The Plague

The son of a prosecutor, Jean Tarrou spent his childhood and early youth in France. A gray-eyed man who enjoys a jaunt to the beach, Tarrou has traveled to Oran for reasons that remain undisclosed for much of the novel. Good-humored and frequently smiling, the mysterious visitor appears to be “an addict of all normal pleasures without being their slave” (12). Paradoxically pleased to have discovered a town as ugly as Oran, Tarrou finds the city’s obsession with commerce captivating. His ever-vigilant capacity to take in apparently trivial information translates into his “eccentricities of thought and expression” (13). Behind this curious marriage of normalcy and intrigue lies Tarrou’s seemingly bizarre habit of observing people and events around him and recording into his notebooks insignificant details that typically go unnoticed by others. These minutiae prove of utmost pertinence, however, and serve as the primary source material for Rieux’s chronicle of Oran’s plague. Furthermore, Tarrou clearly possesses the prescience to gauge the everyday objects and occurrences that in the long run bear significance. For example, he writes extensively about Oran’s trolleys, which later carry exhumed corpses from mass graves to the crematorium. Tarrou also takes delight in recording the curious actions of his elderly neighbor, who leans out of his window and spits on cats roaming the city.

As the plague intensifies in Oran, Tarrou outright rejects using prisoners to supplement the city’s overstretched labor teams. Likening forced prison labor to a death sentence, Tarrou expresses his disdain for the death penalty, a view on which he elaborates during his intimate conversation with Rieux prior to contracting and dying of plague. At Tarrou’s insistence, volunteer workers form a sanitary squad to support doctors’ and officials’ efforts to fight the plague.

Tarrou explains to Rieux that he became an enemy of all forms of injustice due to his father’s profession, claiming that only as a teenager did he begin to grasp his father’s role in handing down death sentences to criminals. Upon realizing that his father was a murderer, Tarrou left home and became an agitator, traveling the continent and fighting killing wherever he could. Considering himself a life-long carrier of plague, Tarrou sees it as his duty to rid himself of contagion by any means possible. Though a humanist and atheist like Rieux, Tarrou aspires to sainthood, and though a staunch believer in truth—he demands that Rieux tell him the unadorned truth about his health as he is dying—Tarrou nevertheless lies to Othon, telling the grieving man that his son died peacefully.

A small, determined journalist sent on assignment to Oran, Raymond Rambert is driven by his quest for personal happiness, to which he feels entitled as a veteran of the Spanish Civil War. When the plague erupts, Rambert pines for his wife back in Paris, to whom he desperately seeks to return once the city enters quarantine. Throughout the first half of the novel, Rambert, while concerned about the plague, cites his outsider status in Oran as the basis of his reluctance to join the fight against the disease.

Rambert first meets Rieux while requesting information for an article on the Arab population’s living and sanitary conditions. Despite Rieux’s refusal to provide details and his subsequent unwillingness to help Rambert escape Oran, the two men grow to respect each other. Even as the death toll mounts in Oran, Rambert continues to espouse the principle of individual happiness, arguing that a conglomeration of joyful individuals amounts to a happy society. As he awaits an opportunity to flee Oran with the aid of smugglers, the journalist feels compelled to support the sanitary squad. Finally, in a plot twist, just when Rambert’s escape is cleared, he decides to stay in Oran to work alongside the plague-fighters.

Joseph Grand, a middle-aged, lowly government clerk of scanty means, devotes his spare time to penning a novel, the first sentence of which he strives endlessly to perfect. Due to his inability to find the right words to justify his promotion, Grand has not advanced in his career, one fault for which his wife Jeanne left him. Steadfast in his love for her, Grand lives austerely and honorably, devoting his waking hours to accomplishing workplace duties and perfecting the first sentence of his literary opus.

In the spirit of being a good neighbor, Grand calls for Rieux’s help when Cottard attempts suicide. As the plague intensifies in Oran, Grand unflinchingly lends his support to the sanitary squad, despite his advanced age and faltering health. For this, Rieux qualifies Grand as the embodiment of quiet heroism behind the sanitary squad’s efforts.

An odd, secretive loner who lives in the same building as Grand, Cottard has no legitimate means of income. Out of momentary remorse and fear of police apprehension for a past crime, Cottard attempts suicide in the novel’s opening pages. Initially plagued by angst, Cottard ostensibly “blossoms”—according to Tarrou’s journals—during quarantine as he profits from the plague’s devastation by smuggling contraband substances.

Characterized by shifty behavior, Cottard superficially befriends Tarrou and Rieux for a time, though he declines to join the sanitary squad. Ultimately concerned with his own interests, Cottard grows increasingly paranoid as the plague wanes, knowing his shady business dealings will come to an end and that authorities will seek him out. As the novel closes, a fully demented Cottard is led away from his apartment by the police.

A well-educated, militant Jesuit priest, Father Paneloux enjoys widespread popularity in Oran, even among nonbelievers. Known for his intense personality and eloquent oratories, Paneloux participates in a week of prayer at the onset of quarantine. During his first high mass sermon, he evokes countless details regarding the plagues of history, deftly weaving rhetorical flourishes throughout his remarks as he reproaches his congregants’ lax religious beliefs, which he claims have caused God to strike Oran with plague.

After the death of Othon’s son, Paneloux delivers a second sermon in which he beckons Oranians to look beyond their visceral reactions to the boy’s senseless death and accept it as an act of God. While Paneloux remains devoted to following God’s will, he nevertheless demonstrates solidarity with the sanitary squad by helping them fight the plague. However, when he displays signs of illness, he refuses medical treatment, deeming his deteriorating condition the result of divine will, with which he refuses to intervene.

M. Othon is a local police magistrate known for his somber conservatism, evinced by his black garb and rule-following personality. His tall, thin frame topped with a bald head bearing tufts of hair on each side make him resemble “a well brought-up owl” (14). In the public sphere Othon always displays proper social graces in the company of his family, all the while withholding kind remarks from them. At times, he adopts a perfunctory, polite tone as he utters unkind comments to his “black mouse” of a wife and “performing poodle” children.

Othon’s personality undergoes a change after his young son dies from the plague. After being sent to the quarantine camp, Othon sheds his steely exterior as he gains awareness of the sanitary squad’s collaborative efforts to fight the disease. To the surprise of all involved, he later returns to the camp to honor his deceased son and to assist in the collective struggle. In the end, he dies of pestilence prior to putting his newfound sense of solidarity into action.