Camus -- the Plague an Research Paper

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Yet, even Tarrou must fall to the plague inevitably. Camus as much as says that while Tarrou's ideals may be beautiful, they are not ultimately the truth: there is no moksha for Tarrou -- only death. Does absurdism expect that one's best course of action is to interact with life at a slight remove -- as Rieux does? No definite answer can be given.

Cottard, however, is definitely not the best example of how society should act in the face of the absurd. His attempted suicide leads him to more irrational and violent behavior. His foil is found in the person of Rambert -- who, like Cottard -- attempts to find a "way out," at least initially. Gradually, Rambert is moved to shame for his desire to escape and seek his happiness outside of the human experience that is happening in Oran. Rambert finally decides to stay and help even though his conniving produces him a chance to escape. His sacrifice is rewarded at the end, when he is reunited with his wife, who has been waiting on the outside. Rambert is recognized as the man whose courage fails only to be revived by conscience -- the simple man, who embodies neither high ideals nor scientific inquiry, but who recognizes the good within himself.

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Yet -- each of these representations is ephemeral, as Camus suggests at the end: "The men and the women Rieux had loved and lost, all alike, dead or guilty, were forgotten" (248). The conviction or belief in transcendentals -- in eternity -- is absent in Camus' The Plague. High ideals are noble and praiseworthy, but in the end what is left? Spectacle, admiration, experience…the effects, in other words, of the "age of faith," still being felt even as the new world sputters to a halt under the plague of "modernity."

In conclusion, Camus' The Plague is full of characters who are representative, within the framework of absurdism, of the social spectrum ranging in extremes from good to ill. Through Rieux, Rambert, Tarrou, and Paneloux, Camus creates a panorama of social characteristics that reveal themselves when the world reveals itself to be a place of absurdity -- where Sisyphus is doomed (yet happy -- as Camus tells us we must imagine him) to forever roll the rock up the hill.

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