceptive reader of The Plague
soon grasps that the book is not really – or not primarily – concerned with
actual plague or, indeed, with any sort of public health emergency. The plague described in the book, it
transpires, is a symbol for something else equally, if not more, menacing. What is more, and perhaps more frightening,
is that one of Dr Rieux’s staunch associates in the campaign against the
disease, the enigmatic Jean Tarrou, eventually says: “I have realized that we
all have plague … each of us have the plague within him; no one, no one on
earth , is free from it.” And so the
reader is compelled to wonder about the true nature of the pervasive “plague”.
We know today, thanks to many literary analyses
of The Plague, that the disease
described in the novel is probably, among other things, a metaphorical
reference to the scourge of Nazism that had infected Europe in the 1930s and
that ultimately led to World War II. The
quarantine imposed on the city of Oran is probably an allusion to the Nazi
occupation of large parts of Europe during WWII. And the “sanitary squads” organised by Dr
Rieux and his volunteer assistants to fight the plague probably allude to the
partisan resistance movements that struck back at the seemingly overwhelming
force of Nazism. Camus (who was to win
the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957) himself participated in the French
Resistance, and became editor of the clandestine newspaper Combat, whose contributors included Jean-Paul Sartre and André Malraux.
As now we wait for the coronavirus to unleash
its full devastation, and as we enter the period of “lockdown”, we could do
worse than re-read The Plague, which,
at a superficial level, is an eerie account of the C-19 crisis avant la lettre. In an amazingly imaginative and prescient
manner, Camus holds up a mirror in which we recognise many elements of our own
present predicament. Or perhaps Camus
was not quite clairvoyant because – and this is one point The Plague sets out to make – every outbreak of plague (or of
“plague”) is essentially the same and, so, a predictable continuation of its
predecessors. Moreover the plague (or
“plague”) bacillus “never dies or disappears for good; … it can lie dormant for
years and years.”
So what is the “plague” that, according to
Tarrou (or Camus) afflicts us all, even if we don’t show outward symptoms of
illness? Who are the “rats”? And who the “fleas”? Reading and reflecting on The Plague, especially at this juncture
in the history of the world, should give us pause.
To be continued
[Quotations from The Plague are taken from the Penguin translation by Stuart
Gilbert]
In 1947, the Algerian-born French writer Albert Camus (1913 – 1960)
published his book La Peste. It
was subsequently translated into English as The Plague. At first blush it is a chronicle of events
that occurred in the port city of Oran, in the north-west of Algeria, in the
1940s. An outbreak of a virulent strain
of bubonic plague, and fears that it would spread further afield, prompted the
authorities to close the city gates and so place the city’s entire population
in quarantine. This period of
sequestration endured for some ten months.
In the chronicle, the narrator (whose identity is only revealed at the very
end) describes the medical, social and psychological impact of the disease on
the city’s inhabitants.
However, all is not quite as it seems. As a matter of fact, there was no plague
epidemic at Oran in the 1940s. The city,
which is believed to date back to about 900 AD, had experienced severe
visitations of plague in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Cholera also wiped out a substantial
proportion of the city’s population in the mid-1800s. Since then, plague has periodically returned
to the city (most recently in mid-2003: see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851531/). On these occasions, however, it was diagnosed early and, with the benefit of
modern prophylactics, the authorities were able to contain it to relatively
minor proportions. There was no significant
incidence of plague at Oran in the mid-twentieth century. So we know that the events related by the mysterious narrator of The Plague
are fictitious.
Indeed, Camus himself alerted the reader to the
fact that the chronicle recorded in The Plague was not an account of
events that had actually occurred at Oran, or anywhere else for that
matter. In an epigraph on the title
page, Camus prominently quoted from the preface to Daniel Defoe’s epistolary
novel Robinson Crusoe (1719): “It is as reasonable to represent one kind
of imprisonment by another, as it is to represent anything that really exists by
that which exists not!” Thus we know
that The Plague was not concerned with an actual episode of plague or
some other health crisis, or with events that had actually taken place at Oran.
And as the reader becomes absorbed in
the pages of the book she discovers that it is a multi-layered allegory of more
profound maladies afflicting human existence.
Yes, at a primary level The Plague is
concerned with the palpably deleterious effects of the contagious disease – and
of the resultant quarantine imposed on Oran – on the city’s citizens. We read about the municipal and medical
authorities’ initial denialism in the face of growing evidence that their
community was being confronted by a potentially calamitous outbreak of fatal
disease. We read about the authorities’
dilly-dallying in taking half-hearted measures to address the growing crisis. (“Officialdom can never cope with something
really catastrophic. And the remedial
measures they think up are hardly adequate for a common cold.”) We read about the selfless activities of Dr
Bernard Rieux and his squad of civilian volunteers who “roll up their sleeves” and
“put shoulder to the wheel” in a seemingly hopeless campaign to deal with the
medical aspects of the spreading disease.
We read about the apprehension, and then the panic, that spreads among
the city’s inhabitants as the disease begins to claim an ever-increasing number
of lives. We read about the impact that
all of this has on the daily lives, and on the minds, of the city’s population as
they finally have to face the uncertainty of being locked inside a
disease-ridden city for an indefinite period and without hope of medical
security.
In the early chapters of The Plague we read
about the prelude to the epidemic – rats dying in the streets of Oran in
unprecedented numbers. These were
“premonitory signs of the grave events” that were to ensue. It was only when the townsfolk began to show
“signs of uneasiness” that the municipality (which “had not contemplated doing
anything at all”) convened a meeting to discuss the situation. Initially, not everyone was alarmed. Some had “other things to think about.” Others thought it was somebody else’s
“headache” to deal with. After a brief
period of “bewildering portents”, the situation changed to one in which “the
perplexity of the early days gradually gave place to panic.” Soon, panic gave way to fear. Even when medical evidence pointed almost
irrefutably towards plague, there was a reluctance to acknowledge that the
disease might be plague, or even to use the word for fear of causing
“unnecessary” alarm. Gradually, some
medical personnel began to recognise that “energetic measures were
needed.” It was understood by some of
them that the deceased rats had emitted on Oran “tens of thousands of fleas
which will spread the infection in geometrical progression unless it is checked
in time.” But even then the authorities
hesitated to take decisive action.
Meanwhile, deaths began to mount.
About that time, the narrator tells us, the weather
appeared set fair: “There was a serene blue sky flooded with golden light each
morning … all seemed well with the world.
And yet within four days the fever had made four startling strides:
sixteen deaths, twenty-four, twenty-eight, and thirty-two. On the fourth day the opening of the
auxiliary hospital in the premises of an infant school was officially
announced. The local population, who so
far had made a point of masking their anxiety by facetious comments, now seemed
tongue-tied and went their way with gloomy faces.” Only then did the authorities begin
“tightening up the new regulations.” The
next day serum was flown in. There was
enough for immediate purposes, but insufficient quantities to cope with a
spread of the disease. A request was
made for additional supplies, to which the response was that “the emergency
reserve stock was exhausted, but that a new supply was in preparation.”
But even the half-attentive reader of The Plague soon comes to understand that
the book is not really – or not primarily – concerned with actual plague or,
indeed, with any sort of public health emergency. The plague described in the book, it
transpires, is a symbol for something else equally, if not more, menacing. What is more (and perhaps more frightening),
is that one of Dr Rieux’s staunch associates in the campaign against the
disease, the enigmatic Jean Tarrou, eventually says: “I have realized that we
all have plague … each of us have the plague within him; no one, no one on
earth, is free from it.” And so the
reader is compelled to wonder about the true nature of the pervasive “plague”.
We know today, thanks to many literary analyses
of The Plague, that the disease
described in the novel is probably, among other things, a metaphorical
reference to the scourge of Nazism that had infected Europe in the 1930s and
that ultimately led to World War II. The
quarantine imposed on the city of Oran is probably an allusion to the Nazi
occupation of large parts of Europe during WWII. And the “sanitary squads” organised by Dr
Rieux and his volunteer assistants to fight the plague probably allude to the
partisan resistance movements that struck back at the seemingly overwhelming
force of Nazism. Camus (who was to win
the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957) himself participated in the French
Resistance, and became editor of the clandestine newspaper Combat, whose contributors included Jean-Paul Sartre and André
Malraux.
As now we wait for the coronavirus to unleash
its full devastation, and as we enter the period of “lockdown”, we could do
worse than re-read The Plague, which,
at a superficial level, is an eerie account of the COVID-19 crisis avant la lettre. In an amazingly imaginative and prescient
manner, Camus holds up a mirror in which we recognise many elements of our own
present predicament. Or perhaps Camus
was not quite clairvoyant because – and this is one point The Plague sets out to make – every outbreak of plague (or of
“plague”) is essentially the same and, so, a predictable continuation of its
predecessors. Moreover the plague (or
“plague”) bacillus “never dies or disappears for good; … it can lie dormant for
years and years.”
So what is the “plague” that, according to
Tarrou (or Camus) afflicts us all, even if we don’t show outward symptoms of
illness? Who are the “rats”? And who the “fleas”? Reading and reflecting on The Plague, especially at this juncture
in the history of the world, should give us pause.
(3 April 2020)
II
Yesterday (or
perhaps the day before) was the 16th of April – the day on which the
chronicle narrated in The Plague
commences. It was the day on which Dr
Rieux, as he emerged from his surgery, stepped on “something soft”: a dead rat
lying in the middle of the landing. But
that is all coincidence.
After C-19 had wreaked its initial havoc in China, and had
begun to reveal its destructive force in Italy, Spain and France, other
countries belatedly and reluctantly began to impose lockdown arrangements of
various hues towards the end of March.
At the time, most of us assumed that the lockdown would endure only for
the initial stipulated period and that, after that, we would return to our
“normal” lives. Of course, we have now
been disabused of that misapprehension.
Not only will the lockdown (such as it is) endure for longer than
initially anticipated; even once the extended period has elapsed, the
post-lockdown period will be different from our previous “normal” lives in many
ways.
Not only is it likely that we will have to endure further
periods of lockdown of one or another degree of severity; even outside lockdown
periods, life will (and arguably should) be altered in substantial ways. Indeed, one wonders how “normal” pre-lockdown
life actually was. The probability,
however, is that most people will happily, and without much ado or thought,
return to that pre-pestilential “normality”.
And that will only go to demonstrate the irrefutable truth of Tarrou’s view that “we all have plague.”
The contagion will not have been cured by the expedient of a brief
lockdown. And, as we will inevitably see
(if we were to open our eyes), the rats and their fleas will not have been
exterminated. Quite the contrary: like
vultures they are already salivating at the prospect of scavenging among the
debris for remnants that they might be able to turn to good account. And I am not talking only about the
despicable hoodlums who have opportunistically exploited the crisis to
vandalise, poach, pillage and rape.
Early in Camus’ parable, set in the
coastal town of Oran in the French colonial province of Algeria, Dr Rieux is
visited at his surgery by Raymond Rambert, a journalist from a leading Parisian
daily newspaper. But Rambert is not
seeking medical treatment. He is not ill
(or if he is ill – or “ill” – he is blissfully unaware of it). Rambert is looking for information. He has been commissioned to write a report on
the living conditions of the Arab population, and especially on sanitary
conditions prevailing in the Arab quarters of Oran. (It is one of the curiosities of The Plague that, beyond this, little is
said about the indigenous population of Oran.
Does this betray a hopelessly Eurocentric perspective on the part of
Camus, who, although born in Algeria and raised in Algiers, was the son of a
third-generation pied-noir French
father and a mother of Spanish descent?)
Dr Rieux, stating that these conditions were not good, asked
whether Rambert’s editors would allow him to tell the truth and publish an
unqualified condemnation of the prevailing state of affairs. Rambert said that he would not be allowed to
go quite as far as that. To this Rieux
replied by saying that, in that event, he would decline to provide Rambert with
information because he had no use for statements that do not divulge the whole
truth: he had resolved to have no truck with compromises with the truth. In parting, Rieux suggested to Rambert that
he might want to write something about the extraordinary number of dead rats
found in Oran.
Indeed, by 18 April the proliferation of dead rats had caused
the inhabitants of Oran to begin to show “signs of uneasiness”. This prompted the municipal authorities to
convene a meeting to discuss the situation.
However, they took little action beyond directing the sanitary service
to collect the dead rats at dawn every morning and to have them
incinerated. But the situation continued
to worsen, with increasing numbers of dead vermin being found in the streets on
subsequent mornings. On 25 April, the
information bureau announced that in excess of 6,000 rats had been collected
and burnt the previous day. This statistic
unsettled public nerves; people who had hitherto merely grumbled “now realized
that this strange phenomenon, whose scope could not be measured and whose
origins escaped detection, had something vaguely menacing about it.”
When the number of deceased rodents increased to 8,000 on 28
April, “a wave of something like panic swept the town.” Now the authorities were accused of
slackness, and people who owned out-of-town holiday homes considered decamping
there. Soon a few patients afflicted by
a strange disease, not readily diagnosed by medical practitioners, fell
ill. On 30 April a beautiful spring day,
with blue skies and a warm, gentle breeze, gave rise to a new sense of optimism
among the townsfolk. But that same day
the mysterious illness claimed its first fatality.
Now, we read, the bewildering portents and the general
perplexity of earlier days were superseded by panic. “Reviewing that first
phase in the light of subsequent events, our townsfolk realized that they had
never dreamt it possible that our little town should be chosen out for the
scene of such grotesque happenings as the wholesale death of rats in broad
daylight or the decease of door-porters through exotic maladies. In this respect they were wrong, and their
views obviously called for revision.”
Even when it had become clear to some
medical specialists that the mysterious disease had all the hallmarks of
plague, the government continue to shilly-shally, reluctant to give the disease
a name because of a desire “not to alarm the public”. One of the specialists cautioned against
acting “as if there were no likelihood that half the population wouldn’t be
wiped out; for then it would be.”
Nevertheless, the initial measures taken by the authorities gave little
indication that they were “facing the situation squarely”. The city’s residents were “advised to
practise extreme cleanliness.”
Of course, we were quite naïve in
thinking, three or four weeks ago, that we would be healed from the physical symptoms
of the C-19 disease merely by adopting a regime of enhanced cleanliness and by
a relatively short period of lockdown. In
this respect we were wrong, and our views soon required revision.
Over the last few weeks we have read
frequently that the C-19 pandemic will result in a paradigm shift and that we will
never revert to the pre-lockdown state of “normality”. Much has been written about how we will never
return to our old way of life or to the perceptions that informed that way of
life. But alas: already it is quite clear
that if we had misconceptions that a brief lockdown, like a fleeting visit to a
spa or a sanatorium to “take the waters”, would begin to cure us of the
figurative disease afflicting us, we were mistaken.
(17 April 2020)
III
Initially (Camus tells us in La Peste), Oran’s municipal authorities ascribed little
significance to the profusion of rodent corpses strewn in the city
streets. Soon patients began to present
with unusual ailments. Some died of a
mysterious illness. But in those early
days very few people connected the dots and appreciated the potential
implications of these seemingly unconnected circumstances. Indeed, very few people even discerned the
existence of dots. Soon, though, it
became apparent to those who were prepared to open their eyes that the city was
being confronted by a potential emergency of substantial proportions. Even then, though, few understood the nature
and extent of the potential crisis.
Medical doctors waited cautiously for the results of post-mortem
examinations before they were prepared to start speculating – let alone draw
conclusions – about the “strange malady” that had made its appearance. In these circumstances, an elderly medical practitioner, Dr Castel, was surprisingly outspoken: “I don’t need any post-mortems. I was in China for a good part of my career,” he said, “and I saw some cases in Paris twenty years ago. Only no one dared to call them by their name on that occasion. The usual taboo, of course; the public mustn’t be alarmed, that wouldn’t do at all. And then, as one of my colleagues said, ‘It’s unthinkable. Everyone knows it’s ceased to appear in Western Europe.’ Yes, everyone knew that – except the dead men.” Then, turning to Dr Rieux, he said: “Come now, Rieux, you know as well as I do what it is.” (One need hardly draw attention parenthetically to Camus’ references to China and Paris.)
Looking out of the window of his surgery, Dr Rieux pondered the imponderable. Though blue, the sky had a dull sheen. “Yes, Castel,” he replied. “It’s hardly credible. But everything points to its being plague.”
The next day, Dr Castel pointed out to Dr Rieux that there was not a gramme of anti-plague serum in the entire district of Oran, and that it would have to be flown in from Paris. Several days later, they were still waiting for the serum to arrive. When health practitioners made enquiries with the authorities about the delays in the delivery of serum, they were told: “It’ll come this week.”
Now, when we know that the serum will not be arriving this week, or even next week or the week after, it has been tragi-comic to observe the stunts of some pseudo-leaders in advocating the use of anti-malarial drugs as a supposed defence against, or cure for, C-19. One might be forgiven for wondering whether they have bought vast tranches of shares in the pharmaceutical companies dispensing these drugs.
Ironies abound.
Populations stricken by coronafatigue accuse
governments of over-reacting by maintaining severe restrictions on civil liberties. Entrepreneurs and shareholders suddenly
discover an altruistic solicitude (long concealed in the philanthropic depths
of their munificent hearts) for working people (long underpaid) now deprived of
their livelihoods. They clamour for the
lifting of lockdown restrictions. Many
people take the law (and their lives) into their own hands, disregarding the
restrictions imposed for their benefit.
But when it is announced that schools will gradually begin to reopen on
a limited scale, many people indignantly proclaim their objections – ostensibly
out of concern for the well-being of the children (who, scientific opinion
seems to concur, are not materially at risk).
Some teachers and their trade unions, protest against the reopening of
schools, despite the fact that initially only two out of thirteen grades will
be returning to class. Cui bono?
The lockdown gradually disintegrates
organically. Government is powerless, or
politically unwilling, to enforce it properly. Even in circumstances when no civilians should
be out and about, and a curfew is supposedly in place, the thousands of
policemen and soldiers supposedly mandated to enforce the law cannot prevent
the looting and vandalisation of schools.
Many of those who favour the lifting of the
lockdown point out that infection rates and mortality figures have not reached
the levels initially feared. Isn’t that
precisely (or at least partly) because there has been a lockdown? But perhaps these advocates of a removal of
lockdown restrictions can be forgiven their lack of appreciation of the
severity of the situation. Their
freely-offered expert opinions are obviously informed (or misinformed) by the
paucity of reliable and up-to-date statistics.
Does anybody seriously believe that some provinces have recorded very
few infections and hardly any deaths?
Following a prolonged reticence by government
to take citizens into their confidence by releasing meaningful information,
government has finally produced some information that is actually
informative. See https://www.news24.com/Analysis/analysis-inside-sas-frightening-covid-19-projections-and-why-transparency-is-important-20200520. These sobering projections
indicate that – despite the relative success of the lockdown – we may well see
40,000 fatalities by the end of the year.
That would be enough people to fill a large sports stadium. (It is not many more, though, than the number
of people who succumbed to Ebola in West Africa in 2014-’16 – but,
inexplicably, that passed largely unnoticed.)
So, even if there is no immediate likelihood that half the population will
be wiped out, there is certainly no scope for complacency.
Unsurprisingly, recent times have seen a
resurgence of interest in The Plague. See, for example, https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/05/15/graciliano-ramos-and-the-plague/. Unfortunately, there has been
little analysis of the underlying message sought to be conveyed by Camus, or of
what it means for us in C-19 times. One
article that points in the right direction is Steve Coll’s commentary published
in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/camus-and-the-political-tests-of-a-pandemic. Particularly powerful is his
statement that “Camus was less interested in the evolving science
of epidemic response than in our capacity as individuals to face the truth,
endure, and contribute to success under extreme conditions.” But even that doesn’t quite capture the crux
of The Plague. And we are still left to explore the true
meaning of Tarrou’s statement that “we all have plague …
each of us have the plague within him; no one, no one on earth, is free from
it.”
Understandably, there has been a deluge of C-19
media coverage in recent months. Indeed,
it almost seems as though there is no other news. Among the many worrying and depressing
reports there have been a few heartening and uplifting stories – for example,
of people who have done their duty in difficult conditions, and of people who
have courageously and imaginatively gone above and beyond the call of duty. There have also been a few stories about the
impact of the lockdown on the natural world.
For example, there has been a dramatic reduction in global greenhouse
gas emissions. In some cities, people
have seen blue skies for the first time in years. Sadly, though, these reduced emissions will be
only temporary and will have no noticeable impact on global warming: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/19/lockdowns-trigger-dramatic-fall-global-carbon-emissions.
By
contrast, there has been very little publicity about the mass culling of
animals that had been destined to be slaughtered for human consumption. One recent article drew attention to that
fact that tens of millions of farm animals are being killed by the most
horrific methods. Although the euphemism
“euthanised” is used to describe these killings, the reality is that
unimaginable numbers of animals are being killed in sickeningly cruel ways: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/19/millions-of-us-farm-animals-to-be-culled-by-suffocation-drowning-and-shooting-coronavirus. But no photographs are provided to illustrate
any of this. One would have expected
that, in a world that regards itself as vaguely “civilised”, there would be an
explosion of popular outrage about this brutal treatment of animals. Sadly, this has largely been swept under the
carpet and, no doubt, will soon be forgotten.
When
we begin, even only slightly, to conceptualise the extent of the callous
cruelty that is inflicted on the animal kingdom, we cannot avoid asking
questions about the extent to which we have allowed ourselves to become
desensitised and dehumanised. The
nauseating irony is particularly striking when we consider that the first
reading for the Easter Vigil (long since lost in the mists of C-19 history)
included the following: “And God
said, Behold, I have given you every seed-bearing plant upon the face of all
the earth, and every tree, with its seed-bearing fruit; to you it shall be for
meat” (Genesis 1: 29). It seems most of
us are incurably infected by an acute lack of basic compassion. Perhaps if we reflect on this for a moment we
will begin to glimpse what Tarrou meant when he said that we all have the plague within us.
(24 May 2020)
IV
The journalist Rambert was dispatched to Oran by his Paris
newspaper to investigate and report on the living conditions of the Arab
population in Oran and on sanitary conditions in the city’s Arab quarters. To his chagrin, Rambert ended up trapped in
Oran by the quarantine (or, in demotic parlance, the “hard lockdown”) imposed
on the city when the government belatedly endeavoured to confine the
propagation of the disease.
Some three weeks after the cordon sanitaire had
been flung around Oran, Rambert returned to Dr Rieux. Now, he was no longer seeking assistance with
his investigation. Instead, he was
hoping the doctor would give him a clean bill of health in support of his
efforts to persuade the authorities to allow him to leave Oran and return to
Paris. Rieux was on his way from the
hospital to a dispensary, and invited Rambert to walk with him. As they strolled through “the narrow streets
of the Negro district”, Rambert explained his yearning to go home: he had left
his wife in Paris. He immediately
clarified: strictly speaking, she wasn’t his wife. “The truth is that she and I have been
together only a short time, and we suit each other perfectly.”
When Oran had been put into quarantine, Rambert
had tried to send a letter to his beloved.
But the postal officials had vetoed this; it was feared that letters
sent by post might transmit the plague from Oran to the outside world. So Rambert had had to stand in a queue for
hours just to be able to send her a telegram: “All goes well. Hope to see you soon.” (It was the kind of empty abbreviated missive
that would, decades later, be reincarnated as an SMS or WhatsApp message.) Indeed, at the time Rambert’s impression had
been that “this state of affairs was quite temporary” and that he would be back
in his sweetheart’s arms before long.
However, he had soon realised that “there was no knowing how long this
business was going to last.” As a
result, he had decided to leave Oran as soon as possible, and was now in the
process of lobbying municipal officials for the equivalent of an exit visa –
hence his request for Dr Rieux to certify that he was not infected.
Coming to the Place d’Armes, the two men stopped beside the statue of the Republic. (The obelisk and the feminine incarnation of liberty remain there to this day, but the statue of Marianne – the symbol of the French Republic – which previously adorned the plinth has long since been removed.) Rieux explained that he could not give Rambert the requested medical certificate: “I don’t know whether you have the disease or not, and, even if I did, how could I certify that between the moment of leaving my consulting-room and your arrival at the Prefect’s office you wouldn’t be infected?” Besides, there were many people in the same quandary as Rambert and there couldn’t be any question of allowing them to leave.
Rambert, his hat pushed back slightly and “his
shirt-collar gaping under a loosely knotted tie, his cheeks ill-shaven”, had
“the sulky, stubborn look of a young man who feels himself deeply
injured.” Upon hearing Rieux’s refusal
and explanation, he exclaimed indignantly, “But I don’t belong here!” Rieux retorted: “Unfortunately from now on
you’ll belong here, like everybody else.”
As it transpired, and as Rieux had predicted, the
city functionaries had no intention whatsoever of permitting Rambert (or, for
that matter, anyone else) to leave Oran.
In his desperation, Rambert eventually had recourse to an underground
syndicate that was paying bribes to guards to smuggle people out of the city
under cover of night. Making the
necessary arrangements for Rambert’s flight proved to be an arduous,
time-consuming and frustrating process. Every
time it seemed as though the scheme was about to come to fruition, some problem
arose and it all came to naught, and the whole process had to start from
scratch again.
And so, weeks later, Rambert was still in
Oran. In a conversation with Rieux and
Tarrou in his hotel room, he explained that these disappointments had made it
dawn upon him that this was exactly what the plague meant: the same thing over
and over again. He played a record (“St
James Infirmary”, a blues song made famous by Louis Armstrong in the late
1920s) on the gramophone. “Rather a
boring record,” he observed, “and this must be the tenth time I’ve put it on
today.” Asked whether he was very fond
of the song, he said, “No, but it’s the only one I have … the same thing over
and over again.”
Rambert enquired about the progress of the
civilian sanitary squads organised by Tarrou and Rieux in combating the plague. He mentioned that he had fought on the
republican side in the Spanish Civil War, and that he no longer believed in
heroism: “I know it’s easy and I’ve learnt it can be murderous. What interests me is living and dying for
what one loves.” To which he added: “We
– mankind – have lost the capacity for love.”
Nevertheless, he agreed to assist Rieux and Tarrou until he could find
some way of escaping from Oran.
Not long afterwards, Rieux, reflecting on the
impact of the plague on the townspeople, realised that it had “gradually killed
off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship.” Or, he thought, perhaps “our love persisted,
but in practice it served nothing; it was an inert mass within us, sterile as
crime or a life sentence.”
By the end of September (about five months
after the plague had claimed its first life in Oran), Rambert’s furtive
departure from the city was, finally, imminent.
It had taken a great deal of trouble and expense (and, of course, risk)
to make the arrangements. But at the
eleventh hour, Rambert decided to abandon the scheme. Announcing his change of heart to Tarrou and
Rieux, he explained: “Until now I always felt a stranger in this town, and that
I’d no concern with you people. But now
that I’ve seen what I’ve seen, I know that I belong here whether I want it or
not. This business is everybody’s
business.”
Decades hence, when next generations look back
on the C-19 era, they will almost inevitably associate it with George
Floyd (requiescat in pace), #BLM and the fall of Edward Colston and others of
his ilk. George Floyd will probably, and
deservedly, be remembered in decades to come.
But of course (and this is by no means intended to detract from the
disgraceful tragedy that occurred in Minneapolis at the height of the C-19
pandemic) his death was simply the latest (and, sadly, not the last) recurrence
of many such incidents, not only in the USA but also in many other locations
around the world. Consequently, George
Floyd will probably come to symbolise many similar incidents caused by white
supremacism and state brutality. The
question is, how did humanity sink to such depths? It would have been tragic enough if the
murder of George Floyd had been the only occurrence of its nature. Instead, it has been “the same thing over and over again.”
Derek Chauvin will not stand in the dock by
himself. Of course, his co-accused will be
alongside him. But, in reality, all of
humankind stands indicted. For we have
all stood by idly while this sort of atrocious apathy towards human life and
dignity evolved and became “normal”. (Of
course, some – including people in high office – have actively encouraged the
mind-set that allows this sort of syndrome to develop, and that desensitises
people so that they stand by idly.) A
world that countenanced slavery for as long as it did, and one that has allowed
society to undermine the human dignity of so many people for so long, one that
has connived at poverty and hunger for so long, is a world that has lost the
capacity for love. It is one that has
suppressed in us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship. Or, if vestiges of love for fellow human
beings survive, they have been rendered an inert and sterile abstraction.
Today, food shortages exacerbated by the C-19
pandemic threaten to kill many more people than will be killed by the disease
itself. Today, millions of people around
the world – also in the richest countries of the world – are hungry and
homeless. Homelessness is a pandemic
that strips millions of people of their dignity and most basic rights. In addition to homeless hordes, millions of
people take refuge in structures not fit for human habitation. And yet, today, in hundreds of cities around
the world, office blocks stand empty, vacated by businesses whose staff are
blessed to be able to work from home.
Many of those buildings will never be occupied by their tenants again,
or not remotely to the same extent as before we had heard of Wuhan. Will we convert those buildings into homes
for the homeless? Will we do this and
not turn it into a novel money-making scheme? Time will tell whether the soul of humanity is
too badly infected to do what is right.
Global crises are inflection points. They accelerate political and socio-economic
change. They afford opportunities to
discard old (and frequently inefficient) ways of doing things. The First World War expedited the demise of
autocratic monarchies, gave birth to the League of Nations, and furthered the
development of a system of international and humanitarian law. The Second World War spawned the Bretton
Woods Conference, which rearranged the international economy. “But what good came
of it at last?” One might well ask. Perhaps the present global crisis presents an
opportunity for a qualitatively different Bretton Woods. Do we have the empathy to fashion a global
economy that answers the needs of the hungry and the homeless? Who has the heart to take the helm? Time will tell.
Hopefully we will not have to listen to “St
James Infirmary” yet again. Hopefully it
will not be the same thing over and over again for the soul of humanity. “Now if thou would’st,
when all have given him over / From Death to Life, thou might’st him yet recover.” Time will tell.
(12 July 2020)
To be continued
[Quotations from The Plague are taken from the Penguin translation by Stuart
Gilbert]
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