Index




ANACHRONISTIC APOCALYPSES: 
The Human Psyche and Collective Suffering in The Plague


Mae Liu, New York University



19 December 2022


  Life imitates art—or is it the other way around? Albert Camus’ novel, The Plague, blurs the lines between both. Long since renowned for its incisive portrayals of human nature in times of turmoil, its resurgence in modern contexts of the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored striking continuities between the classic plague narrative and real life. The citizens of Oran, too, face the reflection of their predicament through art: namely, in Orpheus and Eurydice, the last play showing in the isolated city. In this paper, I closely analyse Camus’ representation of one fateful night when these periodic performances are brought to an abrupt halt, and the grim progression this signals for the plague’s merciless onslaught. Notably, Camus weaves together allegory, symbolism, and foreshadowing against this backdrop of Greek tragedy to echo Oran’s own denial and hypocrisy back at themselves. In a scourge, he suggests, retaining a sense of one’s humanity is just as important as physical health. Thus, his reference to Orpheus and Eurydice serves as a parable for the idea that hubris towards mortality results in prolonged torment—yet the value of tragedy lies in the wisdom and sense of unity humanity hones through this suffering. 
    
     To begin, several narrative elements of Orpheus and Eurydice correspond with the peoples’ experiences during the plague, allowing the play to act as a microcosm of Oran’s suffering. Central to this allegory is Orpheus’ ultimate goal: to reunite with Eurydice by bringing her back to life (Woodlief). This framework already parallels the yearning each citizen feels for their loved ones, separated either through death or the city’s locked gates. The sheer hubris of Orpheus’ goal also mirrors the strong sense of self-importance citizens have at the beginning of the plague, clamouring at the 

gates and attempting to bargain with the guards (Camus 70). Orpheus’s “unhappiness and love” are “belted out in arias” —a piece intended for solos—connotations which reiterate the assertion of one’s individualism and self-interests during the initial stages of tragedy (211). Nevertheless, his “melodious cries” are met with Eurydice’s “powerless appeals,” a hopeless contradiction that hints at the futility of his endeavours, regardless of their passion (211). Eventually, the narrator even belittles Orpheus’ “slight excess of pathos,” shifting tones from compassion to wry criticism (212). This can be likened to how Rieux faces countless patients and families, whose extended displays of agony only numb his empathy. After all, as the novel warns early on, “the first result of this illness’ brutal invasion was to force…citizens to act as if they didn’t have individual feelings” (78).  These parallels of suffering are further reiterated by classical archaeology professor Marina Prusac-Lindhagen, who characterises Orpheus’ plight as the “extreme emotional challenges” resulting “when death steals away the life of a dear one, and that fact cannot be accepted” (Prusac-Lindhagen 47). It is therefore this anguished denial in the face of unwavering failures that “gives [the play] its tragic quality” (Segal 476). In the “presence of a stable, unbending world-order,” akin to the austere regulations surrounding the plague as well as the unrelenting disease itself, “to violate this order is to invite suffering" (476). In both novel and play, self-interest that stems from denial is shown to meet indifference—and whether resisting bureaucratic restrictions or mortality itself, this hubris serves only to prolong one’s predicament.

    Orpheus’s treacherous journey to the Underworld further reflects the citizens’ compulsions: entering the dimly lit theatre, the men “found the reassurance that  


 had been missing…in the dark streets of the city” (Camus 211). Camus’ juxtaposition of the words “reassurance and dark streets” implies the audience finds solace from the plague-stricken city through theatre, a revival of familiarity. This imitates Orpheus braving the dark descent into hell in hopes of recovering a lost part of his life—his former love. Hence, the quest to retrieve Eurydice not only represents Oran’s yearning for their loved ones, but their previous sense of normalcy. Their resultant coping mechanisms are best illustrated through the symbolic connotations of the theatre, which represents one of Oran’s beloved “habits” from their lives before. Hence, juxtaposing the self-indulgence of its attendees with the plague’s disastrous onslaught emphasises their desperation to cling to a sense of structure and order. “Trapped by the disease, for months, each Friday,” this play is staged, “still popular with the public” and the “box office always [doing] well” (211). Thus, despite remaining the same show—or perhaps because it is the exact same—citizens gravitate towards the only familiarity and escapism they can salvage. Cottard and Tarrou “[settle] in the most expensive seats…[overlooking] an orchestra section filled to bursting” with the “most elegant fellow citizens” (211). The more their sense of mortality looms over them, the more people are inclined to indulge in lavish experiences. The narrator painstakingly details how attendees “[detach] from one another with precision…bowing to one another with grace” as they engage in “good-humored conversation” (211). Elegant diction like “precision,” “bowing,” “grace,” and “good-humored” illustrate the tragically absurd lengths people go to so a sense of order can be preserved. “Habit [chases] out the plague,” the narrator notes, a personification depicting how citizens wield 

social norms like a tool to make apocalyptic changes feel less imminent (211).

    More striking, then, is the narrative significance of art for both Orpheus’s tale and Oran’s people. It is Orpheus’s musical prowess that initially sways the will of the gods, earning him the chance to make his katabasis—just as performance art opens a temporary gateway for Oran’s citizens to access the spectres of their previous life (Lendvay 473). Scholar John Heath, however, condemns Orpheus’s fervour as mere “sophistic posturing”: after all, upon Eurydice’s second death, Orpheus retreats to the comfort of lamenting through his music, instead of following her in death as he had passionately promised when begging the gods (Heath 366). “At the liminal, boundary, instant, Orpheus chooses the longing for love rather than a tangible, embodied, union in love on the earth,”  Lendvay further explains, reinforcing our tendency to wallow in self-soothing art where human resolve is lacking (472). After all, Orpheus lives out his days “reminiscing on that liminal moment, choosing that longing for love,” rather than honouring his original promise (472). It is the unfulfilling end, then, of Orpheus and Eurydice that reads particularly torturous: a split-second lapse in judgment overrides Orpheus’ agonising efforts, a poignant concession to the “foibles…weaknesses and…needs of individual life” (Segal 476).  The citizens’ nights out are testament to an analogous mentality: what began as catharsis has morphed into dangerous escapism, in which citizens immerse themselves in fantasy instead of actual action. Where human will fails, desire for familiar comfort takes its place, reaffirming the necessity of retaining one’s humanity during tragedy, and the pivotal role of art 



 when doing so. 

     Nonetheless, their wilful denial is short-lived,rudely awakened when Orpheus collapses onstage. Now, the “pastoral elements of the stage set that had always been anachronistic…[appear] so for the first time to the spectators, and in a horrifying way” (Camus 212). Imagery and diction work to produce an unsettling atmosphere of dread: the phrase “had always been” first berates the audience’s sheer ignorance until this point, while the “anachronistic,” “pastoral elements” of the set allude to something decrepit and long past its expiry—similar to the facade of normalcy the attendees have been holding onto. Moreover, similes of a “church when the service has been finished, or a funeral parlor after a wake” evoke more solemn imagery to accentuate the grim atmosphere: when service ends, the sense of guidance and comfort of a priestly speaker disappears; during a wake, one is forced to let go of something they will never regain (212). The fallen actor symbolises the culmination of Oran’s misery, explicitly narrated as an “image of what life was then” and contrasting the “plague on the stage in the form of a collapsed thespian” with the “total extravagance that had become useless” of the higher class (213). This deprecating tone is often echoed towards Orpheus in his tale, too, humiliated by his “unrealistic confidence” in his art: as Heath postulates, the bard’s “reluctance to recognise and accept the tragic nature of life” may well have been the “point of his ultimate failure ” (Heath 365). Orpheus’s end can thus be read as a tragedy of passion, where one “disobeys the inexorable laws of nature and suffers accordingly” (Segal 478). Oran’s coping through pleasure-seeking is a similar transgression, showing—like Orpheus’s music—how art placates grief through a false sense of order “briefly and tenuously” before the “reality of the human condition” restores chaos (Heath 353).

This theme of illusory comfort is best invoked by 

Camus’ use of foreshadowing, inducing the same stages of dread in the reader as the audience experiences. Here, foreshadowing works to highlight the alienation between performer and audience. From the start, the narrator directly addresses the leads as “Orpheus” and “Eurydice,” dissolving distinctions between actor and characters. This immediately estranges the performers, reflecting the audience’s resolution to treat them as mere objects of entertainment, comfort, and fictionality. They “hardly [notice]” when “Orpheus [adds] a trembling that hadn’t been there,” an ominous diction and instance of dramatic irony that hints budding conflict to the reader before the audience catches on (Camus 212). As the play symbolises an unchanging constant in Oran’s routine, any deviance—like the trembling—is all the more unsettling. When Orpheus is overcome with “jerky movements,” it simply “[appears]” to viewers as a “stylistic effect that added even more to the singer’s interpretation,” their painfully slow realisation emphasising the lack of regard for the performers as people (Camus 212). Jerky movements evoke connotations of something unnatural, while “appear” suggests the audience’s initial impression is deceptive.

    Only after these incidents occur does the narrator swap “Orpheus” for “the singer” or “actor,” as though mirroring the audience’s progression from wilful ignorance to horrified awareness (212). This foreshadowing reaches its peak when Orpheus falls, “as if the rumor that came from the parterre had been confirmed by what he felt” (212). This mention of an unnamed rumour implies there had been knowledge of him contracting plague all along, reinforcing the extent of denial and disregard for humanity the audience has internalised for the sake of self-indulgent entertainment. Only when their illusion literally collapses are they forced to reckon with this fatal denial. Words like “costume,” “stage set,” and “thespian”





  follow in rapid succession to accentuate the falsity crashing down on them (212-213). Stubbornly preserved individualism dissolves into a panicked mass, a stark contrast to the refined facades in the first paragraph: “little by little, the movements sped up, the whispers became exclamations, and the crowd flowed toward the exits, hurrying to get out, finally pushing and shouting” (212-213). These abrasive actions feed into the polarisation and antagonism the plague has bred under its rule, mentally isolating its citizens as much as it lumps them into the same cesspool of suffering. 

    What, then, of the scourge’s true purpose? Camus’ narrative effectively evades euphemisms, but beneath the plague’s countless casualties lies a wisdom and regaining of humanity forged only through this suffering. Bleak as the dissolution of individuality seems, classics professor Charles Segal offers a different angle of Orpheus’s myth—and in turn, Oran’s plight: “the bitterness of death as eternal separation” may in fact be “overridden by a vision of death as eternal union” (Segal 484). Though disease ravaged the lives of countless citizens, it also united Oran under what Rieux calls “[humanity’s] poor and terrible love” (Camus 323). This paradox where isolation induces harmony is further explored when Rieux concludes to himself, “the warmth of life and the image of death” constituted “knowledge” (313). Hence, it was a forced reckoning with one’s mortality—and the appreciation for life that it brought Oran—that generated crucial insights post-tragedy.

    Similarly, with the play, critic C.M. Bowra posits the true impact of Orpheus’s journey “lies in his acquiring knowledge about the afterworld, and the recovery of his wife did not necessarily have pride of place in it” (Bowra 315). Instead, both novel and play suggest that the wisdom gleaned from 


humanity’s failure of will rivals the importance of saving lives in the wake of mortal calamity. At the novel’s denouement, Rieux—among those who have witnessed the most deaths firsthand—solidifies this by asserting that “all…a man could win at the plague’s game, and at life’s, was knowledge and memory” (Camus 312) In essence, it is this memory of suffering that rewards the prolonged struggle: a newfound mindfulness to combat the ignorant hubris that had spurred the scourge’s motion. Therefore, the plague reveals in us our humanity: just as Orpheus’s failure only makes the limitations of human nature more stark, memory of the plague connects those who have survived its destruction. “Every one of [Rieux’s] sufferings,” for instance, “had, at the same time, been shared by others”—and during a period where suffering simultaneously felt “solitary,” this proves to be tragedy’s bittersweet concession (330).

    Through clever use of Orpheus and Eurydice’s narrative as allegory, theatre as symbolism, and both imagery and diction to build foreshadowing, this passage highlights the consequences of illusory, self-destructive hypocrisy in times of collective suffering. While habits and routine feel like reassuring anchors to order, excessive attachment to them—as seen in the crowd’s repeated, indulgent theatre outings—exacerbates one’s sense of loss. Therefore, in the end, both play and novel explore the paradoxical value of tragedy: the unifying wisdom consolidated in its aftermath. Often transposed as an allegory for society’s response to socio-political turmoil—be it war, revolution, or epidemic—Camus’ portrayals of the human psyche as it reckons with mortality remain brutally compelling to this day. Perhaps this is why even the wilful ignorance of Oran’s citizens feels infinitely more pitiful than heinous: every calamity brings with it a merciless dissolution of individuality, uniting us only in suffering—and that stubborn, human hope.



Works Cited

Bowra, C. M. “Orpheus and Eurydice.” The Classical Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 3/4, 1952, pp. 113–26. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/636821. Accessed 20 Dec. 2022.

Camus, Albert. The Plague. Translated by Laura Marris, Penguin Random House LLC, 2021. 

Heath, John. “The Stupor of Orpheus: Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ 10.64-71.” The Classical Journal, vol. 91, no. 4, 1996, pp. 353–70. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3297454. Accessed 20 Dec. 2022.

Lendvay, Gregory Charles. “Love Earthbound and Love Evanescent: An Analysis of Love in Ovid’s Characterizations of Alcyone, Orpheus, and the Songs of Orpheus.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, vol. 19, no. 4, 2017, pp. 461–92. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5325/intelitestud.19.4.0461. Accessed 20 Dec. 2022.

Prusac-Lindhagen, Marina. “Orpheus in Love, Death, and Time.” Mirrors of Passing: Unlocking the Mysteries of Death, Materiality, and Time, edited by Sophie Seebach and Rane Willerslev, 1st ed., Berghahn Books, 2018, pp. 33–56. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvw04cz9.6. Accessed 20 Dec. 2022.

Segal, Charles. “Ovid’s Orpheus and Augustan Ideology.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, vol. 103, 1972, pp. 473–94. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2935989. Accessed 20 Dec. 2022.

Woodlief, Ann. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice, as told by Apollonius of Rhodes, Virgil and Ovid (and retold by Edith Hamilton in Mythology). VCU, 2001, https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/webtexts/eurydice/eurydicemyth.html. Accessed 28 October 2022.


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