Let's Go To The Stacks

What can literature tell us about post-Katrina events?

Albert Camus (1913 - 1960) wrote The Plague in 1946. The distilled version of the plot: the town of Oran is quarantined following an outbreak of the plague. At the time of the writing, the plague was a metaphor for Nazi ideology. But the beauty of metaphors means it can just as easily apply to to the tragic events in the South.

Part 2 of the book tells what happens when the plague becomes the concern of all of us. In this section, the townspeople struggle to fight their individual battles against the plague and the suffering and separation it forces them to endure. Some begin negotiating with smugglers, trying to imagine ways to escape the city and meet up again with their loved ones. The town priest preaches a fiery sermon that claims that God has sent the disease upon the people of Oran as a punishment for their sins. Others start voluntary sanitary squads in town, and many people volunteer to help.

The plague had swallowed up everything and everyone. No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and the emotions shared by all.

In Part 3, the narrator tells of the worst period of the disease, the hot summer months when the plague kills so many people that there's no space left to bury them. The town crematorium is burning bodies at top-capacity and everyone in the city suffers terrible feelings of pain and exile.

Although the effort to alleviate and prevent human suffering seems to make little or no difference in the ravages of the plague, Camus asserts that perseverance in the face of tragedy is a noble struggle even if it ultimately fails to make an appreciable difference. Such catastrophes test the tension between individual self-interest and social responsibility.