In "The Plague", Albert Camus pits
humanity against an unstoppable force of nature: the bubonic plague. He creates a variety of characters who all
deal with the plague in their own way, but only Tarrou acts heroically. Rieux comes close to a hero, but he fights
the plague because it's expected of him and shows indifference at the end of
the book. Besides Rieux and Tarrou, none
of the other characters show any heroism or resistance to the plague, except
the sanitation squad under Tarrou.
Through Tarrou alone, Camus asks the reader how to heroically deal with
death. Tarrou also provides an example
of heroes who get crushed by fate for defiance.
For these reasons, only Tarrou can be considered a hero.
All the characters except Rieux and Tarrou
can't be considered heroes. Paneloux
believes in sainthood and God, but he offers no resistance to the plague since
he believes it was divinely sent.
Rambert chooses to run from the problem rather than face it. McCarthy also points out that he neglects his
basic duty as a reporter by failing to record anything (109); a duty which
Rieux and Tarrou fulfill. Grand produces
two sentences and does nothing to fight the plague, which McCarthy interprets
as a parody of Rieux's inability to explain the plague (109-10). Cottard wholeheartedly embraces the plague,
revels in it, and attempts to profit from it.
The rest of the people either waste their time, waiting for the end (the
old man spitting on the cats, the bean-counter, etc.) or join the sanitation
squad, under Tarrou. Nobody takes a
stand and resists death except Rieux and Tarrou.
Rieux and Tarrou do seem to show the same level
of heroism. Both resist the plague, both
are symbolically cleansed in the river, and both record the events of
Oran. Brée thinks that for Rieux
"morality is first of all a question of curing people (150)." Rieux fights the plague only because he sees
it as his duty, and one has to wonder if he would have done anything if he
wasn't a doctor. He views the plague as
"a never-ending defeat."
Tarrou acts for a more noble purpose: to gain sainthood. (Paneloux might also be considered a hero for
this reason, but he doesn't fight the plague as Tarrou does.) He's somewhat like
Dwight Towers in
"On the Beach", viewing the time before death as a period of
grace. G. Picon also points out that
Tarrou sacrifices his life, and thus pays more for his heroism than Rieux (Brée
150). By the end of the book Rieux has
been reduced to methodically diagnosing patients, while Tarrou has died and
supposedly attained sainthood. Tarrou
accomplishes his goal, but Rieux hasn't been able to cure everyone of the
plague.
What is the plague which Tarrou is
fighting? Some see it as a parable for
the Occupation (Bloom 107), with Oran being France, the men rebels, and the
plague Nazism. If this is so, why does
the plague carry off the Catholic priest and M. Othon's son? Austin Fowler (Dep. of English, NY state
university) says that the plague is death itself, common to all men. Camus, then, is showing how different people
react to death. Through Tarrou, Camus
shows how to heroically deal with death. Tarrou falls in with Deucalion and the
worms in God's garden as an example of "the cataracts of
heaven". Since one of his goals was
not to be a carrier of plague, the plague strikes him. Like most of the characters in this chapter,
he resists his fate even to his deathbed.
Camus shows us that the constant act of resisting, the unwillingness to
accept death, makes us saints. Paneloux,
for all his religious beliefs, chooses not to fight the plague and misses out
on sainthood. Rieux resists not because
he hates death but because he's a doctor.
He becomes almost indifferent to suffering in his narration and actions,
so the plague doesn't "punish" him.
Camus has obviously set Tarrou up to be a hero
in the plague. He's the only hero
because nobody except Rieux comes close to fighting the plague, and Rieux only
acts to fulfill his obligation as a doctor.
He's a saint because he resists death and fate and thus attains
sainthood. He's a hero because he
provides a correct model on how to deal with death. For fighting the plague, he gets symbolically
crushed. Without Tarrou, "The
Plague" wouldn't have the hero common to almost all literature.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bree, Germaine.
Camus. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1962.
McCarthy,
Patrick. "The Plague." In Albert Camus, p.107-113. Edited by Harold
Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989.
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