With the outbreak of the Corona virus pandemic, it appears that we depend on society for our health and well-being, and that the individual cannot survive alone, as no one person can alone fight the new Corona virus pandemic that does not distinguish between people.
As the danger from the new infectious disease widened, many critics compared what is currently going on with what Albert Camus recorded in 1947 in his famous novel "The Plague" published after the Second World War.
Between ignorance, ignorance, heroism and the utter sense of tragedy, the novel anticipates the Algerian-born French writer Albert Camus of the current Corona pandemic scenario.
The novel begins on the morning of April 16 of an unspecified year in the Algerian city of Oran, with Dr. Bernard Rio stumbling in a dead mouse in the hallway as he was leaving his office. It was the first sign of the plague epidemic and has now become a valuable literary subject for decoding the dramatic moment we are experiencing, according to an article by author Paulo Zellini for the Italian newspaper Corriere.
In the first pages of the novel "The Plague", the number of dead mice increases in a few days in a mysterious and amazing way, and shortly after that, the infection is transmitted to humans, causing fever, vomiting, and inflammation of the lymph nodes, then dies.
Initial skepticism
When talking about the epidemic and the appropriate measures to take during an emergency meeting in Oran Province, doctors were able to report the results of the analyzes after diagnosing lymphadenitis in patients. The laboratory thought that it recognized the plague microbe at the time, and according to a scenario now familiar to us tragically, the initial reaction was meditation and procrastination rather than sounding the alarm.
| French writer Albert Camus, author of the novel "The Plague" published in 1947, won the Nobel Prize for Literature (Al-Jazeera). |
An elderly physician named Castel learned that he was plagued, but to reassure those present, he said he believed he was not a plague because formal recognition would compel them to take harsh measures.
Initially, individual cases of fever were reported with other complications. Later, with evidence confirming that the disease is spreading rapidly and threatening to kill half of the city's population in a short time, drastic measures have been taken that can be compared to measures to prevent the current Corona pandemic.
And as the narrator says in the novel, "The reality is that no one thought about moving - as long as each doctor did not stand in only two or three cases - but according to some of them, he thinks of adding numbers, he will panic and fade."
Dual destiny
The plague takes its path almost on a double scale and destiny. While Father Panello considered him a deserving collective punishment, Dr. Rio heroically attempted to do everything in his power to fight disease and save lives.
Dr. Ryu says in the novel, "Father Panilo has not seen enough death, which is why he speaks in the name of another fact." Jean Taro, one of the protagonists, also made every effort to organize health teams and take preventive measures to combat the disease.
Tournament and
Rhetoric For Rio, health teams must be reasonably organized to serve an "objective objective", which is simply to fight the plague.
The narrator points out that giving greater importance to heroic deeds should also lead, paradoxically, to indirectly and vigorously honoring evil.
The writer stated that excessive rhetoric of goodwill and heroism that defends us against death will allow us implicitly to believe that good deeds have merit because they are rare, while human actions are usually governed by evil and indifference. But things may be different. People are good and not bad, but they are often ignorant, as he put it.
Community spirit
without possible foresight, ignorance always remains evidence of the inability to visualize hidden wisdom, the destiny that transcends the person and the individual events from which a blind destiny is made that is expressed through a series of logical and repeated actions.
Thanks to the plague, even the most suffering and lonely people find ways to become partners in society. "The only way to bring people together is to send the plague to them," says Mr Cotard, who has already tried in a moment of madness to hang himself.
The first critics questioned the reason for using the plague as a metaphor or symbol to describe his experience in living during the occupation, and they claimed that the novel referred to this description German invasion driven by a Nazi ideology that includes genocide, because the plague may be a metaphor for referring to evil in the world such as wars, disease and misery, or the army The German who invaded Europe quickly resembles an epidemic, and the announcement of the quarantine on the city of Oran may symbolize the isolation and unity of the universe.
Feeling a catastrophe
In August, four months after the first warning in Oran, the plague darkened everything, so fate was no longer individual, but history became collective, and feelings shared by all. But now Father Banilo's first preaching lecture is not enough to understand the deep meaning of the disaster.
The narrator was only a doctor, Bernard Rio, and a stranger, Jean Taro, who had taken on his ethical reflections, both of which led voluntary environmental sanitation teams who were transporting corpses and isolating patients, which helped protect the healthy population.
However, the enormity of the epidemic diminished in front of all those efforts, despite the attempts of those teams, the plague epidemic gathered its strength and began to wrestle men, women and children without discrimination, and the efforts of the protagonists had no effect, and yet the men remained full of determination, determination and integrity of intent.
Camus asked in the novel whether we can perceive suffering as a shared experience rather than as an individual burden, and it seemed that the key to this was the recognition of the universality of suffering, as the plague is an exceptional event, and the horror it unleashes is also exceptional. Every day that you leave the house, something terrible can happen, At any moment, you can get sick with a fatal disease, and the same applies to everyone you know.
| French playwright and novelist Albert Camus was born in the town of Constantine, Algeria, to a French father and a Spanish mother (Wikipedia) |
The novel and contemplation of the "plague" events compel us to think about our responsibilities towards the people around us, and it poses the struggle between individual happiness and moral commitment to the group through these live events that include Doctor Rio himself devoting to resisting the plague and solidarity with his victims and his willingness to sacrifice for that, according to the American writer Sian Ling.
Evidence of Happiness
According to Albert Camus, "the great calamities - if long - are becoming more and more monotonous."
The summary of Camus’s narration appears as though “a common struggle is what makes society possible”, and the lesson of “plague” remains that we must view ourselves as members of society and not as people who live a separate individual life from others, as the epidemic forces us to think - not only in ourselves - Rather, it is about how our actions affect others.