The plague is everyone's business, and everyone should do their part. - "The Plague"
Also known as the Plague and the Black Death, the plague first broke out in the Eastern Roman Empire in 542 AD, known as the "Justinian Plague". The Justinian plague destroyed almost all of Constantinople and soon spread to Europe, directly causing a 1/5 population decline in southern Europe, and the entire European continent was full of mourning and bones.
From 1347 to 1351, the plague swept through Europe again, and because of the rapid onset of the plague (the infected person would die within a day), the skin of the deceased was ulcerated and accompanied by dark spots, and the plague was called the "Black Death" by the people of the time. The plague killed a total of 25 million Europeans, or 1/3 of Europe's population at the time.
It is particularly worth remembering that the outbreak of the plague in Harbin, northeast China, in 1911, caused 60,000 deaths, becoming one of the indelible wounds in Chinese's memory.
Over the past two centuries, the plague has claimed a total of 100 million lives.
The novel "Plague" by the French writer Abel Camus faithfully restores the real state of people's lives when the plague comes, and how humans fight against the virus.
Camus was a famous French writer and playwright of the 20th century, whose representative works include "The Outsider", "The Plague", "The Myth of Sisyphus", etc., and he is also a representative of existential literature and "absurd philosophy".
Plague was published in 1947 and was loved by readers as soon as it was published. Since its publication, plague has sold 5 million copies in mainland France alone.
Camus won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 and was one of the youngest laureates in Nobel prize history. The Nobel Prize's speech to him is that his important literary works have seriously and thoroughly elucidated the problems facing the conscience of contemporary people.
Camus struggled to survive poverty from an early age. Born in the small town of Mondovy in Algeria, Africa, he lost his father at the age of one, and his mother was overly sad because of the loss of a loved one, and he was deaf and speechless. He also had an older brother, and after his father's death, Camus's mother took the two of them to live on the help of relatives.
It was not until the fifth grade of Camus's elementary school that the teacher Louis Germain discovered his talent for language, enthusiastically applied for a scholarship for him, and opened the door to literature for him. At the Nobel Prize ceremony, Camus thanked his teacher Louis Germain.
From this point of view, although Camus is accustomed to all kinds of life, he still has warmth in his heart. He never forgot the relatives and friends who brought him warmth. These warmths are infused into the literary works by him through the end of the pen.
In 1960, Camus was in a car accident while riding a friend's car home, and both he and his friend died. Later generations erected a monument to him in Tibassa, which reads:
Here I learned what people call glory, the right to love without restraint.
The Plague tells a true story, which took place around the 1940s in the city of Oran, Algeria.
The entire novel is based on the timing of the whole process of the plague. The whole process is divided into 5 stages:
Stage One: Ignorance makes the virus come as violently as a rainstorm
On April 16 of that year, a very unusual and trivial incident occurred in the city of Oran, when a dead rat died where it should not have appeared.
Next, thousands of rats came out of the rat hole and died on the road, on the street, in people's homes, and even worse, they would crawl to the feet of passers-by, scream, and then vomit blood and die.
At this time, the inhabitants of oran city were still unaware of the impending disaster:
Civil servant Gran enthusiastically saves Kotal, who is looking for death, Tharu, an outsider, is keen to record images of old men spitting at cats, journalist Lambert looks around for news topics to report, and the author's incarnation of the book "Recorder", Dr. Rieux, is performing his own magic everywhere.
And the lively residents, who watch movies, drink coffee, live their lives, and everything is so unhurried.
Just as the dead rats were being hotly discussed, the first case of plague appeared, the concierge of Dr. Rieux's apartment.
Dr. Rieux found him vomiting, swollen lymph nodes all over his body, high fever, extreme thirst, and spots on his body. The concierge died the day after the onset of illness.
The second, third, and tenth people all experienced the same symptoms. Dr. Rieux realized: The plague is coming?
Castel, an old doctor who had been to China, asserted to Dr. Rieux that the plague was coming.
The two came to the government together to report the situation, and the governor decided to deal with the "plague" and took some minor epidemic prevention measures.
At this time, people are still ignorant, but the virus does not know whether anyone has noticed its footsteps, and it has raised the merciless death sickle at people.
The second stage: the plague came, and the city was closed for its life
On the day the death toll reached 30, the governor finally ordered the proclamation: The plague is coming, lockdown!
At this time, people only listened to the name of the plague, did not see its face, and naturally did not know the severity of the virus. However, the lockdown was a big deal for the inhabitants of Oran, who were forced to isolate themselves from the world, unable to go out on their own, and unable to enter their loved ones outside.
So some people began to eat human blood steamed buns, telling everyone that alcohol can kill the virus, so people drank beer, spirits, and shouted in the streets when they were drunk, without any sense of vigilance against danger.
At this time, three people deserve our special attention: the journalist Lambert, the diary-loving Tarrou, and Dr. Rieux.
Lambert missed his girlfriend outside the city and wanted to escape from the city.
Seeing that the epidemic was getting worse and the medical staff was seriously insufficient, Taru volunteered to set up a volunteer anti-epidemic team.
Dr. Rieux was busy, but even if he had the highest medical skills, he was no better than the scythe of the god of death, he could only save one person at a time, and the god of death could harvest the lives of dozens or hundreds of people at a time. And for plague patients, Dr. Rieux can't do much, and antiviral serums haven't been developed yet.
Human life is like a leek, one stubble after another dies under the scythe of the plague.
Stage Three: Despair and intensification
The outbreak was still in April, but now it has entered July and August, and the arrival of summer has caused an unbearable heat, which in turn has exacerbated the spread of the epidemic.
The death toll rises sharply, and even worse, a stage actor falls alive on the stage, and he also suffers from the plague, which awakens people from numbness, panic and despair spread through the city, and then people are indifferent to their surroundings, trying to cut off the message of the plague by cutting off contact with the outside world.
Dr. Rieux, Tarou, Gran, and the journalist Lambert who decided to stay and fight together, the anti-epidemic team they formed together is still struggling at this moment, and more and more people have joined the volunteer team, but in addition to the quarantine of the epidemic, they also have to carry out the task of disposing of the body.
At first, each corpse also had an acupuncture point and a coffin, and then it was divided into male and female corpse pits, one layer separated by lime and soil, and a corpse pit did not know how many layers were built, and the coffins were also changed from a person's exclusive to a public resource, which was responsible for transporting the bodies from the hospital to the cemetery, vacating them and recycling them.
Later, there was not enough land to bury the bodies, so the government activated the crematorium, and the whole city was submerged in the black smoke of the crematorium.
The bodies ended up with only one name on the roster, and their relatives evolved from mourning to cold signatures.
Man disappears between heaven and earth in the stroke of a loved one.
Stage 4: Serum onset of action, weak outbreak
During this period, the plague also completed the deformation, and Åland City had plague and pneumonic plague, and people with pneumonic plague would have severe lesions in their lungs.
However, after unremitting efforts, the serum was finally developed and had a utility.
Gran contracted pneumonic plague, but thankfully he survived, and more people began to recover. Everything is moving in a good direction.
Dr. Rieux and Tarou became friends, and Tarou revealed his true identity to him, and they even went to the sea together to take a bath.
People began to imagine that if the plague was lifted, they would live a more meaningful life.
Only Kotal did not show the slightest joy, and he even hoped that the plague would not be lifted, because he had committed a crime, and during the plague lockdown, he was equivalent to a suspended sentence. Now, the plague was receding, and seeing his judgment day approached, Kotal was anxious.
Stage Five: The plague is gone, but the grief is not far away
Just two days before the announcement of the lifting of the plague, Dr. Rieux's friend and "fighter" Tarou fell ill with the plague and died on the eve of the lifting of the ban.
Finally, the gates of oran city were reopened, some people looked forward to returning their relatives, while others would face the dilemma of people going to the empty building, their relatives have become a name, and they have long since dissipated into green smoke over Oran City.
Dr. Rieux also received a telegram that his wife had died a week earlier.
Kotal went crazy with extreme anxiety, and after shooting at the crowd, he was arrested by the police.
The plague was gone, and those who had vowed to live more meaningfully during the lockdown went into movie theaters and cafes as usual, and Dr. Rieux continued to treat and save people as usual.
The plague has not yet gone, because the plague bacillus is still hidden in furniture and underwear, bedding, and they can sleep for decades. They will wait patiently in rooms, cellars, chests, handkerchiefs, or waste paper, and when one day they will summon the rats again and send them to die in a happy city, bringing disaster and lessons.
In Plague, Camus does not admit that there are real heroes, whether dr. Rieux or volunteers Tarrou, Gran, or Lambert, whom Camus considers to behave perfectly normally. He argues that "excessive emphasis on noble deeds can turn into indirect and powerful praise for sin." ”
Whether it is dr. Rieux, who is dedicated to his duties, or Tarrou, Gran and Lambert, who come forward in times of crisis, they do very ordinary things, the most ordinary good in human nature.
Camus said through the characters: Life has no meaning in the first place. So what is the meaning of the person as the subject of life? It doesn't make sense. The only meaning is memory. The words they have said, the things they have done, the good deeds they have done, if they can remain in people's memories, can be regarded as the meaning of life.
Albert Einstein said that only by devoting oneself to society can one find the meaning of what is actually a short and risky life.
So in this plague, to say what defeated it, not time, the plague lasted for ten months; not the season, from April of the first year to February of the following year, experiencing spring, summer, autumn and winter in the middle; not faith, even the priest who believed in Christ finally did not believe and died in disappointment...
It was goodness, it was goodness that defeated the plague. Good to make people unscrupulous and steal, good to make Lambert not stay out of the matter, good to make Dr. Rieux loyal, good to make Gran willing to give, good to let Tarou sympathize with the weak in the name of justice.
If people do not have goodness, even if science is developed, the disaster caused by the virus to mankind is still immeasurable. It is with the dam of goodness that the virus is resisted and contained, and finally defeated.
The plague is merciless, but man is sentient, and this emotion is intolerable, it is sympathy, it is goodness, it is hope and tomorrow.