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...
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“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.