Albert Camus died Jan 4 1940. In his novel The Plague he describes the experience of a modern port city in Algeria as it is besieged by bubonic plague. The disease— a counterpart to the German occupation of France—is also a symbol for the human condition.
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For Camus, such a world imposes a solemn duty of revolt, the refusal to consent to a condition which tortures innocents and reduces the life of each person to absurdity. The heroes of the novel are those who resist the plague.
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But the plague has a spiritual counterpart— represented by those who accommodate themselves or who put their trust in a disengaged piety that makes them implicit collaborators in evil. “What the world expects of Christians is that they should speak out loud and clear...
“That they should get away from abstractions and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today.” He described the moral challenge of his generation: “If not to reduce evil at least not to add to it.” He won the Nobel Prize in 1957. He died in a car accident at 46.
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