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The Plague: Translated by Stuart Gilbert
The Plague: Translated by Stuart Gilbert
The Plague: Translated by Stuart Gilbert
Audiobook10 hours

The Plague: Translated by Stuart Gilbert

Written by Albert Camus

Narrated by James Jenner

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

In the small coastal city of Oran, Algeria, rats begin rising up from the filth only to die as bloody heaps in the streets. Shortly after, an outbreak of the bubonic plague erupts and envelops the human population. Albert Camus' The Plague is a brilliant and haunting rendering of human perseverance and futility in the face of a relentless terror born of nature.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 25, 2006
ISBN9781440780981

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Rating: 3.9718236746673625 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Much has been written about this book so I'll keep my comments brief. The Plague is the chronicle of a city under siege to disease. Camus does an outstanding job of creating the development of solidarity between the key characters who initially react to the threat in divergent ways. The rational detached tone of the narrator keeps this book focused on the struggle against the plague based on hard work and common decency rather than heroism or selfishness.Life is full of plagues of many different kinds in which the innocent and the offensive suffer together. Check out the current headlines in the newspapers featuring war, famine, earthquakes, and other natural and man-made disasters. Camus calls this senseless suffering absurdity and, through the actions of his characters, advocates that our response should be one of active compassion. We all face a choice when tragedy strikes to either accept it without question or to confront the situation in big or small ways. This book offers plenty of food for thought about our moral responsibility to defeat evil in our world.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Awful….. terrible narration (the author’s phlegmatic voice was barely tolerable) and the plot sucked. Not my best Camus novel. Actually the worst.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Couldn't get involved. I couldn't find a way in. Perhaps the lack of a clear central character may have thrown me. I found it a bit cold and dry.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A book for our times. Should be the “Big Read,” reaching as many people as possible. Often couldn’t tell it wasn’t written just this minute. And when writing is this good, you’re not even aware you’re reading, rather, you’re transported.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    As poignant today as when written. I wish humans learned from the past more. The hysteria is palpable too. But the moronic behavior that breeds the plague unbeknownst to the people of Oran, you wish to live then and tell the people to not congregate. It’s current yet dated. But a powerful indictment of what can and does occur.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Little slow at times overall great book and a good read
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Although I found this novel slow and found it difficult to connect in any meaningful way to the characters, I still found myself wanting to pick it up and read at any opportunity. The narrator, whose identity is not revealed for a long time, is telling of a town in which an outbreak of the plague has occurred. The descriptions of the direct effects of the plague on people is described well, and many times, and even though the greater effects are discussed also, I couldn't get a feel for what it would actually be like to be living this nightmare. The town is sealed off to people both wanting to come or to go. So instantly there is a case of everyone being in the same boat. People are left separated from their loved-ones, if not spatially, then eventually through death. Good people die, bad people do. Rich and poor, powerful and lowly. Disease, the ultimate leveller. There is a lot of existentialist discourse. No surprises there. But it came over to me as all rather banal. I expected there to be more practical concerns in a time of terrible illness, food and goods shortages and mass grief. It seemed to me to be a load of men sitting about theorising about life, fate, God and the human condition. So if that is what you are after, then you will love it. 3 stars.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    At first I found the book merely interesting. Interesting characters presenting all kinds of views on life. But the story didn't really ring with me. I didn't feel committed to the characters. But at the end that changed, not completely, but more than enough to love this book. If you want to read a clever book, this one is yours. If you want strong emotions, I would choose another.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    ?Therefore they forced themselves never to think about the problematic day of escape, to cease looking to the future, and always to keep, so to speak, their eyes fixed on the ground at their feet. But, naturally enough, this prudence, this habit of feinting with their predicament and refusing to put up a fight, was ill rewarded. For, while averting that revulsion which they found so unbearable, they also deprived themselves of those redeeming moments, frequent enough when all is told, when by conjuring up pictures of a reunion to be, they could forget about the plague. Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress. Thus, too, they came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose. Even the past, of which they thought incessantly, had a savor only of regret."
    (This one of a bjillion quotations that hit me so hard- CAMUS HOW DO YOU DO IT?)

    "For instance, if it happened that one of them was carried off by the disease, it was almost always without his having had time to realize it. Snatched suddenly from his long, silent communion with a wraith of memory, he was plunged straightway into the densest silence of all. He'd had no time for anything.?
    (uugggghhh SO GOOD)


    So I'm analyzing a handful of quotations from the book for English class and DAMN, this is so well-written. I never stopped to appreciate these words before, guess I got too caught up trying to makes notes and such.

    My English teacher said this book was life-changing, and y'know what? I don't disagree with him.

    I'm gonna have to give this a read a couple of years from now and see what I can get from it. What I do know now is that I don't want to be like the people of Oran. No siree.

    Accept the absurd. Live an authentic life. Got it. I will try my best Camus.


  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I studied this book in French whilst at University in the 1960s, when we were advised to read it three times (1) firstly as a story per se (2) secondly as an allegory of evil in general in the world (3) thirdly as a metaphor for the Nazi occupation of France in particular. Then it makes sense
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great story poignantly written. Heartbreaking and beautiful. This will stay with you a while.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Very relevant read right now! Thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The plague - first bubonic, then pneumonic -- comes to the city of Oran in North Africa, and as the death toll rises, the city is quarantined. This novel of ideas explores the way the community and individuals in it deal with death, loss, and isolation. The main characters are a doctor, a priest, a social-change activist, a criminal, and a journalist, each of whom develops his own understanding of what their collective fight against the plague means. There is something badly askew in the worldview of the story's narrator. I can't tell whether the narrator reflects Camus' own view of the world, or reflects Camus' successful effort to write as one who has lived through and been scarred by an epidemic. Under the circumstances of the story, it would be entirely reasonable for the narrator to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (of course the term wasn't used in the era when Camus wrote); and in fact the narration has a strange emotional flatness in places, even as factual details are recounted with great specificity. Another aspect of the story that feels off kilter -- but is essential to its exploration of existential reactions to the plague -- is the near absence of women. The doctor's wife is elsewhere, at a sanatorium; the journalist's lover, in distant Paris; the criminal has never had a lover; the priest is presumably celibate. Two mothers play a role in the story, but they are symbols rather than co-shapers of the main characters' world. The absence of loving partnerships makes the men less ambiguously real; instead, as the plague wipes out past and future, the characters are reduced to their ideals, abstract or concrete. Who would really live through a plague, or any other disaster, this way? It makes for fast, dramatic reading, but it also leaves the characters oddly incomplete.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Knap zonder meer. Een van de top 10 werken van de 20ste eeuw. Goed uitgebalanceerd en evenwichtig. Het morele dillemma centraal : we zijn in dit leven geworpen en al lijkt de zin ervan ons niet erg duidelijk, we moeten doen wat we kunnen om het aanvaardbaar te maken. Enige storende element : zwaar accent op de visie van de ? gescheidenen ?.Eerste keer gelezen in het Nederlands, toen ik 16 was;onmiddellijk onder de indruk
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The writing in this isn't at all like the Stranger, kind of set me back and showed me Camus is actually a good writer. I feel like he spent more time on this book. The most interesting this about this book is reading it during COVID, yes that's still a thing. He didn't predict anything since we've had other epidemics in the past, but parts of this book sadly haven't changed. Found myself wanting to quote so many sentences in this book. I think if I read this book beforehand I wouldn't have gotten much out of it honestly.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The setting of this renowned book is the Algerian town of Oran. A deadly disease breaks out in this town, which starts with the finding of innumerable dead rats everywhere. We see the action through the eyes of Dr Bernard Rieux. He is hard-working and conscientious - “The main thing was to do one’s job well.” Rieux’s wife is ill and throughout the events depicted in the book is in a sanatorium in the mountains. But there are several other leading characters; there is a Parisian journalist called Rambert doing an investigation into the living conditions of the Arabs; there is a young man with a pock-marked face called Tarrou; there is the doctor’s mother, Mme Rieux, who has come to look after his abode in the absence of his wife; there is Father Paneloux, a learned Jesuit, whose sermons Dr Rieux attends. There is Joseph Grand, a civil servant, who is trying to write a book, but hasn’t got past the first sentence, which he is continually trying to perfect; there is the concierge, Michel, who is the first we hear of to become ill, with swollen lymph nodes, a high temperature and internal pains; there is Cottard, who tries to hang himself but is saved; there is Castel, an older colleague of Dr Rieux, who orders serums. The doctors discuss whether the disease is or isn’t the plague. Rieux states that it is an infection similar to typhoid, but with swelling of the lymph nodes and vomiting. It is Rieux’s opinion that when a microbe is capable of increasing the size of the spleen four times in three days and “making the mesenteric ganglia the size of an orange”, the disease could kill half the town within the next two months, whether you call it plague or not. Rieux does not believe that the plague “might really get a hold on a town where you could still find humble civil servants (Grand) who devoted their free moments to honourable obsessions”. So the plague has no future among the people of the town, he thinks, Toxic gas is being injected into the sewers to control the rats; families are obliged to declare any cases diagnosed by the doctor and agree to isolation of patients in special wards. The state of plague is declared and the gates are closed; people, mothers and children, wives, husbands and lovers, are suddenly separated. This is a very readable book describing the slow development of the disease everyone gradually comes to realize is the plague. It is apparently an allegory of the suffering of France during the Nazi occupation, I now intend to read several other of Camus’ works.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Exceedingly well-done, this book captures the emotional trauma of plague and makes it intimate with astute observations about love, loss, and recovery.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I have long been interested in plague literature, so I'm not sure why it has taken me so long to get round this example. It's a great entry in the genre, too. It does some of the things that most plague lit does (describes the various kinds of reactions people have to the disaster and uses those reactions to examine human nature, for example), but Camus goes farther and gives us more detailed character studies, using the plague as a backdrop for their reactions and interactions. It's a particularly fascinating - and in several ways troubling - read right now; both the parallels and some of the divergent points are sad-making when compared to how our society is handling our current outbreak.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The last time I read a Camus book was 17 years ago, and it was a life-changing experience. Ever since then, I have studiously avoided Camus' writing in case his other novels were similarly affecting.

    But with the onset of Covid-19 and so many people in my literary circles reading or re-reading the Plague, plus with it being Camus' best known and most commercially successful work, I thought this would be a good time to give it a go.

    Fortunately, The Plague wasn't life-changing for me. Merely very good!

    The Plague is straightforward but philosophical; stark yet nuanced; distant, but still emotive. And it is utterly prescient for our times, despite being published in 1947. His explanations of human behaviour can absolutely be applies to how people have behaved regarding Covid-19; I wonder if he would be amused or saddened to know that.

    Camus writes always with such stark simplicity. I don't mean simplicity to say that his concepts are low-brow, but more that his statements are concise and accessible, and with hindsight amazingly obvious; you wonder why you never noticed before the things that he is pointing out.

    But the secret to that, of course, is that Camus' understanding of life and other people was extraordinarily good. He had a depth of insight that cut straight to the heart of things, and enabled him to hone in on the "heart" of the matter.

    Towards the end, Camus linked the concept of the bubonic plague with a wider human issue, a metaphorical and intellectual plague that society suffers from (which he describes as a kind of lack of empathy, cruelty in-built into the system.)

    Note: I'd like to give special mention to Grand, the aspiring author who the doctor befriends. Grand is obsessed with getting his first line perfectly right, so utterly perfect that a publisher will read it and buy the book on the spot. Consequently, he never progresses past the first sentence. I think we have all been there, Grand!

    I do not want to write spoilers for this review but I would like to leave some slightly spoilerific quotes at the end, in case you don't feel like sifting through all of my Goodreads highlights. Some of them are simply magnificent.


    SELECTED QUOTES (minor spoilers)

    ###

    "Pestilence is in fact very common, but we find it hard to believe in a pestilence when it descends upon us. There have been as many plagues in the world as there have been wars, yet plagues and wars always find people equally unprepared."

    ###

    "When war breaks out people say: ‘It won’t last, it’s too stupid.’ And war is certainly too stupid, but that doesn’t prevent it from lasting. Stupidity always carries doggedly on, as people would notice if they were not always thinking about themselves."

    ###

    "[T]hey did not believe in pestilence. A pestilence does not have human dimensions, so people tell themselves that it is unreal, that it is a bad dream which will end. But it does not always end and, from one bad dream to the next, it is people who end"

    ###

    "The people of our town were no more guilty than anyone else, they merely forgot to be modest and thought that everything was still possible for them, which implied that pestilence was impossible. They continued with business, with making arrangements for travel and holding opinions. Why should they have thought about the plague, which negates the future, negates journeys and debate? They considered themselves free."

    ###

    "Figures drifted through his head and he thought that the thirty or so great plagues recorded in history had caused nearly a hundred million deaths. But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has fought a war, one hardly knows any more what a dead person is. And if a dead man has no significance unless one has seen him dead, a hundred million bodies spread through history are just a mist drifting through the imagination."

    ###

    "‘Have pity, doctor!’ said Mme Loret, mother of the chambermaid who worked at Tarrou’s hotel. What did that mean? Of course he had pity. But where did that get anyone?"

    ###

    "Every evening mothers would shout like that, in a distraught manner, at the sight of bellies displaying all their signs of death; every evening hands would grasp Rieux’s arms, while useless words, promises and tears poured forth; and every evening the ambulance siren would set off scenes of distress as pointless as any kind of pain. At the end of a long succession of such evenings, each like the next, Rieux could no longer hope for anything except a continuing series of similar scenes, forever repeated. Yes, the plague, like abstraction, was monotonous. Only one thing may have changed, and that was Rieux himself. He felt it that evening, beneath the monument to the Republic, aware only of the hard indifference that was starting to fill him, still looking at the hotel door where Rambert had vanished.

    At the end of these harrowing weeks, after all these evenings when the town poured into the streets to wander round them, Rieux realized that he no longer needed to protect himself against pity. When pity is useless one grows tired of it. And the doctor found his only consolation for these exhausting days in this feeling of a heart slowly closing around itself. He knew that it would make his task easier."

    ###

    "For them the plague was only an unpleasant visitor which would leave one day as it had entered. They were scared but not desperate and the time had yet to come when the plague would seem to them like the very shape of their lives and when they would forget the existence that they had led in the days before."

    ###

    "‘And this is something that a man like yourself might understand; since the order of the world is governed by death, perhaps it is better for God that we should not believe in Him and struggle with all our strength against death, without raising our eyes to heaven and to His silence.’"

    ###

    I can imagine what this plague must mean to you.’

    ‘Yes,’ said Rieux. ‘An endless defeat.’

    ###

    "Without memory and without hope, they settled into the present. In truth, everything became present for them. The truth must be told: the plague had taken away from all of them the power of love or even of friendship, for love demands some future, and for us there was only the here and now."

    ###

    "Thank goodness, at least, that he was tired. If Rieux had been more alert, this smell of death everywhere might have made him sentimental. But there is no room for sentimentality when you have only slept for four hours. You see things as they are, that is to say in the light of justice – ghastly and ridiculous justice."

    ###

    "‘Nothing in the world should turn you away from what you love. And yet I, too, am turning away, without understanding why.’"

    ###

    "Already at that time he had been thinking about the silence that rose from the beds where he had left men to die. It was always the same pause, the same solemn interval, the same lull that followed a battle, it was the silence of defeat. "
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    One of the few novels by Camus that I hadn't read in my late teens. Very timely and haunting, considering what the world has just been through / is still going through.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A book that is super relevant in our current times. It is all about a plague that strikes a town, and the town gets quarantined. It discusses the psychology and philosophy of loneliness/quarantine, collective responsibility, love vs duty, and many other issues that we have to deal with in this current time of COVID.

    This is my second book by Comus, the first being The Stranger. I find the premise of this book to be much more interesting that The Stranger, but the writing is much, much poorer, which I attribute to the translation (Stuart Gilbert). The Stranger I read in one day (almost one sitting), whereas The Plague I haven't read more than 30 pages at a time. The writing just feels a little too wordy, and a bit clumsy. It's a lot of work to read. Matthew Ward's translation of The Stranger was effortless to read.

    I'm hoping to re-read this at some point with a different translation. Nonetheless, it was a fascinating story, and I couldn't believe how many parallels I could draw to our current times.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    “The Plague” by Albert Camus is the last of the books around the topic of viruses, epidemics and plagues that I will be reading for a while.I started this book with high expectations. Albert Camus has a formidable reputation, and I did expect to gain some insight into human behaviour in this book. The book disappointed me. The narrative was flat. I did not feel any emotional connection to the book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    If there is anything true about people facing deadly realities that is not in this book, I've never encountered it. The language sweeps though the book as the plague sweeps thought the city, steady and unrelenting and suddenly there is a dust devil of passion, love, lost, frustration, helplessness as the story touches individuals.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Sought out during our COVID experience - I knew it would bleak, I ended up having a hard time caring about anyone. Which maybe was the point, but ended up being too long. Would refer folks to The Stranger or Sisyphus instead.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The Plague seems like an appropriate title of a book for a coronavirus-stricken world. Set in modern (1940s?) North Africa, this book reimagines a world where the plague mysteriously makes a recurrence. The work is told from the point of view of a doctor. As with COVID-19 paralyzing the world, the disease paralyzes an entire town for several seasons. Many die over many months.This work provides moving portrayals of individual death and of massive death’s dehumanizing effect on human flourishing. Camus, as always, points us to an existential philosophy of choosing to seize the day despite evil. Even the deaths of a child and of one of the books heroes are cast in this light. The town eventually recovers, much as the world will recover from today’s infections. The world resumes much as it did post World War II; however, the world after has changed in so many ways.In this work, the protagonist faces squarely the good and the evil that humans are capable of. Camus does not mince words in these portrayals. Much like with the Christian concept of original sin, all of us are guilty of murderous callousness towards our fellows. (In Camus’ day, he might have said that even enlightened and educated Germany turned towards fascism.) Nonetheless, goodness still flows from humanity, and this optimistic message is even borne in times of plague. The plague we all wrestle with is not only external (as in disease) but also internal (as in monstrous selfishness). There are no saints, only humans or “men” as Camus put it writing in a less gender-inclusive era.This wrestling with evil is classic Camus. (There are some reports that such wrestling led him to convert to a neo-orthodox form of Christianity before his tragic death in a car accident in 1960.) Camus wrestled with why six million civilian Jews and large numbers of soldiers died in two massive wars in a twentieth century that opened with such promise. Of course, questions like these only provide uncomfortable answers. Nonetheless, Camus chooses – yes, chooses, in a demonstration of his existentialist philosophy – to focus upon the good brought out by these trials. Humans are not turned into saints by life. They – no, we – are shown to be petty and selfish over and over again. Nonetheless, we must deliberate and choose to bring out the good by our daily lives despite the plague’s pervasive presence.In a contemporary environment where governments sometimes fail us and even the best of our fellows seem unsaintly, Camus’ message remains relevant. This work speaks against partisan bickering through small and limited ideologies, but to warm and open embrace of our common and frail humanity. It needs to be reread and reheard by new generations sixty years after Camus’ sudden death. Twenty years ago in college, I loved spending my spare time discovering this author. Today, I cherish his themes even more as they account for the mass of real life that I’ve lived. I wish that more would join me by contemplating his perspective.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    La Peste is about the infection of Oran for approximately a year by the plague. It describes the impact of the plague on the city and on the lives of several individuals. In the process, Camus discusses both the evolution of the state of mind of the general public as well as the intellectual and emotional reactions of the individuals-- basically how they come to grips morally with the plague. Interestingly, there is no concept of the value of social distancing (people are always congregating in bars), although the sanitation efforts are substantial, individuals living with an infected person are sent to isolation in sports arenas and the city itself is closed off from the outside world. Also, until close to the end of the book, there are few if any recoveries of stricken individuals. One of the many themes is whether things will return to normal after the plague or will be changed. The book seems to conclude the former.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    To begin, consider this intro from a wonderful review in Literary Hub: "What would it be like to find your town, your state, your country, shut off from the rest of the world, its citizens confined to their homes, as a contagion spreads, infecting thousands, and subjecting thousands more to quarantine? How would you cope if an epidemic disrupted daily life, closing schools, packing hospitals, and putting social gatherings, sporting events and concerts, conferences, festivals and travel plans on indefinite hold?" Now, by accident, I found a thrashed copy of The Plague in a thrift, when it turned out I already owned a beautifully printed edition with an intro by the wonderful Romain Gary (or, in Hollywood, Mr Jean Seberg). To save the wear and tear on that volume, I read from the other, before passing it along. Once, it was owned by one Julia Kovelman, who, from my research, was a 12th grader, maybe ten years ago. I enjoyed her copious underlinings and her scribbled notes, one that should have had a "spoiler alert!" (but were those even invented back then)? When the intensity level in the story ratcheted up, her markings ceased! Had Julia even finished her assignment? Yes, she did! Near the end, she returned. (I suspect Julia may have been somewhat absent-minded as, a time or two, her notes appeared on endpapers and the like for other studies.) However, both of us finished this gripping account, and we are all the better for it, especially Julia, who now is a pretty young sophisticate. I simply know that when she goes out, her gentlemen friends think, "Somehow, Julia is different," and it is because of the lessons she learned from our reading that give her this certain gravitas. As for me, I will tell you, ignore this world-class novel! You are living through your own plague at this very moment! Why on earth would you need yet another one? Oh, not to be pedantic, but this particular plague is a literary metaphor as well for other horrible attributes. As it was written during WWII, I would argue that it actually reveals how the "plague" of Fascism can take over a country.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    At this time of uncertainty and upheaval in the whole world, I reread this book and was amazed at the relevance to our times. Ostensibly an allegory of wartime France under Nazi occupation, the narrator of this novel, Dr. Bernard Rieux, has given a clear-eyed picture of the progression of a plague which ravaged the Algerian port of Oran. Each of the different inhabitants of the town, closed off from the rest of the world and living under martial law and shortages, has their own reactions to the plague. In the final pages, the good doctor, although knowing the bacillus can lie dormant and arise in future, has seen on the whole that the goodness in man has outweighed the wickedness.Most highly recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I'm not sure that this is the best of Camus' novels - that just might be La Chute - but it is nevertheless a monumental work.There is no structural experimentation here: but it combines highly effective narration over its arc, the presentation in a sober and undramatic way of the approach to life Camus put forth in his non-fiction works, and a quasi-allegorical perspective on the past occupation of France by the Germans. Camus' prose is spare and clean, effective and with an understated elegance.Well worth reading, and rereading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Oran aan de Algierse kust breekt een pestepidemie uit. De jonge dokter Rieux voert een hopeloze strijd uit tegen de ziekte. Een serum van Castel blijkt te gaan werken. De stad herleeft en herstelt. Na alles wat de dokter heeft meegemaakt gelooft hij toch dat de mens meer goed dan slecht is en dat het kwade ontstaat uit onwetendheid.