I’ve posted this in the past, but the version I used has been taken down. Here’s another version, though the subtitles are in Spanish instead of English. Perhaps you can piece it together if you’re not one of our resident hispanohablantes. Early in Part IV of Camus’s The Plague, Cottard and Tarrou head to the Municipal Opera House to see a performance of Gluck’s Orpheus. Here’s the duet mentioned in that scene, which we’ll read and discuss in class today. Here’s a little more about Gluck’s opera — a variation on “the underground rescue-mission [plot] in which the hero must control, or conceal, his emotions” — as well as some additional info about the story it tells. What can this set piece — and the additional stories it invokes — tell us about Camus’ larger narrative?
Archive for October, 2016
The Moral Dilemma of the Plague
Camus contracted tuberculosis, a highly contagious disease, in 1930 at the age of 17. He was forced to abandon his ambitions in football (he was a goalkeeper at the prominent Algerian University team then). He was long confined to bed, and thus only able to study part-time. One feature worth noticing is that even though Camus was once a patient, he chose to narrate the story from a doctor’s perspective rather than the ill one. Shouldn’t he had more experience as a patient? Why did he choose to do so? Is there anything Camus hopes to convey that would be abortive if presented from a patient’s point of view? By far we have read about the plague from various perspectives, and these lead us to the broader question: How does the perspective of narration influence the reader’s conception towards an idea or an event?
Having the experience of being the infected one, Camus is concerned about the sufferings of the patient and how people should treat and react to them. Yet, he started the setting with citizens concerned solely about themselves, about doing business and earning money. Inundated with individualism, the town is a place where “discomfort attends death” [5]. People were so concerned about commercials and profits that they behave extremely indifferently toward each other. They were so obsessed with business that they were completely unprepared when the plague struck by surprise. Is the plague a punishment from some divine power for the sin of greed?
The reaction of the government and the measures taken have significant influences on the spread of the plague. What is the moral dilemma that falls upon the government when a plague hits their people/city? Do they tell them and risk panic that will cause them to attempt to leave and further spread the disease? Or do they risk their community and population completely dying?
Reading Camus, made us think of Dan Brown’s ‘Inferno’. The story revolves around the threat a new world plague created by a deranged lunatic. The protagonist Robert Langdon and other government institutions are on the race to find the threat and eliminate it before it destroys the world. The fear arises from the fact that no one really knows what the ‘plague’ actually is. This is the same in Camus’s ‘The Plague’. The fear arises from the unknown factors at play in a plague. The unknown cause, the fear of waiting for one’s own possible demise. In the ‘Inferno’, the creator of the plague claims that the plague is nature’s way of purging the earth. Is it a natural response for over population of the earth?
Who is responsible during a plague? Is it the authorities? The patient himself? Or medical practitioners? Whose responsibility is it make sure that the plague is curbed? Who does the responsibility fall onto if the “Global Health Organization” can not find a cure for an epidemic, does it fall back to the individuals that carry these diseases?
Furthermore we found an interesting Reddit post about a guy who, through his words, had the responsibility of letting the world know of an upcoming plague or pandemic. Despite the government forbidding him from leaking the information. He took the burden of releasing the information although he has no way of finding a cure.
In the situation of a plague, is one solely responsible for oneself or do we have some duty towards protecting others as well?
–Lateefa, Kai-Wen, Neha
Liberty Bonds and Domestic Life_Augmenter’s Post.
As I was reading this seemingly insurmountable novella, I came across certain thing that stood out to me. Normally, when I read a new text and there are words or references used in the text that I do not understand, I google them (Yay to the 21st Century!!). When Miranda and Adam were trying to keep wake by reading a couple of Bible verses, Adam made a reference to a Biblical verse that was supposed to be from Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. He said, “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take…” [Porter 188]. Being Christian, I found this verse fascinating as I dis not recognize it. In a bid to satisfy my inquisition, I searched up the prayer on google and the first post on the text from Wikipedia had this poster at the side.
The lines “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take” are from an 18th Century Children’s bedtime classic. The first adapted version of the original piece reads,
“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
The US government altered to lines of this children’s classic to say,
“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. God bless my brother gone to war Across the seas in France so far. Oh, may his fight for Liberty save millions more than little me. From cruel fates and ruthless blasts,– And bring him safely home at last.”
If anything, this poster demonstrates augments our discussions from class about how the war fed into domestic life. This poster literally turns the most intimate aspect of a child’s bedtime ritual into a war propaganda tool to get people to buy Liberty Bonds. The poster itself shows a mother and child (the non-combatants) praying and the background of the photo shows the framed picture of a soldier in the war. Since the theme of the poster has been personalized by the title, “My Soldier” it is safe to assume that the soldier being referred to here is the father of the child. This is most likely why this prayer would be important to the child and would prove to be a stronger war propaganda if the mother and child have stronger and more intimate relations with the soldier who has gone off to war.The poster is indeed a subtle coercion tactic to lure non-combatants into purchasing liberty bonds for the war. Furthermore, the backdrop of the poster itself is in the colors of the United States flag which to me would symbolize unity, freedom and patriotism (this thought is also going off lines of their national anthem).
In the text itself, the noun ‘Liberty’ is capitalized. This is intentional as it aims to imprint in the minds of the people of the United States that the war efforts are for their freedom and as such buying the bonds would help achieve the set out goals of liberty and freedom. Ironically, the terms ‘BUY UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT BONDS’ and ‘THIRD LIBERTY LOAN’ are written in bigger and even bigger letters than the term ‘Liberty’ in the bedtime classic as the term ‘bonds’ plays on the idea that the term ‘bonds’ as used in this poster could also mean ‘BONDage’. The citizens of the United states have practically been held captive by the war efforts. The intimate aspects of their lives have been invaded for propaganda means and people are forced to buy Liberty bonds even when they cannot afford to, lest they are harassed by the Lusk Committee.
The audience of this text can’t help but agree with Miranda’s thoughts as she asks, “Coal, oil, iron, gold, international finance, why don’t you tell us about them you little liar?” [Porter 175]. It appears to Miranda and the audience of this novella that dealing with these issues are better ways to win the war as opposed to holding citizens captive by feeding into their intimate lives and forcing them to buy liberty bonds.
Of Time And Death
One of the key elements of the novel Pale Horse, Pale Rider is the mention of time. Throughout the novel, Miranda constantly convinces herself that she has “no time” and that “time seemed to proceed with more than usual eccentricity.” This is understandable since the horrible condition of the war and her disease allows Miranda with no option but to see her death as imminent. Yet when reading the story, I could not help myself consider the reverse: if we know death is imminent, would we also insistently think that we never have no time?
This question seems to invite us to discuss the common fear of death that every human being has certainly felt at some point in their lives. Much of this fear seems to stem from the unpredictability of the death’s arrival. Often we say that if we were to know when we will die, we would make the most of our time. Yet the reality probably says otherwise, we will probably end up being like Miranda. Instead of enjoying the present moment of being with our loved ones, we would instead be consumed by our worries just like how Miranda constantly drifts in and out of her consciousness to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. Hence quite paradoxically, the idea of us not knowing our death seems to be a good thing as it makes us appreciate every single second that we have.
Yet here is the punch: Miranda frequently tells herself that “something strange is going to happen” that when terrible things like Adam’s death and her illness really happen, the whole story looks more like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The irony behind the last line “now there would be time for everything,” troubles the audience’s mind. The question of whether Miranda is alive or a living dead even after she survives the war and her disease can never cease to tickle me personally as a reader. Again, I could not help myself question: if there was anything, could we actually prepare for our death? It seems like with all the foreshadowing preceding the final stage, Miranda still cannot really seem to prepare herself for when she encounters death, much less for when she finally escapes it and is confronted with the truth that she is alive, but Adam is not. If we were told that we will die in the next couple of decades, what would we really do? Would we be the kind, helping individual that we pledge to be, or would we be the greedy person who would want to indulge in as much merriment as possible?
Perhaps think about this way: you know the deadline of your assignment is in two days, would you try to produce the best essay possible by using the two days you have or would you rather procrastinate and complete the assignment in the last minute?
A Pandemic’s Effect on the Mind and Heart
Have you heard of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic? It killed more people than the first World War did, yet it is not widely remembered. Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter is one of the few literary records of a traumatic event that killed between 20 million and 40 million people. This is Porter’s most autobiographical work as she nearly died of the plague herself when she was working for the Rocky Mountain Newspaper. According to a 1936 interview with Porter, 18 years had passed before she set down to write this fictional novella. This suggests she may have tried to forget the pandemic and was unable to repress her memories of it. Perhaps the act of writing this novella was her way of coming to terms with her personal experience of surviving the influenza pandemic of 1918, and suggesting that events like this should be remembered. In the 1936 interview, she recalls her experience as identity-shattering.
“It simply divided my life, cut across it like that. So that everything before that was just getting ready, and after that I was in some strange way altered, really. It took me a long time to go out and live in the world again. I was really “alienated,” in the pure sense. It was, I think, the fact that I really had participated in death, that I knew what death was, and had almost experienced it. I had what the Christians call the “beatific vision,” and the Greeks called the “happy day,” the happy vision just before death. Now if you have had that, and survived it, come back from it, you are no longer like other people, and there’s no use deceiving yourself that you are. (“Interview” 85)” – The Forgotten Apocalypse
Surviving a plague or a war is a life-changing event for an individual survivor and a community. Porter draws upon her own personal experience of alienation and disorientation after a plague when she describes Miranda’s painful and bitter recovery. It raises the question of what survives in a survivor after a plague? Or after a war? Even after the pandemic and the war (suggested by Miranda to be the root cause of her illness) are over, Miranda remains traumatized and is haunted by the ghost of Adam. Pandemic and war have irrevocably disrupted her sense of place, identity, time and the world. What kind of trauma, beyond physical, does a pandemic and war generate? Miranda, at one point suggests that the emotional and psychological trauma is much worse than the physical. “It’s what war does to the mind and the heart, Adam, and you can’t separate these two – what it does to them is worse than what it can do to the body” (177). Since the body cannot be separated from the mind, and vice versa, where do we draw the line between physical and psychological impacts of war? How do survivors and a community remember this trauma and live with it? Perhaps this reflects Porter’s decision to tell the story from alternating third person and first person perspectives in a nonlinear and chaotic narrative. War and disease are so chaotic and disorienting they have disrupted the narration. It isn’t until the end of the novella that we realize Miranda has been dreaming the whole time.
Was Miranda ever really awake until the end of the story, when she is no longer sick and the war has ended? What does it mean for Miranda to be awake or feel alive? When she ‘wakes’ up, she feels numb and like a zombie of herself, a ghost haunted by her past. In the final moments of her fevered dream, she achieved a sense of tranquility and enlightenment. She felt more alive close to death than she does when she wakes up. This irony reminded us of a scene in the animated film Corpse Bride, when the main character enters the underworld and finds that it is far more enchanting and lively than the living world.
Miranda has changed. She is haunted by the ghost of Adam who was “a ghost but more alive than she was, the last intolerable cheat of her heart..” (208). She still feels tied to the memory of the dead. Is she obligated to honor and remember Adam? Her post-traumatic identity is now cynical of more than just the “silly” and “filthy” war; she is now incredulous about being alive in general. At the end of the novella, it is only her memory of the past and the dead that remains after the war and the plague have ended. Is there any way for Miranda to preserve her former self through her memories as a survivor? What are the responsibilities of a survivor towards the dead?
-Sara, Shaikha, and Mira