Part 3: Changes

Besides talking only about the "excesses in living" the narrator mentions "burials of the dead, and the plight of parted lovers" (page 167). In the case of "burials of the dead", people still insist on funerals but slowly they have become more and more rushed due to the increasing need for safety. Frequent attacks on the gates have resulted in additional deaths besides the ones already resulting from just the plague. For the prison guards that have died, the authorities began by rewarding their sacrifice with the military medal, but since that might be misinterpreted by the public they decided to changing it to a "plague medal" (page 170). In the case of the public the narrator was a little more specific. Most typical ceremonies had been banded for safety reasons. If a person had died with their family there family was quarantined and if they lived away from their family, the family was noticed to see the person at a certain hour, then forced to leave. These lightning funerals were at first not widely accepted, but as people began to recognize their necessity they realized that " sentiments can't be taken into account" (page 174). Again this is yet another example of how the plague is causing the people to survival over personal feelings as they think they are approaching the end. It seems to me that the people can't take much more of this. Though these precautions are reducing the death toll, people still die at a faster rate then they are probably born so the question is, how long can these people survive?