Albert Camus

1
Albert Camus

• The Plague

2
Albert Camus (1913-1960)

• Born in Algeria to a working class colonial
  family
• Father was killed in WWI
• Mother mute, illiterate, supported family by
  cleaning houses
• Was able to study due to scholarships
• Joined the Communist party in 1934 (left it two
  years later)
• Established the Theater for the Worker in Algiers
• Took part in Resistance in France
• Later edited journal Combat
• Nobel prize in 1957 for illuminating the
  problems of the human conscience in our time
• Died in a car accident in 1960

3
Principal works

• The Stranger (1942)
• The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
• Caligula (1944)
• The Plague (1947)
• The Fall (1956)
• Exile and the Kingdom (1957)

4
Camus Nobel acceptance speech

• The writers function is not without its arduous
  duties. By definition, he cannot serve today
  those who make history he must serve those who
  are subject to it.

5
The Plague

• extract appeared clandestinely in a collection of
  Resistance texts in occupied France
• the novel was initially produced as an
  underground testimony, as a verbal action of
  resistance which, as such, is not a simple
  statement or description of the historical
  conflict it narrates, but an actual intervention
  in this conflict (Felman, 98-99)

6
Camus concepts of existence and revolt

• Existence makes humans different from things
• The power within us to be free
• Power to understand
• Ability to feel passion
• Things
• Can be pushed by forces around them
• Are in bondage to their environment
• Cannot understand
• Are passionless
• They are, they do not exist
• When we give up liberty, lucidity and passionate
  involvement with the world, we become a mere
  thing

7
Revolt

• The movement from thinghood to full existence
• Phases
• Rock-like somnolence
• A shock or crisis during which the absurdity of
  the world around us becomes clear and inescapable
• Free choice of a reaction or attitude toward this
  absurdity
• The use of our freedom to act (to do something
  about this absurdity)
• Think about Where we see these phases in The
  Plague?

8
The Plague

• Opening of the novel
• The narrator
• The city
• the inhabitants
• the plague as metaphor

9
The characters

• Michel
• Dr. Rieux
• Tarrou
• Grand
• Rambert
• Cottard
• Prefect
• Paneloux
• Othan