The opening paragraphs give the
initial feel of a social commentary. The people of a small dull town called Oran live busy and
preoccupied about money, no time for pleasure or fun, just work and routine. The narrator even speaks of how that mindset extends to most modern cities. In
contrast to those other cities, he describes that his
town is different because of the “discomfort one may experience there in dying”. They are
described, by our anonymous, “unbiased” narrator, to be so detached that they
care nothing about their neighbors and family.
This description, though, does not
fit that of what is demonstrated by Dr. Rieux, in the first pages of the The
Plague. Maybe it is due to the nature of his profession, but he even helps out
his poor patients for no pay, he cares for those around him. When dead rats
start to emerge throughout Oran,
he seems to brush it off as nothing, but as the number of rat casualties start
to increase and more people start to go to him with theories and concerns, he grows more curious. For some reason, the first few pages hook the reader
in a way that makes going through descriptions of rats dying by the hundreds bearable
and intriguing.
Jean
Tarrou’s account of the events leading up to the concierge’s strange death were
made possible by his documentation in a small journal that he kept while in
this “intrinsically ugly town”. He first wrote about the
mass deaths of rats when watching an old man call for his unresponsive cats. He wrote that maybe the death of so many rats would send them on a
hunting rampage, but then remembered that his own cats turn their head to dead
things. Jean knew a disaster was about to occur, yet he remained in the town, this
along with his reaction to the news of a fever going around, caused some
workers to wrongly describe him as a fatalist.
The
contrast between his view and Mr. Rieux’s gives the reader a feel of what was
happening in the town from two very different men of different backgrounds.
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