kvmkidz.blogg.se - The plague author albert

But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue.”

“On the whole, men are more good than bad that, however, isn’t the real point.At the start of the COVID-19 crisis in 2020, demand was so high that The Plague even went out of stock at Amazon.In 1957, at almost 44, the Algerian-born Camus became the second youngest Nobel Prize winner ever.Camus’ message of responsibility and solidarity struck a chord with readers and made it his first commercial success.

The Plague was inspired by the belief that men are inherently decent.

He wrote large parts of the novel while working for the French Resistance paper Combat during World War II.

Camus believed that the only way to confront the absurdity and pointlessness of life was to rebel against it and create meaning through action.

The novel can be read on several levels: As a realistic tale of an epidemic outbreak, an allegory of active resistance to totalitarianism, or a comment on the Absurd.

After much death and despair, the plague is defeated, families and lovers are reunited and life begins anew. But after a complete lockdown is imposed and case numbers rise sharply, a medical doctor and his outsider friend decide to fight the disease by organizing volunteers in sanitary squads.

First the rats are dying in the streets of the Algerian coastal city Oran, then the plague breaks out.

The Plague, published in 1947, was Albert Camus’ international breakthrough.

We must rise up in collective action and resist each recurring wave, over and over and over again. But Camus warned his readers of complacency: Pathogens like totalitarianism, racism or mindless opportunism won’t disappear for good.

Like all pestilences, the plague eventually runs its course. What does it feel like to be suddenly cut off from nature and the world, beleaguered by an invisible bacillus and condemned to endless apathy? And, more importantly, what to do in such a nightmarish situation? Albert Camus, inspired by historical accounts of plague outbreaks and his experience during the Resistance in Nazi-occupied France, answered that timeless question in The Plague: Get up and do something useful together! The novel tells of a group of men who don’t even try to make sense of a meaningless disease, but instead establish hygiene standards, isolate and care for the sick, develop a cure and hope for the best.