The Plague & The Plague

Dylan Daniel finds many contemporary resonances in Albert Camus’ novel.

- Dylan Daniel

Many popular reading lists for the COVID-19 pandemic include The Plague, a 1947 novel by Albert Camus. The author was an existentialist philosopher who was also a journalist, a writer, and a member of the French Resistance to the Nazi occupation. Camus was born in Algeria, and his father died soon after his birth. For a fascinating glimpse into Camus’ life, have a look at Albert Camus: A Biography, by Herbert R. Lottman.

Though he disavowed being called an existentialist as a means to avoid association with Jean-Paul Sartre, a one-time friend turned enemy, Camus’ work nevertheless centers upon existentialist themes, such as each person’s need to take responsibility for their own choices and actions and in doing so to create meaning for their lives. For the existentialists there is no yardstick by which to measure meaning; rather human beings ascribe meaning to life themselves. Camus’ unique twist on this involves couching it within ‘the absurd’. For Camus, we must take responsibility for creating meaning for ourselves just because of the fundamental absurdity of life – the mismatch between what we would want from life and what it actually gives us. And perhaps the most absurd part of the entire affair is that we never find out if we did it right or not. In The Plague living virtuously is presented as one way of creating meaning. But for Camus, even virtue is not meaningful beyond what it means to the one who has it.