 Hi, my name is Monty Johnson. This is the third of my lectures on Albert Camus the Plague LePest originally published 1947 and I'm using the translation by Stuart Gilbert that was published in 1948 So we move on to part three which in the overall structure is Kind of a pedestal chapter meaning parts one and parts two build up to it It's kind of a climax and then we move downwards in parts four and five Part one Introduced us to the plague. There was a lot of Denial that it was happening a lot of dithering on the part of public officials and it wasn't until the last line of that part that There was acceptance that there was the plague and it was officially declared in part two by far the longest chapter We had in-depth character development of the main characters Ryu Toro, Rambeir, Grand, Pantelou, and so forth in part three then we have already met the characters and we have Essentially a graphic description of the waste that the plague lays to the city and the mass death and destruction and how it is coped with and in a way, it's the most Difficult chapter to deal with the hardest to read it hits very hard after this we have a part that explains how the characters are Transformed in response to the plague how they cope with it as it goes on interminably before the Resolution and the end of the plague in part five now one thing I think is crucial philosophically to this chapter is the idea of focusing on those who are worse off and that being a kind of Coping mechanism for dealing with a difficult situation So consider this passage from chapter 18 The authorities had the idea of segregating certain particularly affected central areas and permitting only those whose services were indispensable to cross the cordon Dwellers in these districts could not help regarding these regulations as a sort of taboo Specifically directed at themselves and thus they came by contrast to envy residents in other areas their freedom and The latter to cheer themselves up in despondent moments fell to picturing the lot of those who were less free than themselves Anyhow there are some worse off than I was a remark that voiced the only solace to be had in those days and in fact This is an effective coping mechanism for one thing. It does relieve some of the pain that is augmented by rumination and constant return and reflection on your own difficulty But also I think that Camu shows how this focusing on those that are less fortunate than us also Changes our perspective from one in which we envy those who are better off and we come to feel pity and Mutual fellow feeling for those who are worse off and This psychological mechanism was also utilized by the Epicureans most famously in the opening of book 2 of Lucretius's on the nature of things where he says Sweet it is when on the great sea the winds are buffeting the waters to gaze from the land on another's great struggles Not because it's a pleasure or joy that anyone should be distressed But because it is sweet to perceive from what misfortune you yourself are free Sweet it is to to behold great contest of war in full array over the planes When you have no part in the danger Now he makes it clear that this isn't a kind of taking Pleasure at another's misery, but it's rather by focusing on them one feels more safe and Secure oneself in fact This is a very very ancient piece of is wisdom perhaps the oldest piece of ethics that we actually have we go back to One of the key longest and most secure fragments of Democritus of abdura He says one should keep in mind one's capabilities and be content with what one has Having few memories or thoughts of those who are objects of envy and admiration By not paying attention to them and one should observe the lives of those who are enduring hardship Taking into consideration the defects they suffer from So that the things one has and already possesses will seem great and worthy of jealousy And no longer would you suffer badly because of having desires in your soul For the one who in his memory at all hours dwells on those who are objects of admiration and deemed blessed by other humans Is always compelled to find new opportunities and to overshoot because of a desire to do desperate things Which the laws forbid that is why by not doubting what must be But by being content with respect to the things that must be by comparing one's own life with those who do worse And by deeming oneself blessed keeping in mind the things they suffer one does and fares much better than they do And so this chapter which describes so much misery and mass death Invites the reader to follow along with the procedure That the characters in the novel Engage in which is to constantly describe and understand worsening conditions that other people are going through Now to give an idea of the overall structure of this short chapter Initially camo describes the climax of the summer heat in the disease as we move into summer and the days get steadily More hot more sweaty more uncomfortable even as the death rates climb And he says he'll describe this miserable situation with respect to three issues one the excesses of the living How people are reacting and dealing with the plague not very well They are rioting and burning down buildings attacking the police and guards and so forth second What happens with burials of the dead and how the dead are treated and third the plight of parted lovers So to begin with the excesses of the living So the contagion most immediately threatens those who live together in groups like prisoners soldiers monks nuns students and dormitories as it were the These individuals must leave these group living situations and be billeted in private houses But that entails a breakdown of these groups and a disruption of their daily routines So this contributes to a sense of disruption and even chaos Now this is impossible of course for prisoners. They can't be released So they stay trapped within the prison and being in prison becomes a kind of death sentence because you have the highest rates of transmission There and and weak health care Now at the climax of the summer heat, there is an outbreak of rioting and arson's caused largely by people who had returned from a quarantine and Throne off by their thrown off their balance by bereavement and anxiety They were burning their houses under the odd delusion that they were killing off the plague in the Holocaust But there are other reasons why people are burning buildings and many of them are Engaging in looting theft and so forth So the authorities enact stiff penalties of imprisonment in order to prevent these arson's again Imprisonment in this context amounts to a death sentence So an epidemic of burning buildings of looting buildings Also attacks sometimes armed on the police and the guards of the town Usually at the gates. So the authorities are forced to respond by imposing nighttime curfews and eventually martial law and all of this just Titans the widespread feelings of being imprisoned Along with this inference that being imprisoned leads to a death sentence So certainly if you are within the prison But everyone is in a way imprisoned And so everyone feels like they're under that kind of death sentence and some people Forced to stay where they are within their own homes within their own districts Everybody is immobilized. So there is a very awkward and unsettling combination of growing lawlessness and chaos Outside along with the lethargy and immobilization inside Now this misery is described basically through all of the sensory modalities the way that we Sense what's going on around us and the apprehension that that causes So for example camu describes dust clouds a gray crust Forming on everything due to the dryness and heat darkness at night when electricity is cut off and curfews Are imposed and so you have a kind of absence of sensation And a haze of dust and golden light upon treeless streets. So there's this sort of combination of Things being too bright and they're being too much glare from the sun But then also being obscured in a haze and a dust Before totally disappearing at night when there is no electric light So almost like a kind of blindness is coming on But as for hearing loud shrilling of wind A defunct city in which plague stone darkness had effectively silenced every voice One vast rumor of low voices and incessant footfalls the drumming of innumerable souls Time to the eerie whistling of the plague and so Unfamiliar sounds and yet they're repetitive and annoying and uh irritating Also, of course the searingly hot days the warm darkness of the summer nights the constant sweating feeling too hot but can't relieve oneself by uh swimming or uh Gathering in cafes to drink and things like that Also foul smelling clouds of smoke They come from the plague fires both the arsons Where houses and buildings are being burned down, but also from the crematorium that they've had to start employing Such were the sights and apprehensions that kept alive in our town's people. He writes Their feeling of exile and separation in this connection The narrator is well aware how regrettable is his inability to record at this point something of a really spectacular order some Heroic feat or memorable deed like those that thrill us in the chronicles of the past The truth is that nothing is less sensational than pestilence and by reason of their very duration great misfortunes Are monotonous In the memories of those who live through them the grim days of plague do not stand out like vivid flames ravenous and Inextinguishable beaconing a troubled sky But rather like the snow Deliberate progress of some monstrous thing crushing out all upon its path So even while all of the senses are stimulated by these Disturbing and irritating new sensations. The overall effect is actually not excitement, but monotony and This going on and on and there sort of being no release from it Now the most grim section concerns burials of the dead And the narrator offers his own apology for the graphic nature of his descriptions But he insists that he doesn't have a morbid taste In fact, he prefers the living and prefers activities like swimming But swimming is impossible now and he's surrounded Not by swimmers and beach days, but by funerals and death. So he must give an account of them Actually, the most striking feature of our funerals was their speed And formalities are quickly abandoned both for health reasons and because they are happening so often And it's just not tenable to give everybody a full Funeral The rushed and unceremonial process of moving bodies from the hospital actually a converted school Over to the cemetery is described The whole process was put through with the maximum of speed and the minimum of risk It cannot be denied that anyhow in the early days the natural feelings of the family Were somewhat outraged by these lightning funerals But obviously in a time of plague such sentiments cannot be taken into account and all was sacrificed to Efficiency people not allowed to see Their loved ones in the last stages of their dying and then not even being able to See them off at a funeral so again Absolute separation and isolation from the closest loved ones and at A crucial time in their life their death Now there's a shortage of coffins which necessitates ultimately combining funerals And then reusing coffins in order to transport bodies from the hospital to the cemetery At this point mourners had to be Forbidden from the actual interment These now take place into pits Initially two of them for propriety's sake divided into a men's pit and a women's pit But eventually even this decorum has to be abandoned and men and women are thrown indiscriminately Into pits together and quickly covered with layers of quick lime Which he describes as steaming and seething again describing its effect on our senses Burials are then connected eventually at night in order to obscure and cover up the more and more Summary procedures that are employed to cope with the growing number of corpses and as space runs out, you know the Cemetery plots eventually run out and then not only the plots run out, but those have to be dug up and large pits to throw bodies into but then even There's not enough space for those anymore And so the plague victims have to be cremated and for this purpose a crematorium On the other side of town is employed and eventually a streetcar is converted To transport bodies more efficiently from the town out to the crematorium So Kamu says making a very morbid kind of joke a branch line was laid down to the crematorium Which thus became a terminus Now the final Description of the climax of misery due to the plague Is the plight of parted lovers He goes so far as to say that the chief source of distress The deepest as well as the most widespread was separation of people from one another but That gets so bad that even this distress eventually comes to lose some of its poignancy as people become essentially Disinterested in everything and treat everything as being kind of indifferent While during the first weeks they were apt to complain that only shadows remained to them of what their love had been and meant They now came to learn that even shadows can waste away Losing the faint hues of life that memory may give again describing describing this darkening and becoming more bleak and fading from our visual perception The here and now had come to mean everything to them for there is no denying that the plague had gradually Killed off in all of us the faculty not of only of love but even of friendship Naturally enough since love asks something of the future and nothing was left to us but a series of present Moments so under these circumstances even friendship starts to fade Being parted from your friends not being able to get together with friends not even really being able to meaningfully communicate with them So they'd cease to choose for themselves and plague had leveled out Discrimination this could be seen in the way that nobody troubled about the quality of their Clothes or the food he bought everything was taken as it came People don't get dressed up anymore. They roll out of bed and put on the same set of clothes wearing whatever is most comfortable at hand and not Trying to dress to please or impress other people And this shows, you know a gradual losing of connection with other people And so this feeling this strange feeling of a simultaneous Exile and imprisonment So that all of us ate at the same sour bread of exile the blind Endurance again an endurance a period of endurance robbed of real sensation this blind endurance Had ousted love from all of our hearts That's the depth of the misery reached by the plague in part three