Comments on: (La Peste) The Plague by Albert Camus – a review

By: Nanoubix

Nanoubix — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 14:25:49 +0000

@ Praiffs
Camus’s essay ‘The Myth of Sysiphe’ is about the enormous idea of suicide. The essay starts with the following:

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”

Through the rewriting of the myth of Sisyphus, Camus tries to communicate his sense that, although existence is meaningless (= absurd), it is not without hope, not without happiness.

Being aware of the absurdity of (one’s) life is ultimately a formidable success for humanity. Choosing to end one’s life would show one’s failure to comprehend and endure our human condition.

By: greggy

greggy — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 03:36:03 +0000

hi im doing a paper on this book, and was wondering if anybody knows anything about how Camus puts in his own life into the book. Such as he played soccer and liked to swim and this is in the book. any help?

By: praiffs

praiffs — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 15:58:50 +0000

According to existentialists we have no meaning of our lives..it is worthless,purposeless..if it is so then why dont we go for suicide.?? Is there any kind of force to live.?? I think most of people believe in two kind of ideology, idealism and materialism, materialists live for materialistic things and idealist live for emotions,feelings but when they both alone they feel the absurdity of theire live,they wanna leave this world.but they cant, they have become slavers of matter and mind..what do u think.? Am i wrong?

By: optimisation

optimisation — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:31:05 +0000

Interesting thoughts! I dont read The Plague. Is it necessary to read? Thanks.

jb says: Not necessary, but if you don’t read it you’ll be missing something quite special.

By: integration and disintegration

integration and disintegration — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:18:24 +0000

I was wondering, since the novel was written after WWII,,, then how can we draw parallels to the occupation of the french by the Nazis? or that of the Holocaust?

jb says: I think you mean to infer that the novel was written before the start of world war II, when in fact it was published in 1947. But even if it had been written before the war, from a readers point of view in the 21st century, surely its equally valid to interpret it as a metaphor for the Nazi invasion and occupation of France, or as a metaphor for any thing or concept that imprisons us and takes away our freedom or our expectations. We don’t place such limits on ourselves when reinterpreting Shakespeare. Just the other day I saw a production of Romeo and Juliet set in the 1940s. Worked fine. Doesn’t culture enable us to move about in space and time, and in so doing, to reinterpret our sense of self and memory and experience?

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:49:21 +0000

Though everyone knows that life is an implacable foe that will devour him? It is a great book and perhaps my favourite Camus, but there seems a simple intelelctual error, amounting to separating oneself from the life one is a part of. We are obviously constituent parts of this life, and any notion of our being separate entities delusional. So how can we be a foe of that which is our own selves. We are part of life so how can it devour us?, us being an indivisible part of it.

jb says: Thanks, Andrew. Mysteries, eh?

By: Litlove

Litlove — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 08:29:27 +0000

I very much like what you have to say about this book (it’s a favourite of mine). What do you make of the fact that Rieux is firmly against the plague being seen as a metaphor for anything? He resists all attempts by others to convince him of its meaning and will only accept the statistics of the infected and the dead. It’s very tempting to transcend the actuality of the event, but do you think Camus is suggesting to us that we can only do so, recognising that that transcendence has nothing to do with lived experience?

jb says: I’m still thinking about the book. I’m reading something else at the moment and have this strange experience, every time I pick it up, of thinking that it’s Camus’ novel. I don’t mind trying to answer your question but feel that I’ll have another answer tomorrow, and the next day and next week an even more thought-through response. Rieux’s fight is against creation, against the absurd world into which we are born . . . that is the plague . . . and it is an implacable foe, something that, if we take our eyes off it for a moment, will devour us.
Every man knows this and, alone, cannot face it. As individuals we surrender to dreaming about what it might mean. We mouth the platitudes, that everyone else will succumb, but this will not happen to me. Everyone else will die but me and mine will survive.
Rieux wants us to stop thinking about ‘me’ and start to embrace the concept of ‘us’. For that is the only way that the plague will be beaten. By us coming together and fighting it and never giving up. We don’t have to interpret it in terms of something else. We have to accept it as the reality in which we live and fight against it until it is beaten or we are beaten.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 14:04:55 +0000

Well at similar time to Camus & the like, Aldous Huxley was writing of mysticism in books like The Perennial Philosophy which while not being an evasion of personal responsibility-indeed the very opposite, certainly disagreed with the notion of God having become an obsolete concept, though Huxley's God a far from personal deity. A far profounder writer than any of the existentialists such as Dostoevsky(a far profounder writer in the essentials of life than probably any other in comparatively recent times) than probably any other of the last few centuries) would also presumably disagree about God not being part of our equation. “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” would seem to be the very opposite of an evasion of personal responsibility, and that’s quite mild compared to some other statements on the importance of how one lives.

jb says: I imagine differing opinions of this one will be around for some time to come.