"Plague": History is always strikingly similar, and the life under the plague a hundred years ago is full of thoughts

Text | Reading Jun

The plague is one of the most terrible plagues in human history, not only in Europe, but also in China.

However, when it comes to this plague, many people feel that this matter is a bit ethereal, very far away from our reality. However, when the epidemic really happened around us, we found that what was recorded and described in the history books was so close to us.

Speaking of plague, if it were not for the epidemic that has profoundly affected human beings around the world in recent years, I am afraid that many people's memories and understandings of the plague would be very few. Even if you have seen all kinds of meticulous and terrifying plague scene descriptions from various historical materials or literary works, you do not have much impression and understanding of these descriptions.

Now, after experiencing this serious epidemic disaster, reading various works depicting the plague again, I can deeply feel the dark influence of the various plague scenes described in history.

If you want to say a book related to the plague, then this book that describes the plague and the social environment under the current epidemic has to be mentioned, this book is the French writer Albert Camus in 1947 to create the "Plague", a book closest to our current people, but also close to our current life.

01 "Reality" by absurdist writers

Before we get to this novel, it is necessary to get to know the writer in general. Readers who are familiar with his work must have been extremely impressed by his absurdist literature. For example, his novel "The Outsider" describes a very absurd character and world to the reader.

The beginning of the novel, with "no" as the beginning, vividly presents the reader with an absurd character image. After the death of his mother, the son not only did not know, but even showed a cold and ruthless attitude that had nothing to do with himself to the death of his mother. This cold-blooded approach is surprising and surprising.

However, the absurdist writer's "Plague" shows another kind of cruelty.

When it comes to plague, many people may think of the Black Death in the European Middle Ages, which caused tens of millions of deaths. Of course, in human history, this plague disaster has not only occurred. Looking at the world, many parts of the world, including China, have had large-scale outbreaks of plague, which have dealt a heavy blow and harm to mankind.

In other words, there are at least two diseases of plague: one is pneumonic plague, which appeared in European history along with the Great Plague of 1348. The other is the bubonic plague, which has a much older history and is called "God's mark" in English. The virus of pneumonic plague (Black Death) is mediated by fleas on black rats.

There have been many plagues in human history, and the number of deaths caused by them is so numerous that when it comes to plague, it is discolored.

02 "Plague": A strikingly similar scene from a hundred years ago

What exactly is Plague written about?

Albert Camus's novel The Plague is set against the backdrop of the "plague," one of the most influential plagues in human history. The main center of the novel is to describe the reactions of people in the face of the sudden plague in a city called Oran in North Africa in the 1940s.

Oran, in other words, is a city without trees, gardens, pigeons, even the sound of birds flapping their wings and rustling leaves. There, the transmutation of the four seasons that can be felt is more or less the manifestation of the sky.

However, even this has not stopped people's love of life. They also have the same worldly hobbies, love women, love movies, like to stay in cafes and drink coffee, and all kinds of social activities.

However, the plague raged, bringing "devastating" disasters to the people of the city. In this disaster, all the ugliness and beauty of human nature have been vividly reflected. In the fight against the epidemic, the various human choices made by the people of Oran City are like a mirror that reflects the cattle, ghosts, snakes and gods in the world.

The spread of the plague has caused the people in the city to die of sudden diseases such as "fever", but despite this, the people are still looking for fun, living a leisurely life, and soaking in the bar all day. The authorities are also covering up their rumors, preaching everywhere that "the residents of the city are not in danger." Later, as the death toll climbed, people began to suspect and question, and finally experts and authorities determined that it was plague.

In order to minimize deaths and effectively fight the epidemic, the authorities decided to lock down the city. After the city of Oran was locked down, the unprepared people were caught off guard by the sudden epidemic and had to say goodbye.

At first, they thought that the parting was only a few short days, but finally they found that it would be difficult to get back together, and even contact had become extremely difficult. People began to miss the beauty of the past, look forward to the early end of the plague, and began to hope that time could be turned back or faster.

It can be said that the plague deprived people of the ability to love, because there is still some hope for the demand for love, and the people of the present are only left with the moment of the moment. You can imagine how desperate this feeling is. In the first few days, everyone was angry, and later, people hoped that this collective suffering would end soon.

But how could the so-called plague disappear in a short period of time? When the plague disaster becomes more and more intense, what love, what love, what hope, morality, faith, compassion, sense of responsibility, all have been crushed by the cruel reality. Arguably, there is nothing more desperate than despair.

03 Human nature is beautiful and ugly under the plague

A philosopher once said, "But in all great calamities, we can always find the deep roots of the inferiority of the nation." Let's change this sentence: But all great disasters and calamities can always find the beauty, ugliness, goodness and evil of human nature in them.

What happened in oran city is actually just a microcosm of the history of human disasters.

The inhabitants of oran are fanatical and careless about life, love, work, and life and death. In fact, everyone wants to get rich, and the main purpose of their life is to "do business". It was a materialistic money society, a distorted and pathological society.

When a large number of rats die unnaturally, everyone is busy with their own things, looking at their own desires, no one pays attention to the rats, no one does basic epidemic prevention, and everyone does not realize what the rats will change. Even if it really comes to the moment when disaster strikes, there are still many people who believe that disaster will not come to them:

As it goes, "Everyone understands that plagues have a way to recur in the world; yet it is hard to believe that disasters will fall on us out of thin air."

Some people do not believe in the existence of the plague at all, they think that it is something that has nothing to do with humans, it is like an imaginary thing, and some people even think that it is a monster, thinking that when they wake up, the nightmare will disappear.

No one could have imagined that the town would become a place where a large number of rats would die in broad daylight, and a place where people would die of strange diseases.

It turns out that the relationship between man and nature has always been the oldest topic, and history is always strikingly similar. As for human nature, it has always been immutable. When great calamities come, we can always glimpse the good and evil of human nature.

During the plague, the three religions and nine streams of people each played their own small calculations, and the small people who had nothing to do on weekdays and were sluggish and sluggish relied on the black market doorway to bring people all kinds of fine products in the "chaotic world" and became the heroes of the city. Politicians have disguised themselves, are arrogant and ignorant, and even want to take advantage of the chaos of the disaster to make a windfall. And the small people in the city, living in terror, selfish and greedy.

The city under the plague is lifeless, no one can come and go at will, and it can be said that its scene is no different from the society under the epidemic today.

04 Reader Jun said

Throughout human history, there has never been a shortage of plague diseases, the most serious of which, including smallpox viruses and the Black Death in the Middle Ages, have caused major and catastrophic effects on mankind. In a sense, the history of human civilization is a history of resistance to viruses and nature.

In reflecting the plague, the role played by literature can be said to be pivotal, it is like a white canvas, engraving the world's hundred states on the canvas.

"The Plague", a very realistic literary work, this work is a very realistic picture of a dark society shrouded by the plague. Through this novel, we can see Camus's call for humanism and the humanity of the society.

Resources:

Gao Yu, from Camus's "Plague" to see the natural-social ethics reconstruction after the plague

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