Camus’ philosophy of the absurd is written in the materialist tradition, in that it is rooted in physical reality. Anchored in material reality, the philosophy of materialism undertakes to explore how that reality can be made most rewarding to human beings. The drawback of this philosophy, it seems, is its dismissal of dimensions of existence other than the corporeal. The fact is that the recognition of a spiritual dimension of reality is often comforting: people derive a sense of order from the assumption that there is a system of morality that, even if intangible, governs the way the world works. Systems of morality function like a map in an unfamiliar place, providing a sense of direction and security. Religious and spiritual ideologies allow the believer to live ignoring the inevitability of physical death or else noticing it only in so far as remembering the need to live in the light of the moral norms laid down by a divine dispensation. Such systems also helped humankind impart meaning to suffering and ignore the manifest injustice of life in the hope of happiness in the afterlife. This in fact is what renders such ideologies very consoling sometimes. Deprived of the option of spirituality, one turns to reason, but reason cannot, in the end, explain everything.
Christian Delacampagne argues that the beginning of the twentieth century saw a radical shift in the orientation of philosophy, in that the focus on the metaphysical dimension was gradually replaced by a focus on the social and political dimensions of reality (62). There was a lot about the circumstances of the time that needed explaining. Paul Valery writes: “there are thousands of young artists and young writers who have been killed… there are the lost illusions of a European culture and the demonstrated inability of knowledge to save anything whatsoever; there is science, touched mortally in its ethical ambitions and as if dishonoured by the cruelty of its applications” (qtd. in Delacampagne 62).
The scale of violence that the world witnessed at the time may have proven sufficient to refute the assumption that God or a supreme being, as it were, exists. Epicurus recognizes such logic:
God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to,
or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot, then he is weak - and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful - which is equally foreign to god's nature. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful, and so not a god. If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them? (Inwood and Gerson 97)
As is distinctive of material philosophy, Camus’ thinking addressess the problem of human happiness and well-being that now has to be achieved without the option of falling back on spirituality, religion, or any other system of knowledge. How to make life fulfilling given the inevitability of death and the often incomprehensible nature of the world? Why not give in to suicide?
Camus’ philosophy agrees to the tradition of materialism in so far as it rejects blind adherence to spirituality or religion, but deviates from it in that his philosophy criticizes absolute reliance in reason. His idea of the absurd, as explained in The Myth of Sisyphus (1955), is founded on the discrepancy between man’s need for rationality and intelligibility from the world he inhabits and the world that, as it were, is indifferent: “the mind that aims to understand reality can consider itself satisfied only by reducing it to terms of thought…(but) this world itself is not reasonable” (17-21). The old-fashioned question that asks why ‘bad’ things should happen to ‘good’ people comes from man’s need for rationalization from the universe that does not, really, operate with motives. The absurd is a consciousness that results when one recognizes the disjunction between one’s expectations of the world and what the world is capable of giving. Such disjunction necessarily occurs because there are things about life and the universe that the human subject cannot make sense of, the most significant of which is death – particularly because it figures in everybody’s reality. For Camus the mere existence of death that is universal, random, inevitable, arbitrary makes human hopes and activities meaningless. It seems that without the transcendence that spirituality gives death cannot be treated as trivial.
There are variations in the degree to which people allow themselves to be conscious of the absurd. Camus explains: “before encountering the absurd, the everyday man lives with aims, a concern for the future or for justification. … he acts as if he were free, even if all the facts make a point of contradicting that liberty…(b)ut after the absurd, everything is upset” (57). Those who are conscious of the absurd see a fundamental disjunction between man and the universe and have therefore lost all sense of meaning that exists independent of the perceiver. To the absurd consciousness, any attempt at rationalization, which may produce a sense of meaning, is recognized as a man-made construct. Camus describes the absurd consciousness as “an intelligence that knows its frontiers” (70), advocating that the absurd consciousness can exist only when the notion of the absurd itself is no longer questioned, when there is recognition and acceptance of the disjunction between man and the universe.
The presence of the epidemic in The Plague is discernible only through the symptoms in the bodies of the sick – the swollen glands, the fever and delirium. This quality of the plague is reminiscent of the attribute of the absurd consciousness that does not become apparent until the human subject recognizes it. However, because the symptoms of the disease are physical, the residents of Oran – even those who are not ‘sick’ -- are forced to acknowledge the presence of the epidemic. People who are yet to show symptoms of the disease are nevertheless confined to the town, obliged to live with the knowledge that the plague has contaminated their living space and that any one of them can, at any time, fall ill and die. The epidemic is present in such a way that it cannot be kept out from consciousness. The depiction of the absurd consciousness as an epidemic therefore allows Camus to examine people’s attitudes when they are forced to acknowledge the absurd condition. There is also an implication that everybody is susceptible to the absurd consciousness and that at times only active attempts to shut it out can keep such consciousness at bay.
Camus’ text suggests that the human mind rebels against having to acknowledge vulnerability to death, chance and uncertainty: rather than giving in to panic, some people and these are the fortunate, in Oran live with the hope of being reunited with their loved ones, so much so that “(t)he egoism of love (makes) them immune to general distress” (64). Others indulge themselves in recklessness, as if to overcome anxiety: “all stream out into the open, drug themselves with talking, start arguing or love-making” (102). The hope of surviving, resuming ordinary life, and being reunited with people they love sustain many residents during the quarantine period, including Rambert the journalist who repeatedly attempts to leave the city to be together with his partner.
Rieux’s asthma patient, an old draper, defends himself against the plague by immersing himself in the incessant activity of counting peas. The draper lives his days in his apartment and has virtually no ties to the outside world. His detachment from the public world is so total that he refuses even to adhere to the conventional notion of time; instead, he works out time by transferring peas at a regulated speed from one bowl to the other. “Every fifteen pans,” he said, “it’s feeding time. What could be simpler?” (99). His complete lack of involvement in public life protects him in a way – since occasions in the outside world seem to no longer affect him. The plague that cordons off the town and causes some sort of hiatus in people’s lives makes, in effect, no difference in the draper’s life, whose experience of time and reality is shaped exclusively by his pea-counting activity and is therefore in his control. The addiction to a completely meaningless activity which is self validated insulates the addict from the sense of panic and external crisis.
The town’s refusal to recognize their situation for what it is – living with consistent consciousness of death – seems to culminate in the audience’s reaction to a performance of Gluck’s Orpheus in the Municipal Theatre and Opera House. The performance itself allows the townspeople to momentarily put the plague out of their mind: “in the soft hum of well-mannered conversation (in the theatre) they regained the confidence denied them when they walked the dark streets of the town; evening dress was a sure charm against plague” (162). The audience enjoys the performance until the Third Act, when the actor playing Orpheus “(staggers) grotesquely to the footlights, his arms and legs splayed out under his antique robe, and (falls) down in the middle of the property sheepfold” (162). To Tarrou, watching the actor’s performance is like looking at “plague on the stage in the guise of a disarticulate mummer” (163). The actor’s presentation, particularly his articulation of anguish, reminds the audience of the plague that lurks outside the theater – the very thing that the audience comes to the theater to forget. The audience responds with denial and evasion; they leave the theater on seeing the actor’s performance on stage.
The audience’s response calls to mind the reaction of Prince Prospero, from Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”, to the pestilence that devastates his country. He and a few courtiers fortify themselves against the plague by retreating into a castellated abbey. The abbey is buttressed in such a way that the occupants may be sure to keep the disease out. There is sufficient entertainment to keep them busy without being reminded of the disease that rages outside the abbey. When the Prince holds a masque several months after they retreat into the abbey, a figure appears that reminds everybody present of the pestilence: “(t)he figure (is) tall and gaunt and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave…(t)he mask which (conceals) the visage…(resembles) the countenance of a stiffened corpse…the mummer has gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death” (www.online-literature.com). Prospero wants the man executed, but nobody – either out of awe or reluctance – dares touching or approaching the man. Prospero himself then pursues the man with a dagger and ends up being killed. Surprised by Prospero’s sudden death, the guests try to get hold of the man, only to find the figure “untenanted by any tangible form” (www.online-literature.com).
Prospero, like the people in Oran, attempts to escape having to cope with the absurdity of living with the awareness of death. Poe’s story nevertheless suggests that the nature of absurdity is sometimes such that it forces itself on consciousness. “The Masque of Red Death” concretizes in the figure of Prospero the consciousness that is in flight – the way Camus does with his depiction of characters who try, at times desperately, to shut out the reality of the plague.
In Paneloux’s reaction to the plague, Camus’ text calls attention to the inadequacy of conventional religion. Paneloux’s interpretation of the epidemic as a form of punishment for sin seems inhumane: “(the) plague is the flail of God and the world His threshing-floor, and implacably He will thresh out His harvest until the wheat is separated from the chaff…(t)here will be more chaff than wheat, few chosen of the many called” (79). Such an explanation is callous and arrogant, almost, in its assumption that suffering has a positive value and that some lives are worth more than others. Commenting on Paneloux’s sermon, Rieux says, “Paneloux is a man of learning, a scholar. He hasn’t come in contact with death; that’s why he can speak with such assurance of the truth…but every country priest who visits his parishioners, and has heard a man gasping for breath on his deathbed … (will) try to relieve human suffering before trying to point out its excellence.” (106)
Paneloux is forced to reconsider his understanding of the plague after he witnesses the death of M. Othon’s child. The death of the child who cannot, in the priest’s mind, be an ‘evil-doer’, prompts him to reinterpret the plague as an ultimate test of faith: “…the love of God…demands total self-surrender … it alone can reconcile us to suffering and the deaths of children, it alone can justify them“ (186). Even when he himself is sick with the plague, Paneloux refuses Rieux’s help, choosing to rely only on his religious faith. Paneloux’s life appears to be defined by his belief such that without it his life is bound to be meaningless, the way Rambert’s would be without the companionship of his lover. The difference is only that while Rambert’s wish for companionship is within reach, what Paneloux aspires to, even if it holds him up, is too abstract. Only faith and fear of the prospect of meaninglessness appears to have sustained Paneloux’s belief in religion despite its inadequacy to explain such a baffling phenomenon as the plague which results in random deaths.
Rieux’s attitude towards the plague is almost contrary to Paneloux’s. Rieux goes on offering medical assistance to plague victims despite having dealt with a massive amount of deaths. In one sense Rieux is fighting a losing war; his only justification, as he tells Tarrou, is that he has “never managed to get used to seeing people die” (107). While Paneloux tries to fit the plague into a preexisting theoretical system – conquering it, so to speak, with religious faith -- Rieux fights it instinctively on a material plane patiently doing what is reasonable hoping that it will eventually pay off, alleviating pain and extending life wherever possible but relentlessly placing public safety above private loyalties.
Rieux particularly recalls the figure of Don Juan, particularly as Camus delineates him in The Myth of Sisyphus. As Camus’ prototype of the ‘absurd man’, Don Juan courts a series of women only because courting and falling in love is heartening. He knows that he will love again as much as he has loved; he does not look for revelations, as it were, as he advances from one relationship to the next. If Don Juan’s life is fulfilling and happy, the reason seems to be that he does things for the sake of doing them, as much and as long as he can. This is not at all a foreign philosophy: so often happiness and contentment is about doing things for the sake of doing them -- like being in love or indulging in food which, in themselves, carry little meaning.
Of all the characters in The Plague, Rieux most approximates Camus’ idea of the ‘absurd man’: the individual who lives with an absurd consciousness and copes well with it, even though the absurd consciousness obliges individuals to admit limitations of their freedom in and understanding of the world. He is for that reason capable of living life for what it is, not aiming for more than what can realistically be obtained.
Camus’ text puts forwards human love and solidarity as more sustaining while dealing with the absurd condition than human reason, knowledge, or intellect. Rieux’s attempts to save lives are perpetually defeated but as he keeps on with his efforts, Rieux seems to have resigned himself to the fact that nothing, apart from a sense of assurance of the capacity of human love to impart meaning to life is likely to result from his work: “there lay certitude; there, in the daily round…(a)ll the rest hung on mere threads and trivial contingencies (and) you (cannot) waste your time on it” (37). In the end it is belief in one’s ability to live, to love, and to sympathize with other human beings that can serve as an antidote, so to speak, against the absurdity of life.
The Plague is a narrative that, if subtly, criticizes ignorant complicity in social systems that are detrimental. The plague itself becomes symbolic of the harmful social system within which most people live without being aware of its capacity to cause harm.
In the process of writing The Plague in 1943, Camus wrote, “La Peste may be read … as a symbol of Nazi occupation (and incidentally the prefiguration of any totalitarian regime, no matter where)” (qtd. in Todd 168). In this text Camus seems to have communicated his objection to any system that carries ideologies to extremes and justifies any means to achieve its ends. Many such systems necessarily belittle the value of human lives. This is a concern that receives serious attention in the text, particularly in the story of Tarrou.
Tarrou is a humanist who pushes for the abolition of the death sentence. The ideal society for Tarrou is one that does not allow human life to be violated on any ground. He is firm in his belief, even as he acknowledges that, in consequence, he does not fit in with a society that often sacrifices human lives to the ideological interests of the state: “I know I have no place in the world of today; once I’d definitely refused to kill, I doomed myself to an exile that can never end” (207). When fighting against fascism in the Spanish Civil War, Tarrou is told that a few deaths are always necessary for the creation of a new world in which murder will no longer happen. Tarrou reconciles himself to this view until he witnesses directly an execution by a firing squad and recognizes that executions are far more gruesome than is usually described. Since then, it has been Tarrou’s principle to avoid being involved in anything that supports the death penalty and to avoid, through lack of action, being unknowingly made accomplice to any act of murder.
When Tarrou remarks that he has had plague already (201), he means that he is more aware of the reality of his surroundings than the average inhabitant of Oran is. Tarrou recognizes murder for what it is -- the taking of life -- rather than an abstract part of an ideological progress. Tarrou’s sickness concerns his state of mind more than his physical self. To Tarrou the plague is present within everybody, in the form of ignorant complicity to the social system that attributes little value to human life. The figurative plague, like the real epidemic, is pervasive in society, such that “those (like him) who want to get the plague out of their systems, feels such desperate weariness, a weariness from which nothing remains to set us free” (207).
Camus’ text reveals the ‘sick’ to be those who prefer superficial order to the reality that is sometimes problematic. In Oran, the sick are often people in the position of authority. There is a delay in setting up the necessary measures to prevent the plague from spreading because the Prefect in Oran requires Rieux to be absolutely certain that his patients’ symptoms are indications of plague before putting such measures in place: “I shall need your professional declaration that the epidemic is one of plague” (45). The police officer who manages to prevent Cottard from going through with his suicide attempt threatens to put him in jail for “troubling the peace of others” (31). Rather than being concerned about what drives Cottard to suicide, the officer is more interested in maintaining public order – even if only superficially. The officer’s attitude is consistent with the delineation of Oran as a town that is keen on regularity and order. The town’s attitude towards the plague later on echoes the authorities’ approach to Cottard’s case in their reluctance to recognize and address indications of trouble.
Tarrou is critical of the role that language occupies in creating superficial realities. He remarks, “all our troubles spring from the failure to use clear-cut language” (206). People’s ignorance of the true reality makes them reluctant to oppose the system that Tarrou knows legalizes murder in order to progress: “…a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead…a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination” (35). Tarrou is concerned about the politicization of language where language is used to manipulate. Orwell in his essay “Politics and the English Language” discusses similar concern. Political language, Orwell writes, functions in such a way that “the concrete melts into the abstract” (www.orwell.ru). It makes use of turns of phrases that are needed to “name things without calling up mental pictures of them” so that it may “(defend) the indefensible” (www.orwell.ru).
In the text, Grand is described as a character whose “difficulty in finding his words (has) come to be the bane of his life”(41). Due to his difficulty with words, Grand never asks for a raise in salary even though this has been promised to him. He drives his wife away because he cannot tell her that he loves her: “a time came when I should have found the words to keep her with me – only I couldn’t” (70). Throughout the text Grand attempts to write a book that he never finishes because he feels he cannot come up with an opening sentence that can satisfactorily evoke the scene he wishes to convey. He struggles to communicate “the exact tempo of (a horse’s trotting)” and the precise atmosphere of a May morning (96). Camus says of Grand’s character that he imagines the story of a victim of the French Revolutionary Terror who cannot write more than one sentence of a book about it, because he feels he cannot match the reality (qtd. in Todd 160). The story of Grand, the “funny little man” (34), appears humorous on the surface, but it demonstrates very persistently the text’s argument that language is often inadequate to describe reality. This inadequacy must consequently become a point of concern if the reality to be described were to demarcate truth from falsity.
If language as an instrument that shapes and gives expression to reality fails to provide a genuine picture, one can only rely, as Tarrou suggests, on constant awareness -- such that people know precisely what they support and what they help to legalize. Awareness is the only cure for the plague that to Tarrou manifests as apathy and indifference.
…The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. ... the most incorrigible vice (is) that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness. (110)
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