The Blue Room

  The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo (c. 1508-1512) There have been many different responses to the plague. Some townspeople have chosen to essentially ignore it and wait for it to pass, some have decided to help fight the plague, and some have set their houses on fire. The way different characters have reacted reveal a lot about their worldviews. In Paneloux’s case, he has decided to give sermons about the plague, stating that the plague is part of God’s unwavering plan. Meanwhile Tarrou has set out to help the health committees control the spread of the plague, showing that he believes human efforts can save lives. I find Paneloux’s and Tarrou’s viewpoints particularly interesting, as they seem polarizing, and get into the question of whether the people on The Plague have free will. As Paneloux says in his sermons, he firmly believes that the plague is God’s will and that God’s will must be accepted in its entirety or fought in its entirety—there cannot be any middle ground. ...

  The Triumph of Death  by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1562) There are a lot of passages in The Plague that feel eerily familiar considering our current circumstances. From the fact that the characters are unsure what the illness in Oran is and what it is capable of, to the authorities in the town hesitating to reveal the dangers of the illness to the townspeople, it feels like a novel based on the year 2020. Two passages from this reading in particular struck me as being very true to what we are seeing happen in the United States. The first passage occurs shortly after Rieux admits that the disease in Oran is likely a plague, and he begins to think about the death tolls of plagues: “Figures floated across [Rieux’s] memory, and he recalled that some thirty or so great plagues known to history had accounted for nearly a hundred million deaths. But what are a hundred million deaths? […] since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million cor...