Today in class, we talked a lot about how Camus establishes the setting for The Plague. To be honest, a lot of the first section of this book blended together for me - the middle-class French men with unmemorable names, the rats (and then humans) gruesomely dying in the streets, the conversations among medical professionals - many of the finer details are difficult for me to recall. However, the description of Oran stuck with me. The narrator describes one of the blandest and ugliest towns I have ever imagined, with not very nice humans living in it.
At first, I thought it was strange that Camus had selected such a boring setting for his book. Then I realized how intentional it was, and how important. Camus is using the story of the plague as a medium through which to analyze fascism and the Nazis. That is his primary focus, and in order to fully focus on the plague he needs to eliminate all distractions (e.g. a noteworthy setting). He is isolating the variable by placing it in an extremely controlled setting.
I think Camus has done quite a good job of ignoring Oran thus far. I haven't found myself wondering about what the buildings look like, if the streets are crowded, or what color the sea is. I also haven't wondered about how the larger community is responding, or even what the people look like. Camus has managed to do something fascinating - he has found a way to write an entire book about a town without writing much about the town at all.
It is pretty cool how Camus makes such an effort to color in the town with people rather than with superfluous imagery. Maybe we think of the town as so drab because of the relatively unsavory people in it (like those who spit on cats), because Camus makes it seem like the setting and the people are a co-dependent entity, almost as one being.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that the sort of bland backdrop is a key and purposeful element of this book. The way I thought about it was that he made it so plain is so the reader can project themselves onto it, morph it and visualize in whatever way they see fit. Maybe even imagine that it's their own town. I also definitely agree that it's written sort of as a control; here's this completely ordinary town, and now watch how this plague makes it extraordinary and tainted. Very interesting observations!
ReplyDeleteBy making the town of Oran itself such an un-magical and uninspiring place, Camus definitely does draw our attention towards the main cast of characters, who all respond to the plague in highly unique ways, and who seem well-crafted (although, I agree, they did all blend together in the very beginning). However, I've been surprised thus far with how hard it is to find the WWII parallels, even in the "blank-slate" town of Oran. In this book, Camus seems to be studying human nature under the influence of an actual disease that affects people randomly and is essentially an automatic death-sentence to those who contract it. I've hardly been able to find any connection to a Nazi occupation.
ReplyDeleteThe very fact that I haven't thought about Oran or even considered your points made in this post proves your point! I also think in making Oran a blank, bland canvas, he can truly focus on the human psychology and how humans react to calamity. I also think it's cool how he explores this through only a small handful of characters.
ReplyDeleteI can see how Camus is conveying the fascism of the Nazis through The Plague, but I think a big chunk of it can be attributed to the environment/setting as well. The isolation as well as the mindset of the people when their lives are put in danger, change to a sort of emergency state that can be compared to that of during war.
ReplyDeleteI've never been to France, but reading this made me wonder if a person living there would recognize Oran as a stereotypical French town. But yeah it definitely makes sense that he would want a town anyone could picture and project their own home onto
ReplyDeleteI really like this post, I hadn't really noticed it myself until reading this, but you're completely right. Another thing I find interesting is that it sometimes seems like Camus didn't just craft Oran to unremarkable, he actively takes away or downplays parts of Oran throughout the book that would interfere with the focus on the plague itself. He mentions rising prices and food shortage, but just barely as a side note to lead into a discussion about the people in Oran. The "Arab Sector" had been brought up near the very beginning of the book, before the plague started, yet Camus studiously ignores the place when the plague begins. Maybe he thinks if he were to focus too much on these things that could be tied to the actual town of Oran and not just the people in it, it would shatter the illusion he'd created that the citizens are practically living in a vacuum.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that Oran is an extremely boring and unattractive town, serving for a decent "control" location to observe people's reaction to the plague. However, we must consider that when we extend the impact of the plague to larger/smaller towns, or in fact, any other town than Oran, there are going to be differing factors that changes the path the plague takes. However, psychologically, Camus did a great job with a setting that removes outside factors as much as possible.
ReplyDeleteYour interpretation of Camus' purposefulness regarding his description of the town and how he uses that to write his story is definitely not something I have spent a huge amount of time on, so this was actually really good to think about for me. I do agree that Camus seems to write about the town of Oran, but not go into too much depth about the specific details of the town. Instead, he lets his descriptions of the people and the people's actions build a personality of the town for the reader to interpret.
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