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PARTISAN REVIEW
to say that they did not believe in scourges. A scourge goes beyond the
hwnan scale and consequently people say that it is unreal, that it's a
bad dream that will soon be over. But it isn't always over right away and
from one bad dream to another men themselves are finished instead,
and the humanists to begin with because they didn't take any precau–
tions. Our fellow-citizens were not any more guilty than anyone else;
they simply forgot to be modest and they thought that scourges were
impossible. They kept on doing business as usual, they planned trips and
they had opinions. How could they have thought of the plague which
suppresses the future, and travel, and discussions? They thought they
were free and no one will ever be free so long as there are scourges."
When Albert Camus makes these remarks early in his new novel,
La Peste,
it should be at once apparent, even if it were not earlier, that his subject
transcends an imaginary plague isolating the Algerian city of Oran from
the rest of the world.
"On the morning of April 16th," the narrative begins after an intro–
ductory chapter, "Dr. Bernard Rieux came out of hls office and stumbled
on a dead rat on the stair landing." We all had such significant warn–
ings in the years preceding 1939, but like the
good
doctor we kicked the
rat aside and went about our serious business. As the number of dead
rats began rapidly multiplying within our city we too started worrying,
as he did. And when the plague was upon us in all its horror, we sprang
into action and did what we could.
To French readers in 1947 this vividly depicted plague in Oran will
surely seem a parable for the enemy occupation of France from 1940
to
1944. The same problems are evident here: the common suffering of
all, the pain of separation from loved ones, the formation of isolation
camps, the restrictive laws and hardships in obtaining the necessities of
life, the being cut off from the outside world, the search for a cause
to these sufferings, the effort of some to escape and their illegal dealings
with a band of outlaws, the tendency of others to consider themselves
outside the common lot, the spontaneous organization of all able-bodied
men to combat the plague, the black market, the people's faith in
prophecies, the exhortations of the radio from outside countries, etc.
Camus shows brilliantly by examples how a scourge of this kind under–
mines all moral and intellectual life, absorbing every activity of the mind
and body.
But there is a larger implication here, broader than the allegory
of France's momentary fate, more general even than the whole recent
war. The basic problem, as in his. first novel
The Stranger,
is a philoso–
phical one which is dear to Albert Camus: that of our common respon–
sibility in this life and our inability to escape the
condition humaine. ,
No matter how absurd or meaningless that fate may be, we still must
accept it and play our role. No one can take refuge in the fact that he
doesn't belong here (Rambert), or in a permanent attitude of ironic de-
