Line #28 Literature/ThePlague


1	[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ThePlague_5495.jpg]]
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3	A classic 1947 novel by Creator/AlbertCamus, ''The Plague'' (''La Peste'' in French), on the surface, tells the story of an epidemic of [[ThePlague the bubonic plague]] that besets the UsefulNotes/{{Algeria}}n city of Oran, imprisoning the citizens behind quarantine. The protagonists, including Dr. Bernard Rieux, a man named Jean Tarrou, a visiting journalist Raymond Rambert, and a city clerk Joseph Grand must respond to the plague and find their place in the ensuing depressing conditions, while philosophizing on the nature of suffering and the proper response thereto.
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5	The plague is generally accepted to be a metaphor for the "brown plague," fascism, which spread throughout Europe in the 30s, and more specifically for the occupation of France by Nazi Germany in 1940. Oran is the equivalent of France: cut off from the outside world, the inhabitants have to choose whether to submit to the inevitability of dying of the plague (the historical inevitability of Germany's dominance) or to fight back against the plague by joining the sanitary teams (the Resistance).
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7	More generally, the book is an allegorical tale in which [[AuthorTract Camus expounds on his views about the human condition]]. When the possibility of death at any time makes life absurd, the only thing to do is to give one's life meaning is to rebel against an unjust world, live passionately and strive for freedom.
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9	The novel received several adaptations, including:
10	* ''The Plague'' (1992), a film by Argentine director Luis Puenzo, starring Creator/WilliamHurt, Creator/SandrineBonnaire, Creator/RobertDuvall, and Creator/RaulJulia, with a soundtrack by Music/{{Vangelis}}. It changes both the [[AdaptationalLocationChange location]] (moving the story to UsefulNotes/{{Argentina}}) and [[SettingUpdate time period]] (moving it to the later [[The80s 80s]][=/=]early [[TheNineties 90s]]).
11	* ''The Plague'' (2024), a French miniseries that changes the setting and era again, to Southern UsefulNotes/{{France}} in [[NextSundayAD 2029]]. It posits that [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic COVID-19]] has weakened immunity in most people and that a new deadly bacillus of the Plague arises because of this, devastating a city in Southern France.
12	----
13	!!This novel displays the following tropes:
14	* TwoPlusTortureMakesFive: Camus wrote, very similarly to Orwell "again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two makes four is punished by death".
15	* AnyoneCanDie: The narrator makes notations of this frequently about the plague, and extends it to life as a whole via Tarrou's musings about his own life. More literally to the trope, [[spoiler:Grand plays with this having a bad bout of plague but coming back around soon, but Dr. Richard, M. Othon, Father Paneloux, and Tarrou are among the narrative's plague casualties. Rieux's wife as well, although not from the Plague.]]
16	* AuthorAvatar: Rambert, like Camus, is a journalist with a strong sense of justice who has investigated the living conditions of the Arab population of Algeria.
17	* AuthorTract: Camus exposes his philosophy in a much more explicit way than he did in ''Literature/TheStranger''. [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools But this was in some ways necessary as this book serves to exorcise the bitter memories of the Occupation. Plus, the committee for the Nobel Prize for Literature didn't seem to mind.]]
18	* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The plague ends, Rambert reunites with his beloved, but many people die before that happens, including [[DramaticIrony one doctor who once predicted that the plague would end soon]], Tarrou and finally Rieux's wife. And Rieux knows that one day, the plague might return.]]
19	* BlackComedy: Unusually for the book, but one particular section does so: Rambert trying to leave Oran. He finds a man who has connections, meets the connections who have insight into the city guard, and two guardsman who are willing to smuggle him out. The plan fails due to one of the guards being replaced due to catching plague, and in order to try again, Rambert has to go back to square one and do the ''entire process'' over again, only for it to not pan out as well due to a shift change. Rambert eventually gets fed up with it, and half his reason for staying in Oran is purely because trying to get out is more circuitous than trying to help.
20	* BodyHorror: To be expected in a work about bubonic plague.
21	* CannotSpitItOut: Grand, a rare non-romance (or rather not-just-romance) example.
22	* CharacterDevelopment
23	** Rambert is at first desperate to escape the city with any means possible to see his wife again, but he eventually decides to stay and help the people.
24	** Othon starts out as a traditional 50s French father, saying impeccably polite and very nasty things to his wife and kids. He gets more emotional, and more altruistic, later in the book [[spoiler: after his son dies.]]
25	* LesCollaborateurs: After his suicide attempt, Cottard basically turns into the quintessential Pétain supporter and profits off the plague much in the way collaborators profited from the Nazi Occupation; he is one of the only people who is sad to see the plague go.
26	* DeathOfAChild: The plague doesn't spare children. In a notable case of playing with the trope, when a child who was deemed a hopeless case ''is'' spared, it's a sign the plague is on the retreat.
27	* DelayedNarratorIntroduction: The narrator pointedly refrains from revealing his identity until the end, though the third-person limited PointOfView makes it fairly obvious who he is.
28	* TheFettered: Tarrou, who dedicated his life to fight against killing, though he later became disillusioned.
29	* HumansAreBastards: Tarrou holds this viewpoint.
30	--> ''I know positively–-yes, Rieux, I can say I know the world inside out, as you may see-–that each of us has the plague within him; no one, no one on earth is free from it. And I know, too, that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in a careless moment we breath in somebody’s face and fasten the infection on him. What’s natural is the microbe. All the rest-–health, integrity, purity (if you like)-–is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention.''
31	* IChooseToStay: Rambert goes to great lengths to escape the city, but when he finally is at the brink of achieving his goal, he decides he'd rather stay in Oran and help the protagonists in fighting the plague.
32	* KickTheDog: [[spoiler:Cottard shoots one at random in the last scene, though this is not necessarily a sign of evilness, just insanity.]]
33	* {{Leitmotif}}: The song "Saint James Infirmary."
34	* {{Lockdown}}: A city-wide one. The novel explores how this affects the inhabitants psychologically when they are trapped away from their loved ones for months.
35	* NarratorAllAlong: [[spoiler:Bernard Rieux]].
36	* NoAntagonist: Unless you count the plague itself, anyway.
37	* ObstructiveBureaucrat: Richard and the prefect committee. They dismiss Rieux and Castel's advice, refusing to instate prophylactic measures until they have conclusive proof that the disease is plague (even as Rieux claims that it almost certainly ''is'' plague, and estimates that half of Oran's population will be dead within two months).
38	* ThePlague: Well duh.
39	* PoliceAreUseless: Tarrou at one point remarks "And, anyway, we've never had much use for the police."
40	* LaResistance: In the context of the allegory--the plague as the Occupation--the sanitary teams form a resistance that is fighting back against the unspeakable evil of the plague.
41	* ShoutOut: To ''Literature/TheStranger'' - a Frenchman from Algiers who was arrested for shooting an Arab on the beach is mentioned.
42	* TheStoic[=/=]ThePollyanna: Rieux. [[spoiler:He loses the Pollyanna aspects a bit after Tarrou dies.]]
43	* TragicBromance: [[spoiler:Tarrou and Rieux.]]

Context Literature / ThePlague