In this blog post, I examined how Albert Camus’s ‘The Plague’ goes beyond being an allegory of war to depict the plague itself and the lives of those living through it, and I also reflected on the differences between it and ‘The Stranger’ as well as the appeal of the characters in the novel.
What kind of novel is ‘The Plague’?
Albert Camus’s ‘The Plague’ was published by Gallimard in France in June 1947. Camus was thirty-four years old at the time. Since his masterpiece, ‘The Stranger’, was published by the same publisher in June 1942, there is a five-year gap between the two works. The two works can be compared in many ways, but above all, unlike ‘The Stranger’, ‘The Plague’ was a huge commercial success from the moment it was published.
Of course, by that time, Camus was no longer the unknown Algerian novelist who had struggled to get ‘The Stranger’ published by submitting the manuscript to a publisher. During World War II, he had been the editor of ‘Combat’, a daily newspaper founded in secret that exerted great influence in the postwar period, and through the articles he published there, he had established himself as one of the leading figures of the intellectual Resistance. He had already become a figure of national prominence. Thus, even though ‘The Plague’ was published immediately after the war ended, it was translated into dozens of languages within a year, garnering global attention and quickly establishing itself as a classic of world literature.
However, just as not every best-selling work by a famous author receives universal acclaim, ‘The Plague’ was not immune to criticism. Ironically, one of the most notable critiques came from the famous philosopher and writer Roland Barthes. Barthes had previously heaped praise on ‘The Stranger’.
Barthes argued that the novel lacked consistency between the actual history of the French Resistance fighting against the German occupation during World War II and the fictional struggle of the citizens of Oran against the plague. He argued that the real-life Resistance struggle had inherent limitations when portrayed as an allegory for people fighting a deadly disease. While the French Resistance fighters battled the Nazis—a struggle against actual human beings that involved not only individual moral strength but also far more complex realities—such complexity was difficult to find in people fighting an abstract entity like “the Plague.”
Barthes assessed that “Evil sometimes has a human face, yet ‘The Plague’ says nothing about this.” He also noted that, given the circumstances of the novel, it is difficult to predict how the citizens of Oran would have acted if they had had to fight a threat posed by fellow human beings. He also stated that Camus’s characters had no choice but to become either executioners or accomplices—other than to remain alone—and that this was their true nature. Ultimately, Barth’s critique leads to the argument that merely allegorizing the historical struggle of the Resistance as a battle against a natural epidemic fails to adequately recognize the moral dilemmas citizens face in actual reality.
This type of criticism, which sought to directly superimpose fiction onto reality, actually garnered widespread support at the time. However, Camus relentlessly refuted it. In his “Letter to Roland Barthes,” he stated, “The Plague is not an allegory that dates back only to the period between 1940 and 1945.”
Camus first addressed the criticism regarding the use of war as an allegory for disease. Since the final draft of the novel was published in 1947, when German censorship issues had arisen, replacing the enemy with a disease to conceal the actual meaning could have been historically justified. However, what was more important was that the depiction of the Resistance struggle was merely one of the many elements contained in the book. The fact that this argument was not merely a means to refute Barthes’s claim is confirmed by the fact that Camus had already written in his author’s notes in October 1942: “The Plague has both a social and a metaphysical meaning. They are exactly the same. Such ambiguity is also present in ‘The Stranger’.”
From today’s perspective, Barthes’s critique seems to have strayed considerably from the role of literary creation as an art form. Above all, when reading ‘The Plague’ as a reader in 2024—having experienced the COVID-19 pandemic—one realizes that this novel is not merely a work containing an allegory, but rather tells the story of “the plague itself.” Camus depicts the reactions of people surrounded by the epidemic with astonishing subtlety.
While our citizens struggled to adapt to this sudden exile, the plague stationed guards at the entrance and turned back ships heading for Oran. After the lockdown, not a single vehicle entered the city.
Yet the public’s reaction was still not immediate. In fact, even the announcement that the death toll had reached 302 by the third week of the plague failed to stir people’s emotions. On the one hand, this might have been because not all of the deaths were caused by the plague. On the other hand, it might have been because, until then, no one had even known how many people died in a single week under normal circumstances.
Thus, the people confined by the plague for an entire week struggled valiantly, doing the best they could. Some of them, like Lambert, continued to act as if they were still free, even imagining that they still had the power to make choices. But in truth, it could be said that by mid-August, the plague had engulfed everything. Individual lives no longer existed; only the shared experience of the plague and the emotions everyone shared remained. The greatest problem was the isolation and exile accompanied by fear and resistance. That is why the narrator felt it appropriate to describe, in a general manner, the violence of the living citizens, the burial of the dead, and the pain of parting with loved ones at the height of the heat and the disease.
Rereading ‘The Plague’ After Experiencing a Pandemic
No matter where one opens the book, anyone who has experienced the COVID-19 pandemic cannot help but be astonished by how realistically Camus had already depicted the landscape of a city ravaged by an epidemic and the people facing it. It is so vivid that it is hard to believe this work was written a hundred years ago. Setting aside, for a moment, the kind of criticism that does not view literature as literature in and of itself, and focusing solely on the work itself, what kind of novel is ‘The Plague’?
The novel is set in Oran, a coastal city in Algeria, which was a French colony in the 1940s. It takes the form of a narrator recounting the residents’ reactions to the deadly plague that swept through the city; the identity of the narrator—who is also the protagonist—is not revealed until the very end of the novel. I believe this technique reflects the author’s intention to depict the situation as objectively as possible.
The story begins when Dr. Rieux stumbles upon a dead rat. This incident soon leads to thousands of rats dropping dead throughout the city. Before long, citizens begin dying, exhibiting symptoms of an unknown fever, such as lumps forming on their necks and groins, accompanied by high fevers. While the authorities in Oran initially responded slowly as the unknown epidemic swept through the city, they were eventually forced to quarantine the city as the death toll spiraled out of control.
‘The Stranger’ and ‘The Plague’ were similar yet different
In my youth, I read a translated edition of ‘The Stranger’ and couldn’t understand why this work was considered a well-written novel. It wasn’t entertaining, and it was actually quite difficult to read. I couldn’t quite grasp what Camus was trying to say, nor why readers around the world raved about it. It wasn’t until much later, after reading the original text myself, that I realized the problem lay in the translation.
‘The Stranger’ has now become my favorite novel in the world.
While reading ‘The Plague’, there were parts here and there that puzzled me, but first and foremost, it had a profound appeal. Although the characters sometimes felt a bit unsophisticated and contrived, within the context of the translated story, I could understand them as they were. The writing style was so profound that not only the author but even the translator seemed magnificent. However, upon reading the work more closely, I found that this translation, too, was riddled with mistranslations—no less so than ‘The Stranger’—and, as a result, contained many distortions of the content. Above all, the characters were not the same as the ones I had imagined while reading the translated version. I felt that, in reality, they were far more charming and distinctive.
Furthermore, as I read commentaries and critiques of the work, a question arose. Why do they try to interpret ‘The Plague’ as an allegory of “war” rather than seeing it for what it is? Why can’t they refute and defend the characters’ appeal, just as Camus did with Roland Barthes? If you read the work, you can immediately understand why Camus called it his most anti-Christian work—so why can’t they offer even a single comment on that point?
So, while reading this work, I naturally began to ask myself: Why do readers around the world fail to see this work as ‘The Plague (La Peste)’ in its own right, and instead try to view it as an “allegory”?
However, upon examining the correspondence between Roland Barthes and Camus, I realized that this question had already been thoroughly addressed not only by the author himself but also by others. Above all, I suspected that the historical context immediately following World War II played a role in the issue of “symbolism”—and indeed, that was the case. I cannot say whether I simply failed to find it or whether selective interpretations had conveyed the same content differently, but there was already an abundance of information available that was not present in the book itself.
Camus also stated that ‘The Plague’ should be understood not merely as an allegory of the occupying forces, but as a “symbol.” He said, “Terror has many faces. Nevertheless, the reason I did not point to any one specific name is so that I might strike at all of them more effectively. It is almost certainly because ‘The Plague’ can be applied to any form of resistance against tyranny that I am being criticized.”
I felt that Camus’s words to Roland Barthes—who equated literature with reality and attempted to interpret and critique it under the misconception that his own knowledge constituted the entirety of truth—were therefore all the more significant.
“The essay-novel—which has proven to be the most detestable of all works—is one of the forms most frequently inspired by conceit. You set out to prove a truth you are convinced you possess. But that is merely a starting idea, and an idea is the opposite of thought. Its creators are philosophers mired in self-doubt. On the contrary, the people I speak of—or imagine—are lucid thinkers. To look around, cast aside all preconceived notions, abandon consistency, and look ahead—this is to honor diversity. Moreover, diversity is the home of art.”
