coronavirus
In fact, like our fellow citizens, Rieux was caught off his guard, and we should understand his hesitations in the light of this fact; and similarly understand how he was torn between conflicting fears and confidence. When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid; it can't last long." But though a war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.
Reading this book has been a shocking reflection of our current times with the pandemic, with the parallels of covid pervasive. The narrator talks constantly about peoples reluctance to accept the reality of the situation, attributing it to one thing or another, coming up with excuse, flat out dismissing it it, etc.
But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead
And when he speaks about reality not hitting in until you see it face to face, analogizing war, that also struck true. For me, although I acknowledge the severity, have no real grounding experience with it, and it is far to easy to kind of ignore the bitter truth of the lives lost, thinking of it more hypothetically.
So far this is shaping up to be a really interesting book- definitely my favorite so far, and very timely
I also thought this book was timely. I feel like the connections between today's world and the plague are strong, especially when thinking about the peoples' initial reaction to the rats. I wrote about that in my blog. Also, I think it's nice you point out that analogy. That was very obscure when I was reading,
ReplyDeleteLike I put in my most recent blog post, the connections between this book and today are crazy. Even though it takes place 70 years ago, when the technological differences are huge.
ReplyDeleteI really like the line looking at death, it makes a lot of sense. "a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead" this is also very applicable when looking at sickness. The impact of a sickness has no substance to you unless you have seen someone sick or been sick yourself.
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