Social Representation in Camus' The Plague and Absurdism

The Absurdist Worldview and the French Philosophical Novel

The French philosophical novel of the twentieth century embodied a self-contained worldview, best described by Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus. That worldview was absurdist — an outgrowth of the demise of old-world philosophy. On one hand stood man's desire for meaning; on the other stood the overwhelming weight of empirical data coupled with Kantian metaphysics, the synthesis of which was man's inability to know anything objectively or to find the meaning he desired. This impasse constituted the absurdist worldview, and illustrating that worldview through the novel was Camus' primary function as a writer.

As American novelist Walker Percy stated, "The French have something that is rare… — a philosophical conviction with novelistic art… The combination is usually fatal, but the French seem to achieve it. Sartre solved the problem of joining art and philosophy in his best work, 'Nausea,' and Camus did so in several of his books" (Mitgang 146). With Percy's assessment in mind, this paper analyzes Camus' The Plague and shows how the novel's main characters represent the whole of society according to the philosophy of the absurd.

Oran as Everytown: Setting and the Absurd Condition

Despite the modern world's philosophical loss of universals and objectivity (Weaver 14), the narrator of The Plague attempts to relate the story as objectively as possible — not even revealing his name (that he is, in fact, Dr. Rieux) until the end. Likewise, the town, though it has a name — Oran — is so nearly nondescript that it might just as well be anonymous. As Camus states, "The town itself… is ugly. It has a smug, placid air and you need time to discover what it is that makes it different from so many business centers in other parts of the world" (14).

Oran might just as well be Everytown, as Rieux might just as well be Everyman — or at least Camus' representation of what every man must be: well-intentioned, grounded in scientific inquiry, yet adrift from the philosophical mores and theological tenets that rooted his ancestors in the "age of faith." In Rieux's time, Enlightenment doctrine has displaced religion, and identity and ethos are therefore bankrupt: "The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits" (Camus 14). This ennui is the result of what the absurdist philosopher recognizes as the inability to find happiness in the toil of Sisyphus, condemned to roll the rock up the hill only to watch it roll back down again and again.

As Camus states in The Myth of Sisyphus: "Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness. 'I conclude that all is well,' says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred."

Camus' reinterpretation of drama — comedic as well as tragic — is rooted not in medieval scholasticism or Aristotelian universality and catharsis, but in a kind of Roman stoicism, as Percy attempts to illustrate in his novel Lancelot (Mitgang 147). Like Lancelot, Camus' Dr. Rieux is a stoic of the first order — one who has learned to accept suffering, not as a fatalist, but as one who is resigned and can still find happiness in that resignation, sustained by the optimistic knowledge "that there are more things to admire in men than to despise" (Camus 289).

Camus' absurdism is an attempt at the reconciliation of that which is irreconcilable. The absurdist is, in a sense, the Western counterpart to the Sikh Guru Nanak, attaining moksha as the Jains do — through separation from the karmic body (Van Voorst 122). Those who fail to escape their bad karma are doomed to repeat the cycle over and over, whereas those who achieve moksha — release from the cycle — no longer see the cycle as repetitious but as fulfilling in itself. As Camus says, it takes an act of the imagination: "One must imagine Sisyphus happy" (The Myth of Sisyphus).

Dr. Rieux: The Stoic Ideal

The characters of The Plague are either capable or incapable of that imaginative act, and the degree to which they imagine is the degree to which they find peace and happiness. Absurdism, The Plague, and existentialism are thus intimately united, and each of Camus' characters represents a distinct reaction to the revelation that absurdity is the only rational worldview available to a member of the twentieth century. Absurdism is Camus' philosophical tent pole, and all his characters operate within the shadow of its canopy. According to Camus' concept of how the absurd man should live, one may gauge the reactions of the several characters to the plague that slips into Oran — reactions that represent at least four different ways in which society attempts to deal with life within the absurdist framework.

Rieux represents the man who accepts reality — that the universe is absurd, meaning that what man desires and what he achieves are fundamentally disparate. Rieux seeks no answer through religious faith, nor does he make violent objection to reality through suicide (as Cottard does), nor does he attempt to escape or manipulate reality to his own advantage (as Rambert initially does). Rather, Rieux represents the apex of human nobility within the absurdist worldview: calm, rational, kind, scientifically inclined, and given to action and self-sacrifice when they are demanded of him. He plays the role of physician confronting trouble as it arrives, represented by the plague itself. As the narrator who takes the time to tell us the story, Rieux embodies the ideal man in absurdist philosophy — neither nihilistic nor religious, but realistic, true, brave, and good. He is, in other words, the Romantic hero and the Roman Stoic: one who can be moved to compassion, action, and understanding.

It is Rieux who first identifies the threat of plague to the city. He is observant — neither prone to irrational alarm nor to self-satisfied complacency. He sees the signs and, rather than seeking to make himself feel better about what is happening or searching for a "way out" of the plague — which may be understood as a metaphor for modernity itself (Solzhenitsyn) — he allows himself to be inspired by Tarrou, who helps organize a treatment facility. Tarrou's conviction is one of saintliness. Affected by Tarrou's "spirituality" rather than by Paneloux's, Rieux begins to treat the symptoms of the disease, assisting patients and helping those he can.

Conclusion: Society's Spectrum Under the Plague

Each of these representations is ephemeral, as Camus suggests at the end: "The men and the women Rieux had loved and lost, all alike, dead or guilty, were forgotten" (248). The conviction or belief in transcendentals — in eternity — is absent in Camus' The Plague. High ideals are noble and praiseworthy, but in the end what remains? Spectacle, admiration, experience — the lingering effects, in other words, of the "age of faith," still being felt even as the new world sputters to a halt under the plague of modernity.

Camus' The Plague is full of characters who are representative, within the framework of absurdism, of a social spectrum ranging from good to ill. Through Rieux, Rambert, Tarrou, and Paneloux, Camus creates a panorama of social characteristics that reveal themselves when the world reveals itself to be a place of absurdity — where Sisyphus is doomed, yet happy, as Camus tells us we must imagine him, to forever roll the rock up the hill.

Works Cited

Camus, Albert. "The Myth of Sisyphus." Web. 4 Aug 2011.

Camus, Albert. The Plague. eBookEden.com. Web. 4 Aug 2011.

Mitgang, Herbert. "A Talk with Walker Percy." New York Times Book Review, 20 Feb 1977: 20–21. Print.

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksander. "An Interview with Joseph Pearce." Catholic Education. 2003. Web. 4 Aug 2011.

Van Voorst, R. E. Anthology of World Scriptures. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2000. Print.

Weaver, Richard. Ideas Have Consequences. IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Print.