THE VIRUS NEVER DIES

 

THE VIRUS NEVER DIES

La Peste, (The Plague) is a novel by Algerian writer Albert Camus, published in 1947, which describes the effect of a virus on a town, Oran, in his country. The town is real but the plague is not though its description draws on accounts of real plagues in other places in other times. The book was immediately hailed as a ground breaker for two reasons. It was seen as an allegory of the German occupation of France (1940-44) and how the people suffered and reacted. But it was also seen as a reflection on human beings in general and how they respond to the pestilence embedded in life that keeps breaking out all over the world. The most recent example is a report of the Chinese trying to eliminate the culture, language, dignity and even life of the Uighurs in their western province.

The first sign of something unusual in Oran was rats bleeding and dying in the streets. People notice it but aren’t worried and continue their normal life, leaving the authorities to clean the streets. Then there are some deaths among the population. Again it is shrugged off and causes no alarm. Finally, the death toll rises to around 500 or more a week. And then the dreaded word ‘plague’ is used for the first time. Camus describes the gradual change that come over the people. Health workers devise a response which is scientific, meticulous and generous. The doctor works twenty hours a day.

But many try to leave the town though the gates are locked and guarded to prevent the contagion spreading. The priest preaches a sermon saying the people have brought it on themselves and they must accept the suffering as a cleansing process. The bar owners are happy that people come to drink to drown their worries and frustrations.  Those who have money spend it in a luxurious life style without thought for the future. Ordinary people just wander aimlessly round the town overwhelmed by the sense of ‘illness, exile and separation’ that grips the town. Meanwhile the number of deaths rise and the authorities are more and more stretched.

Camus has no heroes and no villains. Everyone is just trying to survive. But Camus makes a quiet but earnest plea for people to face the truth.

'All I say is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims - and as far as possible one must refuse to be on the side of the pestilence. This may seem rather simple to you, and I don't know if it is simple, but I do know that it is true. I have heard so many arguments that nearly turn my head, and which turn enough other heads for them to consent to murder, that I understand that all the misfortunes of mankind came from not stating things in clear terms. So, I decided to speak and to act clearly ...' p 195 

 

There is one great benefit we have in our time with our own plague, Covid 19. We know the truth and can do something about it. Facts are available even though some politicians cannot resist bending the truth and presenting it in a way that suits them. This is a plague that our ancestors did not have the science to detect or treat. We do. And all the ‘stop/go’ about vaccines is only a temporary hitch.

The people of Oran lived a life of drudgery, reflected in the words of Job in this Sunday’s readings, as they waited for the pest to recede. Many today are locked up and frustrated and there are even cases of young people unable to bear the wait and taking their own lives. But Camus tells us that a pestilence is like an earthquake or a cyclone that hits us from time to time and reminds us of the underlying fragility of life. He ends his novel saying,

‘The plague bacillus never dies or vanishes completely … it waits in bedrooms, cellars, trunks and old papers, and perhaps the day will come when, for the instruction or the misfortune of mankind, the plague will rouse its rats and send them to die in some well-contented city.’

7 February 2021          Sunday 5B      Job 1:1-7         1 Cor 9:16-23              Mark 1:29-39