Plague as Pathological Rationalism

So, I've been reading Albert Camus's The Plague. Not all my posts will be this "heavy," but, as promised, I'm writing about stuff that interests me now, and issues that relate to my research.

I'm currently interested in illness metaphors in modern Iranian literature, and Camus happens to be an important influence on many modern Iranian writers. Iranian intellectuals in the 20th century were, very often, Francophiles.

Now, The Plague takes place in the city of Oran, and centers on a few characters who have to deal with the physical but also emotional and, of course, existentialist challenges brought on by bubonic and pneumonic plague.

Towards the end of the novel, Jean Tarrou, one of these characters, has a heart to heart discussion with Rieux--the doctor who commits himself to the task of helping the town of Oran overcome the pestilence.

Tarrou's comments amount to the following: any rationalist approach to the world is like a plague. By rationalism I mean any worldview based on abstract ideals about things like justice, "Truth," and right. Tarrou, in his youth, witnesses his father condemn a criminal to the death penalty. After this, Tarrou becomes a revolutionary, doing everything in his power to oppose French and European society more generally because he believes the whole system is based around this kind of event--the society "rationalizing" murder under the heading of "justice." Tarrou tells Rieux: "To my mind the social order around me was based on the death sentence, and by fighting the established order I'd be fighting against murder" (p. 226, Modern Library Edition of 1948). This established order is like the plague because it spreads death through this "microbe" of rationalism--justifying what we do based on abstract ideals that we imagine to be the essence of humanity, but ends up justifying the murder of humanity.

But this is precisely where Tarrou's story becomes interesting. Once he joins the revolutionary movement against such rationalizing of murder, he finds that they do the same thing. He describes witnessing an execution by firing squad--meted out by the revolutionaries he has joined. After this, he begins to see that the revolutionary movement against the established order has become its own type of plague. He says: "I came to understand that I, anyhow, had had plague through all those long years in which, paradoxically enough, I'd believed with all my soul that I was fighting it. I learned that I had had an indirect hand in the deaths of thousands of people" (227).

From here on out, Tarrou decides that he won't fight for any ideals, but that he'll just try to fight against plague itself by focusing on the real--actual deaths. What I find interesting about Tarrou's last move is that he moves away from metaphor. Here he is in Oran joining forces with Rieux to fight "real" plague (within the world of the novel, at least) rather than pitting one ideal against another. This may be what is meant in that pithy definition of existentialism: existence precedes essence. It's not some idealized or abstract notion of "humanity" (that is, an essence of humanity) that Tarrou fights for; it is actual, real humans (existence) that he tries to protect (not even "fight" for).