Summary Of The Plague By Irene Finel-Honigman

Irene Finel-Honigman reveals a conflict between man and nature in the novel “The Plague” by Albert Camus as well as the striking similarities between Nazi Germany and the city struck by the fictionally plague, Oran. Her examination, titled, “Oran: Protagonist, Myth, and Allegory” centers on the idea of Oran the city being exiled from the rest of the world and cut off from all normalcy. Finel-Honigman first focuses on “man’s relationship with his environment” (75). She states that Oran is described in negative terms and is seen as the place everyone wants to leave. She quotes the the first page of the novel in saying “We have deluges of mud” (1-The Plague). Then she goes on to say that “Oran is not in coordination with nature” and has “destroyed …show more content…
He uses the plague in Oran to signify the concentration camps during World War II and develops relatable characters to show the shift in attitude on life. He initially gives us the impression that Oran is a disgusting place “without any trees or gardens” (3) and says that it has “deluges of mud” (4). He sets us up to take the point of view of Rambert where if we were the ones living within the city, we would want to get out of there as fast as possible. Camus wants Rambert to be the character people relate to and develop with as the plague goes on because “In the general exile they were the most exiled” (74). Rambert, trapped in an unfamiliar city that appears to him to be awful and dull, eventually comes around to fall in love with the place and sacrifices his freedom to help others, something he would not have initially done. Camus never thinks that Oran is a horrible place, just that the plague turned it into an undesirable destination. Rieux and Tarrou exemplify this in that they never express interest in leaving and instead stick around to fight the plague to get their city back to the way it was. “Oran becomes a prison world, an unreachable limbo to which all its inhabitants are sentenced” (79). Finel-Honigman is right in that Oran no longer is the place that Rieux used to know which is exactly what would happen when the Nazis would take over a city. They would leave the citizens with no power and essentially put them on a death sentence. The plague and the concentration camps brought about slim chances of survival for people who were undeserving of the pain and sorrow and Camus exposed the world at that time to the unjust actions of the