Albert Camus The Plague Themes

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The Plague by Albert Camus has many themes including exile and imprisonment. Let’s define exile first and see how it relates to the text. The word exile means the state of being barred and expelled from one’s native country, typically for political or punitive reasons (dictionary.com). The expert that I choose to work on is on page 100 and it is the turning point in the novel where the people of Oran start to feel exiled and imprisoned. The excerpt states that the outbreak of the plague currently exiles and imprisons the town of Oran, and its close gates recommended by government officials leave many people separated from their love ones and also leave a sense of imprisonment within the town itself. However, right before this feeling of exile surrender, people of Oran were living their lives as they normally do, pretending that nothing is wrong until the death toll of the plague victims spikes sharply upward leading to the closing of the town gates and quarantined. Father Paneloux, a jesuit has given a sermon asserting that the plague is a punishment send by God because the citizens has been sinful and scorned God. Like an occupied town, the plague makes Oran a microcosm of Camus’ absurd universe, which is a philosophical view that states that the world is absurd and meaningless, there is no God or cosmic order, and that human beings are doomed to suffer and die. The section I picked to work with is interesting because as a reader it makes you think or question the meaning

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