The vast joy of liberation

1

• The vast joy of liberation

2

• Politics as living with others
• Four men in the face of the absurd
• Father Paneloux
• Tarrou
• Rieux
• Cottard

3

• In the small face, rigid as a mask of grayish
  clay, slowly the lips parted and from them rise a
  long, incessant scream, hardly varying with his
  respiration, and filling the ward with a fierce,
  indignant protest, so little childish that it
  seemed like a collective voice issuing from all
  the sufferers there. (216)

4
The Doubtful Case of Father Paneloux

• Earlier Calamity has come on you, my brethren,
  and, my brethren, you deserved it.
• After working with the victims instead of
  saying you he now said we. (222)
• While his earlier argument remained true,
  perhaps, as may befall any one of us (here he
  struck his breast), his words and thoughts had
  lacked in charity. (223)
• Experience, suffering, and solidarity

5

• Truth to tell, nothing was more important on
  earth than a childs suffering, the horror it
  inspires in us, and the reasons we must find to
  account for it. In other manifestations of life
  God made things easy for us and, thus far, our
  religion had no merit. But in this respect He
  put us, so to speak, with our backs to the wall.
  (224)
• To live with ones back to the wall is a dogs
  life (Camus at Combat, 257)

6

• Religion in a time of plague could not be the
  religion of every day. (224)
• Today God had vouchsafed to His creatures an
  ordeal such that they must acquire and practice
  the greatest of all virtues that of All or
  Nothing. (225)
• It was wrong to say This I understand, but that
  I cannot accept we must go straight to the heart
  of that which is unacceptable, precisely because
  it is thus that we are constrained to make our
  choice. (226)
• There was no middle course. We must accept the
  dilemma and choose either to hate God or to love
  God. (228)
• Choice

7

• No question of failing to act appropriately
  against plague or falling into fatalism. No, we
  should go forward, groping our way through the
  darkness, stumbling perhaps at times, and try to
  do what good lay in our power. As for the rest,
  we must hold fast, trusting in the divine
  goodness, even as to the deaths of little
  children, and not seeking personal respite.
  (227)
• The hard lesson is that the world cannot be
  understood, and only faith can justify the
  absurdity of our lives. We should make Gods
  will our own. (228)

8

• Apathetically refuses doctor, but asks to be
  taken to hospital so as to comply with the
  regulations. (232)
• Thanks. But priests can have no friends. They
  have given their all to God. (233)
• Doubtful case.
• Solidarity with the victims in death
• What kills Paneloux?
• A doubter or a saint?

9
Saints Men

• Tarrou The accused was more than the
  defendant, he was a living human being. (247)
• Abstractions, law, and train schedules
• To my mind the social order around me was based
  on the death sentence, and by fighting the
  established order Id be fighting against
  murder. (250)

10

• We, too, on occasion, passed sentences of death.
  But I was told that these few deaths were
  inevitable for the building up of a new world in
  which murder would cease to be. (250)
• But who doesnt think that they kill for a better
  world? Everybody makes good arguments. (251)
• My concern was not with arguments. It was with
  the poor owl. (252)
• Thats why I decided to take, in every
  predicament, the victims side. (254)

11

• Whats natural is the microbe. All the
  resthealth, integrity, purity (if you like)is
  the product of a human will, of a vigilance that
  must never falter. (253)
• In addition to murderers and victims, there are
  the true healers, who walk the path of
  sympathy and work to overcome our failure to
  use plain, clear-cut language. (254)

12

• It comes to this, Tarrou said almost casually
  what interests me is learning how to become a
  saint.
• But you dont believe in God.
• Exactly! Can one become a saint without
  God?thats the problem, in fact the only
  problem, Im up against today. (255)

13

• Rieux But, you know, I feel more fellowship
  with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and
  sanctity dont really appeal to me, I imagine.
  What interests me is being a man.
• Tarrou Yes, were both after the same thing,
  but Im less ambitious. (255)
• !
• Faith, ethics, and suffering

14

• Death of Tarrou
• Well, he said, Im losing the match.
• The only picture of Tarrou he would always have
  would be the picture of a man who firmly gripped
  the steering-wheel of his car when driving, or
  else the picture of that stalwart body, now lying
  motionless. (292)
• Struggle, decision, action

15

• The doctor could not tell if Tarrou had found
  peace, now that it was all over, but for himself
  he had a feeling that no peace was possible to
  him henceforth, any more than there can be an
  armistice for a mother bereaved of her son or for
  a man who buries his friend. (290)

16

• Rieux thought it too that a loveless world is a
  dead world, and always there comes an hour when
  one is weary of prison, of ones work, and of
  devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a
  loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving
  heart. (261)

17

• Really, however, it is doubtful if this coudl be
  called a victory. All that could said was that
  the disease seemed to be leaving as unaccountably
  as it had come. Our strategy had not changed,
  but whereas yesterday it had obviously failed,
  today it seemed triumphant.

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That man, who had had an ignorant, that is to say
lonely, heart.

• Cottard
• Criminal on the run
• Glad to share suffering
• Profiteer
• Afraid of the plagues end
• Kills a dog and is arrested after a violent
  frenzy
• Some folks were having fun in the street, and he
  let off at them. (304)
• His only real crime is that of having in his
  heart approved of something that killed off men,
  women and children. I can understand that rest,
  but for that I am obliged to pardon him. (302)
• Collaborator?

19

• Cottard, Tarrou, the men and the women Rieux
  had loved and lostall alike, dead or guilty,
  were forgotten. Yes, the old fellow had been
  right these people were just that same as
  ever. But this was at once their strength and
  their innocence, and it was on this level, beyond
  all grief, that Rieux could feel himself at one
  with them. (308)

20

• To state quite simply what we learn in a time of
  pestilence that there are more things to admire
  in men than to despise. (308)