The Plague

The start of the new calendar year sees fewer plague deaths in Oran, yet Rieux’s attitude toward dealing with the scourge remains unaltered. If infection and death numbers are down, Rieux insists that it’s not due to any heroic efforts on his part. The doctor senses no “victory” in the plague’s waning; rather, he feels himself staring at the absurd. The plague’s arrival in Oran was marked by mystery, and now, 10 months later, its grip on the city unravels equally inexplicably.

Despite tenuous public joy at announcements that Oran will soon reopen, Rieux’s quotidian life proceeds as before. With death still a constant in his personal and professional world, the doctor forges ahead in treating the masses amid devastating personal losses. The demise of the recently metamorphosed Othon is followed by Tarrou’s death, which marks the novel’s climax. As he dies, Tarrou’s life’s convictions are put into play. In juxtaposition to Paneloux, who refuses medical treatment in his passive stance toward death, Tarrou funnels every ounce of internal strength and external assistance at his disposal into his relentless struggle to remain alive.

In The Plague’s final section, death proves transformative in the personal sphere. Although Othon passes away before he can assist the sanitary squad, his son’s senseless, untimely death instilled a positive change in him. Rieux, who in a professional capacity has experienced nearly a year’s worth of death, confronts virtually simultaneous intimate end-of-life events with the demise of both Tarrou and his wife. Although nowhere near ready to stop fighting against death, Rieux nonetheless realizes the limitations of his personal philosophy based on reason and abstraction as he experiences raw human emotions. Grand also changes for the better as a result of the plague. In a surge of optimism, he is motivated to pen a letter to his estranged wife Jeanne, and he approaches writing his novel with a renewed sense of vigor, deciding to dispense of adjectives in an attempt to create less ornate and more straightforward prose. Only Cottard, the novel’s antihero, remains unchanged—or even experiences a downward spiral—as the subsiding plague threatens his newfound wealth and anonymity; worries of police investigations push him to despair and madness.

In the public sphere, however, the plague is all but forgotten at the mere mention of the city’s impending freedom. A fortnight prior to Oran’s official reopening, Oranians begin to rejoice at the prospect of life returning to normal. With the devastation of the past year already fading from their memories, Oran’s residents revel in the present and set their sights on the future.

The novel’s denouement, while revelatory, provides no definitive resolution. Rieux unmasks himself as the chronicle’s narrator, justifying his previous anonymity on the grounds of objectivity required to communicate the only valid points of human intersection: love, suffering, and exile. His decision to write the text at hand stems from the need to objectively memorialize—rather than glorify—those who died and fought death during the plague. Yet, the narrative’s conclusion refrains from marking a resolution to the story. Rieux understands that the plague, an allegory for evil, terror, and suffering, never disappears altogether.