Existential Crisis // Abigale Bell

Throughout this story, each character has had a different response to the immanent threat of plague. The plague seems to have been a test of the town's faith or lack thereof. One character whose response struck me as poignant was that of Joseph Grand. The image Grand gives us is one of the existentialist's ideal. 

Grand has been writing a book (or so it seems). This book, along with his work as city clerk, has been his means of coping with the plague. In part four of the story we learn that Grand's book consists of fifty pages of the same sentence written in different arrangements over and over again. Each word has been pored over and scrutinized to perfection. To me, this is a picture of the character of the town under the rule of plague. They live in daze, no longer feeling emotion, trying to escape their reality. 

At the end of his pages and pages of words that, in their monotony, become meaningless, he writes "'...My dearest Jeanne, Today is Christmas Day and...'" (Camus, 261). With these words Grand seems to be accepting reality for what it is. Perhaps he had been remembering his wife through the picture he had painted of a "lady on horse-back" yet, here, he remembers his wife directly. 

When Grand is finally stricken with plague, he finds that work can no longer be his escape. Neither can striving for perfection in writing his book. He gives up on them and asks Rieux to burn all those hours of careful separation from reality. For that is what the book had been for Grand; a way to separate himself from the fear and melancholy of the world he lived in. Yet, he seems to succomb to plague mentally and spiritually as well as physically. 

"...a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart" (261). Grand had come to the point that he could no longer go on living dead (without emotion). He came to terms with his fear and, soon after, he recovered. Is it better to give in to fear than deny its presence and live in apathy? Is it better to love than to deny its existence and risk the loss of a loved one? Perhaps it is better to simply acknowledge the risk and embrace the unknown. 

To me, this is a perfect picture of the ideal state of mind for an existentialist. There is no true cure for fear just as there seems to be no true cure for plague, yet, when one accepts it as reality there is an opportunity to truly live. In Grand's character we see an acceptance of the reality that things are not okay. He allows himself to accept the plague as inevitable. After Grand's amazing recovery, light seems to begin breaking over the town of Oran. Another patient makes a recovery and the rats return. 

Commented on Haylee Lynd's and Emily Otts' posts.