The Plague

by Albert Camus

A man who works, poverty, the future slowly closing in, the silence of evenings around the table, there’s no place for passion in such a universe.

he believed in an all-powerful God, he would stop healing people, leaving him to care for them. But that no one in the world, no, not even Paneloux who believed he believed, thought that kind of God existed, since no one abandoned themselves totally, and that in this at least, he, Rieux, believed he was on the true path, fighting against creation, such as it was.

preventative measures. I can’t emphasize my support enough. Do you think, Doctor, that the disease will

All that a man could win at the plague’s game, and at life’s, was knowledge and memory.

plague bacillus never dies or disappears, that it can lie dormant for decades in furniture and linens, that it waits patiently in rooms, in basements, in trunks, among handkerchiefs and paperwork, and that perhaps the day would come when, for the sorrow and education of men, the plague would revive its rats and dispatch them to die in a happy city.