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The PlagueThe Plague is a novel written by Albert Camus. It was first published in 1947. Through the description of the plague sweeping through a town in Algeria, the author poses several existentialist...
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The PlagueThe wonderful thing about Albert Camus' The Plague is that it depicts both the negative and positive of the human condition. The three characters who most depict the human condition are Dr. Bernard...
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The PlaguePublished merely three years after the havoc caused by World War II in 1948, Albert Camus's The Plague tells the story about an outbreak of bubonic plague, historically dubbed "the plague" , in a...
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The PlagueAt the base of modern existential literature is the axiom that “existence precedes essence”; that is, humanity defines itself by its actions and is not pre-designed by a “creator.” The plague...
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The PlagueThe theme of religion is a very important one in this excellent classic novel, and in particular Camus analyses the human tendency to turn to religion in times of hardship or disaster. The main...
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The PlagueWhat is so interesting about the bleak presentation of human nature in this novel is the way in which Camus presents the various characters in this text reacting to their situation. Rieux, the...
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The PlagueAt the end of The Plague, Rieux reveals himself to be the narrator of the novel. Unlike a typical first-person narrator, Rieux refers to both himself and others in third person. This technique...
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The PlagueDr. Bernard Rieux, the unnamed narrator of the novel, begins his story some time in the 1940s in the city of Oran, Algeria. The French port on the Mediterranean is a mix of white, brown, and...
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The PlagueThe question of evil, with regards to solitude and solidarity, has to do with the response people have toward the plague. With the town sealed off, some are separated from loved ones, but they are...
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The PlagueIn The Plague, we learn that the whole city of Oran in Algeria is in the midst of an outbreak of bubonic plague. Dr. Bernard Rieux and another doctor, Dr. Castel, both warn the authorities that...
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The PlagueWe can link this answer to the literary movement called absurdism, of which this text is a prime example. This movement points out the meaningless nature of life. We can see how this movement is...
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The PlagueSeparation is of course a central theme in this masterful novel, as the characters in this city become forcibly separated from the rest of the world as they stay in quarantine thanks to the plague...
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The PlagueWe are never told exactly what Rieux’s young wife dies of, but her departure for a sanatorium at the very start of the story suggests that maybe she is suffering from tuberculosis or some similar...
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The PlagueWhy is Cottard’s crime never specifically revealed? Does the nature of that crime make a difference?Knowing the details of Cottard's past life might provide additional insight into his character. However, the nature of his crime matters less than the influence it has on his current actions. His...
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The PlagueIn Albert Camus's The Plague, the people of Oran lack freedom in many ways. Because their city is cut off from the outside world to stop the spread of the plague, the people are not free to come...
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The PlagueThe last sentence of the novel begins with the juxtaposition of the sound of joy "rising from the town" with Rieux's knowledge that their joy will be short-lived. It is a philosophy of despair, one...
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The PlagueIsotopy consists in the permanence of contextual features ("classemes"), whose variations, instead of destroying the unity of the text, serve to confirm it. The features in question are...
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The PlagueThe novel, The Plague by Albert Camus takes place in the 1940s in the Algerian city of Ornan. It deals with a variation of the bubonic plague, which creates havoc and death. There have been many...
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The PlagueClearly one of the central ideas of this powerful and rather depressing text is that of existentialism and absurdism, which points towards the meaninglessness of life and all that we hold most dear...
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The PlagueRieux is the narrator of the story, although he does not reveal this to the reader until the end. He disguises his role, speaking of himself in the third person throughout the bulk of the...