{"id":3529,"date":"2020-04-10T08:19:28","date_gmt":"2020-04-10T13:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/?p=3529"},"modified":"2020-04-10T08:22:18","modified_gmt":"2020-04-10T13:22:18","slug":"3529-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/3529-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading “The Plague” during a pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Print this entry<\/a><\/p>

Whoever dwells in the shelter\u00a0of the Most High<\/em>
\nwill rest in the shadow\u00a0of the Almighty.
\n\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>I will say of the\u00a0Lord, \u201cHe is my refuge\u00a0and my fortress,
\nmy God, in whom I trust.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Surely he will save you<\/em>
\nfrom the fowler\u2019s snare
\nand from the deadly pestilence.
\n\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>He will cover you with his feathers,
\nand under his wings you will find refuge;
\nhis faithfulness will be your shield\u00a0and rampart.
\nYou will not fear\u00a0the terror of night,
\nnor the arrow that flies by day,
\nnor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
\nnor the plague that destroys at midday.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Psalm 91: 1-6<\/em><\/p>\n

A friend of more than 50 years sent me a link to the above psalm in a recent email. As Easter approaches, and most of us worship either online or alone, it brought me comfort.<\/p>\n

|\u2014\u2014\u2014|<\/p>\n

There have been as many plagues as wars in history. Yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Albert Camus<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>I just finished re-reading The Plague<\/em> by Albert Camus, the French-Algerian novelist and philosopher (the latter was a title he rejected, unsuccessfully.) Camus wrote The Plague<\/em> in 1947, two years after the end of World War II. It was translated into English by Stuart Gilbert a year later. I first read it in high school. I looked for that copy in my collection but couldn\u2019t find it, so I ordered another copy from Amazon. It took longer than usual to arrive; clearly the notion of reading a classic novel about a plague during a pandemic has occurred to many others.<\/p>\n

Camus was originally from Algeria but traveled to Paris during the war to fight with the French Resistance. Born in 1913, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 \u2014 a decade after publishing The Plague<\/em>. Three years later, Camus was killed instantly in automobile accident at 46, when the luxury car driven by his publisher hit a tree as they returned from a holiday retreat. The publisher died a few days later, and the world lost a genius.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Plague<\/em> is set in Oran, Algeria, an actual city that at the time Camus wrote the novel had 200,000 residents. Its population now approaches 1.5 million. Its protagonist is Dr. Bernard Rieux, who, we learn toward the end, is the narrator. The plague begins with the increasing deaths of rats. Soon, the rodents are dying by the thousands and being heaped in piles to await the sanitation trucks. Then, people begin dying of bubonic plague (a far-deadlier disease than COVID-19.) At first, city officials are reluctant to acknowledge what Dr. Rieux knows to be true: that this is a pandemic. Soon, the entire city is on lockdown. No one is allowed in or out.<\/p>\n

Many of Oran\u2019s citizens behave bravely, others badly. As the plague continues to take lives indiscriminately, Rieux attends Mass and listens to Father Paneloux\u2019s homily. Rieux, not a religious man, concludes: There was no question of not taking precautions or failing to comply with the orders wisely promulgated for the public weal in the disorders of a pestilence. Nor should we listen to certain moralists who told us to sink on our knees and give up the struggle. No, we should go forward, groping our way through the darkness, stumbling perhaps at times, and try to do what good lay in our power.<\/em><\/p>\n

The curve begins to flatten \u2014 Camus uses the same phrase being used now. The plague leaves as swiftly as it arrives, and the gates are opened. The townspeople who survived join in celebration and fireworks. But Rieux understands the plague never really leaves: \u00a0He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good.; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up the rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city<\/em>.<\/p>\n

|\u2014\u2014\u2014|<\/p>\n

After finishing the book, I went outside to admire the Super Moon. The night was alive with the croaking of tree frogs. I gave thanks and prayed silently. For all of us.<\/p>\n

Print this entry<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Print this entryWhoever dwells in the shelter\u00a0of the Most High will rest in the shadow\u00a0of the Almighty. \u00a0I will say of the\u00a0Lord, \u201cHe is my refuge\u00a0and my fortress, my God, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[73,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-73","category-columns"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3529"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3534,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3529\/revisions\/3534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}