The Plague
Albert Camus (1947)
“A city sealed by plague becomes a laboratory for the only question that matters: what do you do when the universe doesn't care?”
Short Summary
When bubonic plague strikes the Algerian coastal city of Oran, the authorities seal the gates and quarantine the entire population. Dr. Bernard Rieux organizes sanitary squads to fight the epidemic while the city descends into fear, profiteering, and despair. The journalist Rambert tries to escape to rejoin his wife but ultimately stays to help. The enigmatic Tarrou keeps notebooks recording the plague's toll on human behavior. Father Paneloux preaches that plague is divine punishment — then watches a child die and loses his certainty. After months of suffering, the plague retreats as arbitrarily as it arrived. Tarrou dies just before the gates reopen. Rieux is revealed as the narrator — the anonymous chronicler who recorded everything with deliberate restraint. In the final pages, he warns that the plague bacillus never truly dies.
Detailed Summary
The novel opens in Oran, a French Algerian city that Camus describes as ugly, commercial, and ordinary — a place where people work, make money, and avoid thinking about death. In April of an unspecified year in the 194-s, rats begin dying in the streets. Thousands of them, bleeding from their mouths...