Squareness not rewarded

The people of the city of Oran wander aimlessly through the city, either missing someone that passed away, or waiting to get infected. It seems that people have come to terms with their doom since most of them are "under suspicion" and they view trying to deny or run away from the plague as a waste of the little time they may have left. It is sad, and very scary to think about the possibility of being stuck in a lackluster town on the highway to hell. They all lived life with no real emotion, they lacked passion and now have to die without a taste of the happiness that comes with defying the rules, or taking a month off. All of their work, their ambition to climb the social hierarchy was all in vain now that they were all going to die, and death took anyone regardless of their socioeconomic background. What they were so busily pursuing their whole lives? Irrelevant, all of it, the money, the jobs, could not save them from the possibility of dying. All that remained relevant were memories and relationships with the people they had around them, two things that were not their fortes.  The attempted escapes were, in a twisted way, funny. How could a person that lived within a "box" their whole life think that they could for the first time break the rules and succeed, not going to happen. These events appear to be wildly out of character and they reflect the level of desperation that the inhabitants of Oran felt.