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    A Study Guide for Albert Camus's The Plague
    A Study Guide for Albert Camus's The Plague
    A Study Guide for Albert Camus's The Plague
    Ebook41 pages26 minutes

    A Study Guide for Albert Camus's The Plague

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Albert Camus's "The Plague," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 21, 2015
    ISBN9781535838894
    A Study Guide for Albert Camus's The Plague

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    • 5/5
      I read the book but had missed how the various lead characters symbolized differing attitudes of the French during the occupation of the Nazis’. The framing of the lack of concern about the Nazis then the amazement of the French when they lost after just 6 weeks reflects the attitudes of the people in France..This review helped me see the allegories better
    • 5/5
      As always, the Gale / Cengage study guides are excellent! Well written, insightful and able to show the complexity and differences of opinion about the work in question.

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    A Study Guide for Albert Camus's The Plague - Gale

    1

    The Plague

    Albert Camus

    1948

    Introduction

    Albert Camus's novel The Plague is about an epidemic of bubonic plague that takes place in the Algerian port city of Oran. When the plague first arrives, the residents are slow to recognize the mortal danger they are in. Once they do become aware of it, they must decide what measures they will take to fight the deadly disease.

    The Plague was first published in France in 1948, three years after the end of World War II. Early readers were quick to note that it was in part an allegory of the German occupation of France from 1940 to 1944, which cut France off from the outside world, just as in the novel the town of Oran must close its gates to isolate the plague. But the novel has more than one level of meaning. The plague may also be understood as the presence of moral evil or simply as a symbol of the nature of the human condition. Whatever the plague signifies, the various characters must face up to the situation and decide what their attitude to it will be. Should they accept their condition with a kind of religious resignation? Should they continue to seek their own personal happiness, ignoring what is going on around them? Should they deliberately exploit the situation in order to profit from it themselves? Or should they band together out of a sense of obligation to the community to do whatever is necessary to fight the plague? As the plague rages on, at its peak taking hundreds of victims every week, each of the major characters has his own unique approach to the situation.

    Author Biography

    Albert Camus was born on November 7, 1913, in Mondavi, Algeria. His French father, Lucien Auguste Camus, was killed less than a year later at the Battle of the Marne in France during World War I. Camus was then raised by his mother Catherine (who was of Spanish descent) in a working-class area of Algiers. He attended the lycée (secondary school) until graduation in 1930, after which he studied literature and philosophy at the University of Algiers.

    In 1930, Camus had his first attack of tuberculosis, from which he suffered all his life. In 1933, as Hitler came to power in Germany, Camus joined an anti-Fascist organization in Algiers, and in the mid-1930s he became a member of the Communist Party, helping to organize the Marxist-based Workers' Theatre. But a year after his graduation with a degree in philosophy in 1936, he broke with the communists. Until the beginning of World War

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