Hi, my name is Monte Johnson, I teach philosophy at the University of California, San Diego.
And this is the Fourth of my lectures on Albert Camus' The Plague (La Peste)
originally published
1947. I'm using the translation by Stuart Gilbert published in
1948.
So this is Part 4, and Part 4 comes after the
pedestal
climax chapter of Part 3, where the graphic description of mass death was provided.
Now we get self revelations and
transformations of the main characters; their perceptions of themselves, and of their friends.
Strangers in the world are
revealed, reflected, and change in various ways as a result of the plague. And
the chapter culminates in a very philosophical
discussion and conversation between Tarrou and Rieux and
because of this philosophical
Content I will spend most of the presentation discussing that
But first we have a description in chapter
19 after
Briefly describing the exhaustion of the essential frontline healthcare workers
Rieux and his friends during September and October
Chapter 19 mostly consists of Tarrou observations about Cottard,
the criminal, fugitive, smuggler, black marketeer. He's a vicious and unhappy man
who is thriving in a city where almost everyone except the 'healthcare heroes'
seems to be slouching towards vice, lethargy, and unhappiness, because of the horrible circumstances.
Many people are brought down to Cottard's level. Fear and cowardice are becoming widespread and commonplace.
So in this circumstance,
Cottard himself
finally feels like he belongs and he actually
sympathizes and understands the feeling of other people.
For the first time, the world and other people
make sense to him even while it's turned upside down for them.
Cottard was already cut off from other people
before they all became cut off from each other and now that they have become cut off from each other,
he has become connected to them. Like an experienced older sibling or elder. And yet ironically
he's described as mostly enjoying
associating with the youths, and their youthful pursuits; going to bars, restaurants, and clubs, where
social distancing regulations are ignored and even flaunted.
Now in
Chapter 19, we also get a description of a theater piece.
Cottard invites Tarrou to the theater to see a performance of Gluck's Orpheus,
which a troupe that has become trapped in Oran is
performing
continuously.
Now Orpheus describes the painful separation of Orpheus and his lover Eurydice.
Eurydice has died and departed for the underworld.
Orpheus' laments, begging the Lord of the underworld
to release his dead lover. These laments hardly aroused the emotion of
the audience in Oran
because they have become
indifferent to this kind of separation as a defense mechanism against their own all too real
suffering.
But they are finally jolted and surprised at the third scene when Euridice is
slipping finally away from her lover, and the actor playing Orpheus
chose this moment to stagger
grotesquely to the footlights, his arms and legs splayed out under his antique robe, and
fell down in the middle of the property
sheepfold . . . at the same moment the orchestra stop playing, the audience rose and began to leave the auditorium
slowly at first and finally the crowd
stampeded toward the exits wedged together in the bottlenecks and pouring out into the street in a confused mass
with shrill cries of dismay.
So the mythological story about the separation of
lovers due to death,
which
normally has a very
mythological and perhaps
distant feel to it. To this audience seems to be stark realism
because it's a dramatic picture of their life. In these days,
plague is on the stage in the guise of a
disarticulated mummer. The actor or
mime
represents all of their memories and so at the climax of this play where this grotesque
display takes place,
we have a kind of second climax of the novel itself after the description of death in the pedestal
Part three.
We reflect on this
allegory, which is an allegory, but it's assumed this frightening, realist dimension
occurring within Camus ' Plague, which is
itself a very realistic description of the plague. But at the same time an allegory for
the plague of
fascism, and
politics. The
separation of lovers is here used to depict or represent
not just the misery of being separated from lovers, but the permanent misery of being separated from someone you love,
permanent separation being a kind of death.
Now
character development chapter 20
discusses Rambert.
It takes place in early September and so it chronologically precedes chapter 19.
But whereas chapter 19 was general and updated us on several characters, chapter 20 is focused on Rambert.
Rambert continues to work under Rieux with the voluntary
sanitation squads,
learning that he has a fortnight to wait until the guards will at last have an
opportunity to help him escape through the front gates, at midnight, under cover of darkness.
Now on the appointed day Rambert visits the doctor at a place where Tarrou is acting as Rieux's
secretary.
They have a brief conversation in the office under
masks, "whenever any of them who spoke through the masks the muslin or gauze
bulged and grew moist over the lips. This gave a sort of unreality to the conversation.
It was like a colloquy of statues and if you've ever spoken to other people wearing a mask,
it's a very unsettling effect. You can't read their lips, or see their lips move, their facial expression is
obscured, and
it greatly inhibits communication and
connection,
But now that
Rambert has finally reached the end of his elaborate quest to escape from the town, and the plague which has been described
over several Chapters, he unexpectedly
announces that he's decided to stay and fight the plague. Because, despite his desire to reunite with his lover a
desperate desire
He says; "if he went away,
He would feel ashamed of himself, and that would embarrass his relations with the woman He loved".
So again, he acts out of shame.
But Rieux
Replies that there's nothing shameful in preferring happiness to the misery of their current situation, and Rambert agrees.
But he replies that it may be shameful to be happy by oneself. One can't be entirely
happy
when knowing that one has committed a shameful act in order to
secure that happiness or pleasure. And so Rambert has changed and he's exhibited
self-control over his desire and found a way to intelligently pursue that desire, but in a way that's moderated by
virtue. By a sense of shame in the first place,
but the result is that he will enjoy a greater share of happiness in the end
than if he had directly pursued the object of his desire without
moderating it through a sense of shame.
Now in chapter 21, the pathetic death of Othan's child Jaques is
the backdrop for a
crisis of faith on the part of Father Pantaloux.
Recall that Othan had been dismissive of the rats and the plague,
eEven refusing to socially distance when his wife was under quarantine.
But eventually
when she was, he had to be isolated at the Municipal Stadium
which has been converted into a mass isolation ward his wife and daughter
remain at the quarantine hospital, and his son Jaques is
being treated by Rieux.
He's suffering from the plague and his case is so bad
the medical team has decided to test out the
experimental plague serum on him in a last-ditch effort to save his life. And
the extreme misery and suffering of this child is graphically described and
Pantaloux, who has been serving with the voluntary  sanitation squads,
sinks to his knees and exclaims; "my god,
spare this child".
Desperately
praying to his god.
Now in the aftermath of this everybody's in a bad mood; Rieux and Pantaloux have a terse exchange of
arguments. The child was clearly innocent.
Pantaloux acknowledges this but explains that sort of thing is revolting because it passes our human understanding.
But perhaps we should love that which we cannot understand. And this enrages Rieux who replies; no Father,
I have a very different idea of love and until my dying day
I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture.
So you should not
love this, even if it's caused by God, and even if you should love God.
A scheme of things where God causes the torture of children,
that cannot be love.
Pantaloux alleges that Rieux, like him is working for mans salvation. But
Rieux replies to this;
no, I don't aim so high, I'm concerned with man's health and for me his health comes first. And
Pantaloux's
ministering to their salvation is not nearly as
useful or effective, or in the end,
sensible.
So
Chapter 22 then is focused on Father Pantaloux.
It's the end of Father Pantaloux in the previous chapter 21.
We've seen his faith tested when he witnesses the agonizing death of a Othan's son Jaques.
But
from the day on which he saw a child die,
something seemed to change in Pantaloux and his face bore traces of the rising tension of his thoughts.
Pantaloux tells Rieux that he's working on a radical essay entitled; Is a
Priest Justified in Consulting a Doctor? And when Rieux
expresses interest in the topic,
Pantaloux tells him to attend his upcoming sermon.
So the change in Pantaloux's own view of things is represented by the
differences between the first sermon. The first sermon was
given in Part two chapter 11, it described the plague as; a divine punishment,
a kind of collective punishment for people not being religious enough and
in this Second sermon in chapter 22, the plague is instead described a bit differently; as a test of
religious faith.
Can one maintain faith in the face of these horrors?
Whereas the scientific approach tries to explain the cause of the plague itself.
And this is what Rieux and his associates are interested in.
Pantaloux instead stresses learning the lesson that the plague has to teach.
He distinguishes between things that we can grasp as coming from God and things that we cannot;
for example, a libertine burning in hell, and a child suffering are both evils.
But the former is something we can grasp, we can think of it as being a punishment.
But the latter we cannot grasp and cannot understand since the child is innocent.
Now Pantaloux does not take the easy way,
and say that the child's suffering will later be compensated for by some kind of eternal bliss.
For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can
compensate for a single moment of human suffering?
Rieux
asks;
so as a result,
we have to accept all suffering as coming from God and being due to God,
Even though we can't grasp the cause. And so a time of
testing has come for all of us. We must either believe everything;
believe what the church is telling us, or deny it all.
Tarrou later summarizes Pantaloux's position as a
Christian should either lose his faith or should consent to the things that are happening like innocent
children.
Dying
Pantaloux
refuses to lose his faith in God.
Therefore, he must embrace even a child's suffering as having some kind of positive
meaning -
that God has some intention with this that we simply cannot grasp.
Pantaloux
rejects the
Naturalistic approach to understanding how the disease afflicts people as a result of physical processes,
and it's really a pretty random thing. Some of them are innocent, some of the innocent are afflicted.
Whereas some of the guilty, like Cottard
aren't afflicted with it and
the doctors natural scientific explanations can make sense of this, but
Pantaloux has a crisis of making sense of this, within his own
theistic
worldview.
So he's been forced to the conclusion that we must accept even these horrible
senseless things, as somehow coming from God, and being meant by God. And thus to answer
the question in his article, a priest is not
justified in consulting a doctor.
So when Pantaloux becomes ill,
he refuses to consult a doctor in
accordance with his principles.
When he finally consents to being brought into the hospital, just to be in accordance with the Civic regulations,
Rieux
can't actually diagnose the illness. It seems that Pantaloux has a serious illness
but it's not the plague. He doesn't show any of the symptoms of the plague,
still his condition steadily worsens. Rieux
offers to stay with him in what seemed to be his last hours, but Pantaloux refuses saying;
Priests can have no friends. They've given their all to God.
So he dies,
clutching a crucifix, The perfect representation of
innocence suffering a
divine mystery in which he's put all his faith.
Chapter 23 begins on November
2nd, All Souls Day, the Day of the Dead.
Nicer cooler weather has come on, but the cemeteries remain unvisited.
Flowers are no longer brought to the graves. The Day of the Dead is every day now.
The citizens
do some absurd things like buying and wearing oiled raincoats even in fair weather because of a
report and a rumor that these have been used effectively against the plague (and were
200 years ago).
Meanwhile, health care workers must all wear
masks and protective gear
because the
Pneumatic form of the plague is becoming more common than the Bubonic one. So the
contagious danger
is even worse and
shops
profiteer from selling these things that are supposed to be like
protection but also have raised prices on essential foodstuffs.
The result is that the poor are hurt
disproportionately.
Also because they've all become unemployed, and
there's a growing sense of injustice, that just makes everybody
much more upset.
Meanwhile, the newspapers maintain a kind of optimism, as does one of Rieux's associates,
Dr. Richard. Dr.
Richard points out that the graph - after it's long rising curve - had flattened out. So they've
flattened the curve of the death rate.
It's still horribly high,
but people who were desperate for good news are relieved to hear that the rate of increase in death has slowed. But
just before the authorities are set to announce a
relaxation of the public health restrictions,
the optimist, Dr. Richard is himself
ironically carried off by the plague -
now the Municipal Stadium.
Once used for sport events, has become a guarded isolation camp. Tarrou and Rambert
visit it. Those quarantined sit in the stands silently watching a field,
once a host to
exciting spectacles of sports, is now pitched with tents on which there is no movement or action whatsoever.
Just people killing time and staring off into space.
There
Tarrou and Rambert
encounter Othan
who asked them if his son Jaques
suffered before dying? He's got the news that he died. But since he is in isolation, he wasn't able to be there.
They reply to him that they thought that he had not suffered.
in fact,
he had suffered so badly that it provoked a crisis of faith on the part of Father Pantaloux as we saw.
Now
after this Tarrou and Rieux go late one evening to visit
the
Spaniard asthma patient. And while there they're invited to go upstairs and enjoy the view from chairs on
the terrace above. And as they do Tarrou
warmly asks Rieux to take an hour off for their friendship, in which they have a very philosophical
conversation.
Tarrou begins
by telling about his late father, who as a prosecuting attorney,
had brought his son to watch him at court. One day
the young boy,
fixated on the defendant perceiving him not as a criminal, but just an extremely unfortunate person.
He experiences a
terrifying intimacy with the man and a resulting alienation from his father.
Who vehemently and with great
rhetorical and oratorical power, manages to get the man convicted and sentenced to death.
His father is then required to be at the execution,
which Tarrou describes as - what would better be called murder in its most despicable form.
Tarrou  runs away from home,
abandons his middle-class upbringing, and becomes an impoverished drifter.
He says; "my real interest in life
was the death penalty ...  to my mind the social order around me was based on the death sentence".
And so he joins up with other radical activists;
"needless to say", he says; "I know that we - on occasion passed sentences of death".
Suggestion that he engaged and some kind of supported terroristic activities.
"But I was told that these few deaths were inevitable for the building up of a new
world in which murder would cease to be".
But he becomes disillusioned with these tactics and the means don't seem to him to justify
the end. And here we cannot help but see a hint of
autobiography. Because Camus, of course, was part of the French Resistance and was forced to consider how his own
pacifistic views and views, about murder and the death penalty
related to resistant
plots. For example; to kill Germans, bomb
German soldiers.
He discusses such moral issues in his letters to a German friend.
The friend had become a Nazi, and
Camus
discusses why he thinks
participating in resistance efforts could be justified?
Now Tarrou
describes
witnessing another execution later in life.
And seeing the agonized look, on the condemned man's face, makes everything real before his eyes. And he's forced to
reflect on his own connections to murder;
"I learned that I had had an indirect hand in the death of thousands of people;
that I'd even brought about their deaths by approving of acts and principles which could only end that way".
Concepts like
necessity, force majeure,
etc are abused in order to excuse murder which seems more and more common. So that
he says; "there's a sort of competition for who will kill the most".
Recall that this is being written during and immediately
after World War II,
and ask yourself whether this competition of 'who will kill the most' has
changed since then.
Finally, he says; "as time went on I merely learned that even those
were better than the rest who could not keep themselves nowadays from killing or letting others kill
because such is the logic by which they live, and that is why we cannot stir a finger in this world without risk of
bringing death to somebody.
So we're implicated in a network of
causes and institutions
so that we are
connected to people being put to death, people being killed in war, and so on.
And so this occasions a
reflection on  - what we might call plague ethics.
Having come to the realization that everyone, by being part of an unjust society is
implicated, and murderer Tarrou  is
ashamed.
He compares the moral culpability to this to being plague-stricken;
"I realized that we all have plague, and I have lost my peace ...
I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague-stricken ...
So that is why I resolve to have no truck with anything which directly or indirectly, for good reasons or bad,
brings death to anyone or justifies putting another to death".
Now this of course, since all organized society is connected with institutions and practices
that implicate us in murder,
requires him to live apart from society.
He says; once I definitely refused to kill I doomed
myself to an exile that can never end. And thus his route; his life as a rootless
drifter, who just happened to wander to
Oran before the action of the novel starts.
Tarrou  wants to become a kind of Saint,
despite his disbelief in God. He pursues
moral purity by a radical change in his lifestyle;
"that, too, is why this epidemic has taught me nothing new, except that I must fight at your side.
(referring to Rieux) I know positively yes -  Rieux, I can say I know the world
inside out as you may see - that each of us has the plague within him;
no one no one on earth is free from it.
And I know too, that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest, in a careless moment,
we breathe in someone's face and
fastened the infection on him".
What's natural is the microbe. All the rest -  health, integrity, purity (if you like) - is a product of the human will,
of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man,
the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention. And it needs
tremendous willpower, a neverending tension into the mind, to avoid such lapses.
Yes Rieux, it is a worrying business being plague stricken, but it is still more wearying
to refuse to be it.
That's why
everyone in the world today looks so tired. Everyone is more or less sick of plague.
This is an absolutely key philosophical
message that
resonates to this day.
Just as those who are stricken with plague don't choose to be infected and don't choose to harm others.
Those of us who live in and partake in an unjust society don't choose or intend to harm others,
but we bear responsibility
for this harm. And so we can be expected to take enormous
precautions and pains in order to avoid doing so.
Just as those who may carry the plague can be expected to take enormous
precautions and pains, not only to avoid infecting others,
but also to help prevent further infection and save those who are infected. So we're expected to
self-isolate, observe stay at home orders, wear masks, socially distance. And
to the extent that we
consciously and
self-consciously do so and are careful to do so, then we minimize our
connection with this chain of causes, which results in other people's deaths.
But that means, that doing the opposite of those -
refusing to socially distance, going to underground clubs,
refusing to wear masks,
protesting stay at home orders, not staying isolated when we're sick, that these
directly and morally implicate us.
Now it's interesting Torrou's ethics could be compared to Socrates in the Gorgias.
Socrates in the Gorgias
says that he can imagine nothing worse than putting another man to death
unjustly. And
that he'd rather have harm inflicted upon him than inflicted on
another in the least bit. So Tarrou is willing to
sacrifice his prosperous lifestyle, and become a rootless
drifter, in order to minimize the
possibility that he's putting another man -
to death unjustly. Or we may compare his view, as we did
in Part two.
Compare it to Epicurus and Lucretius who described the tranquility that follows from avoiding any
wrongdoing and thus the pangs of conscience and fear of punishment. And claims that this
tranquility is worth the sacrifice of
ambition and desire for worldly success.
Or we may compare him to Hobbes, who discerns that the first law of nature is to always pursue
peace and abandon any right of nature to kill another person even for your own
protection.
These philosophical reflections
almost close out this part, but the part ends with some glimmers of
tranquillity, some even possibilities of happiness that seemed to follow
from the
careful
philosophical knowledge and reflection that the characters Tarrou and Rieux have.
They cap off their philosophical
discussion with going out to the sea for night swimming.
There's a brief an unexpected feeling of tranquility, a kind of windfall of happiness for them.
They swim together and feel at once
isolated from the world and at last free of the town and the plague.
They have a very strong fellow-feeling and can already see that they will cherish the memory of this brief respite
despite the horrors to which they must now return.
Such are their thoughts as they passed the plague Watchmen in returning to town.
In town, Rieux is plunged back into constant work.
He helps Othon secure release from the Municipal Stadium
quarantine camp with some unexpected difficulties.
But once he does Othan decides not to return to work
but rather to take leave from work and, to Rieux's astonishment, to return to the camp as a
volunteer and he says; I know it may sound absurd, but I'd feel less
separated from my boy.
So Othon, this
official in the city, has had a complete turnaround from not wanting to bother
with the rats or the plague; not acknowledging that they were a problem;
refusing to social distance; refusing to wear a mask as
the members of his own family become sick and his son actually dies from it. It changes him
completely and he decides to
surround himself with the plague but focus on those less fortunate
within, him trying to help others and that makes him feel better.
Now as a dismal
Christmas time approaches. Cottard meanwhile has illegal enterprises that are flourishing.
Grand, his neighbor, however is not doing very well.
Rieux finds him wandering in the town and they share together a moment of anguish.
It turns out that Grand is delirious with illness ,Rieux
diagnoses him with the plague. The case looks bad and
Torrou offers to stay with Grand on the night that Rieux predicts Grand will not survive.
But in the morning, it has turned out that Grand has survived, and will live on, and so be able to do his
solid and continuous work. And over the next couple of weeks, there are
more pleasant
recoveries and surprises like this and even the rats seem to be returning, only this time
their appearance is a sign of a slow
return to normality.
