CLAS Acts May 2020
Monthly newsletter of the TT faculty of CLAS
“Unexpectedly and terribly relevant” ꟷ Teaching Camus’ The Plague in a time of pandemic
“It may seem a ridiculous idea, but the only way to fight the plague is with decency.”
~ Dr. Rieux in Camus’ The Plague
When Gabriela Pozzi (MLL) and Grace Coolidge (HST) team teach in Honors, Camus’ 1947 novel The Plague has been a useful counterpoint to lessons about World War II and the Holocaust. Students appreciate the allegorical elements undergirded by Camus’ own Resistance activities. The lessons were safely located 75 years away.
Gabriella notes wryly, “It worked differently this term.” This time, the class began the novel on March 17, 2020, two days into remote learning when the first shocks of new academic reality had just landed. By March 19, Gabriela was able to share philosopher Alain de Botton’s latest New York Times opinion piece, “Camus on the Coronavirus”. What had been perspective on history was now a lens for today’s events.
“It was uncanny. My second day of teaching remotely.”
In other terms Gabriela has assigned The Plague as a possible research paper topic. This term it seemed far more fitting to ask the students to write reaction response papers. All 17 students undertook the assignment in one of two ways: many did a comparison with what is happening in their lives in the present while some chose to distance themselves somewhat by looking at The Plague as an allegory for WWII or the Holocaust.
Set somewhere in the 1940s, the novel tells the story of the town of Oran on the Algerian coast as rats begin to die in large numbers and a cleanup effort unleashes the Bubonic Plague upon the inhabitants. The choices of Dr. Rieux and the other characters provide an examination of humanity under the stress of isolation. As Tony Judt wrote in a 2001 piece for the New York Review of Books, “Rieux is a man who, faced with suffering and a common crisis, does what he must and becomes a leader and an example not out of heroic courage or careful reasoning but rather from a sort of necessary optimism.”
Alain de Botton says of Camus, “He was drawn to his theme because he believed that the actual historical incidents we call plagues are merely concentrations of a universal precondition, dramatic instances of a perpetual rule: that all human beings are vulnerable to being randomly exterminated at any time, by a virus, an accident or the actions of our fellow man.”
“The students wrote quite good, thoughtful papers,” Gabriela explains and illustrates her point with excerpts. Some displayed their concerns while others find a thread of optimism.
The acceptance of cohabitation with death and disease that plagued the residents of Oran is part of the pandemic we are currently experiencing; the denial and refusal to address the possible outcomes of COVID-19 aren’t easy to overlook while reading Camus’ The Plague.
-----------------
In looking at how the novel concludes I believe Camus will also be eerily close to how the public dismisses the plague after it's all over. Considering how the public is acting at the moment it wouldn't be far-fetched for them to quickly dismiss it and celebrate as if nothing happened after the epidemic is dealt with.
------------------
“’The only thing I’m interested in,’ I told him, ‘is acquiring peace of mind.’” (55). I find this to be a common sentiment today, as a rapid flood of information can induce anxiety during uncertain times such as the present. However, as the novel also eerily points out, this panic and frustration is often self-inflicted as, “this was one of the tricks the pestilence had of diverting attention and confounding issues.”
----------------------
The other parallel between the novel and current events that I saw was how both governments responded to the outbreak of the epidemic and what would be best for the common good. Mainly, both governments took a while before they implemented precautions to prevent the spread; this can be seen in how long it took for states to ban non-essential travel and the president not taking immediate action to get necessary supplies to those who need them.
------------------------
Reading this novel as I sit at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, there are almost eerie comparisons that can be drawn between the events our country, and even the rest of the world are living through today, and the experiences of the people of 1940s Oran in Camus’s The Plague.
------------------------
People in Oran had similar reactions and to those the narrator remarks that “It has small importance whether you call it a plague or some rare kind of fever. The important thing is to prevent its killing off half the population of this town.”(49) The line resonates so well with what is going on today, I wouldn’t be surprised if I heard the governor speak these very words on television.
------------------------
I agree with Dr. Rieux when he said, “what we learn in a time of pestilence is that there are more things to admire in men than to despise” (308). In my hometown, people have bought gift cards to keep the restaurants afloat while in New York City the community cheers the medical responders on every night. If there is one thing that can unite humanity, it is suffering.
--------------------------
However, as worrying as I found The Plague, I also found within it peace of mind and a feeling of being seen. The details of the novel, many of which mirror life today, for some reason or another bring about peace of mind. This pestilence of COVID-19 (if it can be deemed as such) is not the first of its time, nor will it be the last. Though the difficulties brought about by COVID-19 brings out the worst in some people, the details of the good in The Plague remind me to keep my mind on the good in the real world, as, “what’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves” (144).
--------------------------
While I hope that after the pandemic is over we are able to return to our regular way of life, I would hate to see us act like it never even happened. It would be ignorant for us to try to forget the lives lost and the suffering it caused, and for both the people of Oran and our country today, events like these should serve as a reminder that we're not invincible, and that the world as we know it can be turned on its head in a matter of days.
----------------------------
Never has a book become so unexpectedly and terribly relevant to a later time period as Albert Camus’ The Plague is today.
Though the strength of the results show that powerful lessons were learned, Gabriela notes that it was hard to teach this work remotely and asynchronously. “We did the best we could. I had to prep PowerPoint presentations that were much more detailed than I would for a classroom. It took a lot of time. I think the students responded well and got a lot out of the reading. In that respect, it was positive. All 17 students wrote papers and got something out of the text.”
Anyone reading what her students wrote sees that ‘something’ was rather significant.
Gabriela learned some things, too. “More than anything, going forward, it is to be more prepared for something like this in the future. I’ll take advantage of the webinars that IT can offer us. It was a scramble. Now we know and will be better prepared for the future. In some ways, it saw it coming—we had the week when classes were cancelled last year.”
The universal preconditions have impressed themselves on students and teachers alike. Even if it is without our face-to-face time in our classrooms, we all must adapt within our newly appreciated vulnerability.
FROM THE DEAN’S DESK
In these times that have brought home to us the value of less stuff and more space, I just want to make sure you know how proud I am of the way our faculty overcame much to bring the term to a successful close. Your willingness to check in on our students and each other has been my inspiration.
Our students did some pretty wonderful things in the midst of all this and faculty worked very hard to celebrate them, from sophomore clarinetist Andrei Mazanko winning a national competition to Andrew Spear producing a 40-minute video in celebration of the seniors of the Philosophy department.
Your heart, humor, and grace are deeply appreciated.