The text begins with a profound statement by Ν. ΝΤΕΦΟΕ about the relativity of representing one form of imprisonment with another. It then leads to the concept of the "veil" that exists within each of us, as no one can truly be healthy. The prisoners within this "veil" fight in various ways, with some like Ραμπέρ imagining they are still free and can make choices. However, by August, the "veil" has covered everything, leaving only a collective hypothesis and shared emotions.

This is a parable of human life, with the sense of progression, thought, and existential movement. Sometimes forward, sometimes backward, often in place, in the midst of the call for the water of purification. It can be between heaven and sea, where the dew of the fountains from the pantheon of the damned moistens the drunken lips of absence and misfortune.

The text then delves into the various emotions and states that humans experience, such as despair, anger, fear, pain, panic, and more. It emphasizes that within this lies the individuality, the individual will, and the existential question of the unanswerable.

Camus writes a transhistorical ode to tragedy, scourge, pandemic, and illness. He celebrates the human spirit, especially those we call fighters, rebels, pioneers, workers, volunteers, and humans in general. However, he argues that it is not right to call them heroes, as what drove them was a simple desire to do their jobs as well as possible and act against seemingly insurmountable odds.

This text beautifully and tragically eulogizes the will and every concept, idea, value, and institution to act in the face of inevitable death. It is perhaps worth an honest look at life itself. This story speaks to these difficult times like no other, with love, exile, pain, indignity, and the vigilance of humanity all expressed here.

Unfortunately, we lost Camus too early, but thankfully we have his writings. You will surely find aspects of yourself in the book and, even more surely and truthfully, connect with each character. Pandemics, like wars, never die. They repeat in history in different forms.

In conclusion, the text wishes you a good reading and sends many greetings.

The story had a resemblance to the past that we ourselves had gone through, and it was good that it had passed.

With the prevalence of this disease, that is, the plague, the lovers who had determined their next kisses suddenly fled from each other. Because they are afraid of contracting this disease. Everyone, willingly, keeps a distance from each other, and this is a very beautiful portrayal of the modern human condition that has fallen into a crisis and become lonely after that.

In this book, we have (Dr. Rieux) who is the narrator of the story, and Camus interprets humanity through this character. (Tarrou) is a person who is approaching death, but with a goal that he creates for himself, he saves the lives of many people. (Grand) is a person who fights until the last moment for his goal, and because he has faith (not just belief) in it, he does not give up on his efforts. (Rambert) is a traveling journalist who has been separated from his lover due to the quarantine of the city and is in the process of trying to reach her, but in the middle of the story, he changes correctly and prioritizes the saving of people's lives. (Kita) is a person who has unsuccessfully committed suicide once, but takes advantage of the conditions of the plague and improves his living conditions with a trade that he starts. (Castel) is a doctor who makes a vaccine for the plague, and despite the high number of patients and the quarantine conditions of the city that make it impossible to send the medicine to the required extent, he saves the lives of many people. (Father Paneloux) is a priest who believes that the plague is the result of the sins of his people, but after seeing the death of a child, he loses his faith and finally (Aton) reopens the city, which does not give any privileges to his own family compared to other people in the conditions of the plague. All of these characters, as described, have their own characteristics, views, and worlds, but they all have one common feature: "humanity". Camus does not necessarily agree with the views of his characters, but gives everyone the right to express their opinions and play their roles. Father Paneloux has as much right as Dr. Rieux and even a person who is afraid of the eradication of the plague because the plague is beneficial to him. Camus does not even judge him. He only tells the reader that such people also exist in society and they also have the right to life and expression.

One of the important points of "The Plague" is that it shows that a human being alone is not capable of doing anything. A group of people must believe that they must stay together and help each other in order to survive. Camus believes that mutual aid is the only way to save humanity, and the basis of this thought is the hope that Camus has for humanity, to the extent that he is capable of even defeating fate and heaven. And the more important point is that what he has shown in "The Plague" is not a personal problem but a collective problem. If the problem is individuality, that is, the human being himself, in this situation, the characters will not come to each other's help. When Rambert wants to escape, after a lot of difficulty, he reaches the border, but finally decides to return to the hospital to help Rieux and Tarrou. They ask him: Why didn't you go after your lover or your happiness? He answers: Happiness makes sense when others are not unhappy. Happiness finds meaning in connection with others. I returned to save the lives of these people and then go after my lover. Even if my lover is not alive, this event itself is happiness. Coincidentally, the interesting point of the event is that they put shame in the face of happiness. He says: If I had gone, I would have been ashamed. And I will not reach happiness if I am ashamed until the end of my life..

12 Days!

It took me 12 days to read it.

Sometimes it was easy to connect with the book, and sometimes it drove me crazy.

Kamo:

I don't know why Kamo made such a fuss about a certain topic.

It could really be more concise.

Cry!

Today I cried out.

The family suddenly said in surprise: What happened?

I said: How noisy this house is! How loud it is in this house!!

I couldn't concentrate and couldn't easily connect with the book.

Goodreads!!

I don't know why from the middle of the book on, I was always thinking about what to write for the review of this book?

Was it really necessary to write something?

And that's a book that I haven't even finished reading yet?!

Dependence:

For me, the plot of the book had no dependence.

I could easily skip through the middle of the book without even bothering to go back to it. It really had nothing to attract me.

(Of course, maybe the busyness of these days made me stay away from it.)

Surprising!

The essence of the story didn't really have much impact on me.

I was looking for more surprising things, something as big as a disaster, but I didn't get to anything special.

Connection:

The book is hard to connect with.

And the story has a lot of ups and downs.

If you stay away from the book, it will be even more difficult to reconnect.

The current book was translated by Reza Seid Hosseini with a preface by Dr. Mostafa Rahimi in 1966 and has 297 pages.

One of the aspects that is attractive to me among Camus' thoughts is the "negation of certainty" by the author.

In fact, we humans are helplessly unable to predict the future in a pitiful way. With a kind of naively optimistic anticipation, we deny the possibility of a sudden event whose severity is even beyond our imagination in the future. However, the disaster has never been and will never be allowed to happen to us. There is always a situation worse than what is imaginable for us.

Of course, the opposite of this is also true. Sometimes the situation develops in a surprising and unbelievable way.

If we accept these facts, then we will no longer be pessimistic in the face of disasters! Because a more terrible disaster could also have happened to us. In fact, humans are not as unlucky as they think and can always see the small but full corner of the cup that has been hidden from view.

**Prisoner of the Pandemic**

11 April 2020


When I informed my friend that I was reading this book, his reaction was 'why am I not surprised'. I was sitting at my computer, swiveling my chair and gazing at the bookshelf filled with the books I had read. There, The Plague seemed to be shouting at me. So, I decided to pick it up, placed it on my coffee table where I have my morning tea, and made it my next read.

This seat has become my reading spot, especially since everything is closed, and I'm not leaving my house due to the police fining everyone. This cartoon also appeared in my Facebook feed.

Reading this book now gives some perspective. The initial warnings of rats dying were ignored, and the authorities argued instead of stopping the plague. The debate about calling it a plague was also interesting.

This is my second reading, and I find new things. Father Paneloux's sermons on the plague contrast with some Christian pastors' responses. Cottard's enjoyment of the plague is disturbing. The situations with the journalist and the cruise ships, like the Diamond Princess and the Ruby Princess, are similar to real-life events.

The book is scary as the real world situation mirrors it. We are all prisoners in our homes, and some are not as lucky. The containment measures are like a prison, and the economic impact of the pandemic is significant. Trump's eagerness to reopen America may be related to his hotel ownership.

Although not named, the plague is clearly the Black Death. I found an interesting video on YouTube about it.

It's a truly breathtaking book.

It delves deep into the mysteries of human nature, explaining a plethora of aspects. It vividly showcases both the worst and the best that humanity has to offer.

There are a multitude of intense feelings portrayed within its pages - hate, love, loss, missing, and so much more.

The book instantly reminds me of "Blindness" by Jose Saramago. Both writers are absolute brilliants in their own right, as they fearlessly expose humans exactly as they really are.

Oh My God! I've just finished reading the book and was completely engrossed in my thoughts about it. And then, out of the blue, there is a small rat standing on my window. I freaked out, and it seems the little rat did too!

I decided to read this for the sense of an ending.

Unlike in Oran, the Algerian setting where The Plague unfolds, in my own city, the bodies keep piling up without end.

Camus, with his detached prose, weaves a tale of horror and anguish here. It's unspeakable, yet it has manifested in our daily lives for over a year now. Much has been said about how the author 'predicted' our response to the COVID-19 crisis, and rightly so. However, Camus' approach is much simpler. He simply and intuitively captures that frustrating behavioural cycle humans are prone to: disbelief, suffering, and forgetfulness. Thus, he ends with an observation of the relentlessness of pestilence and stresses his narrator's awareness of its eventual return – it's always just a matter of time.

The pestilence in question is, of course, as much a metaphor as an illustration of the bubonic plague. It represents the philosophical struggle to keep going amidst the tribulations of the meaninglessness of life and the awareness of our impending deaths – a dance with morality and mortality. What Camus writes of Oran holds true for modern society in general: our enslavement to habits, our devotion to 'doing business', eschewing the simple pleasures of life for the sake of routine and appearances, and our tendency to love without knowing how – and these are just the things he mentions on the second page.

So it's doubly harrowing to have these two plagues unfold in fiction and in real life. Doubly damning that in the latter, things are much worse. There's a section right in the middle of the book where Dr. Rieux, a significant character and our narrator, watches a child die in the feverish throes of the plague. As I write this, thousands of people are dying all across India – hundreds of babies on life support among them – not because of the virus but because of the critical shortage of oxygen (created by a government that came to power based on mass murder and the promise of genocide and who, unsurprisingly, have no qualms about the rising number of deaths). The absurdity is such that hospitals are creating Twitter accounts to send out distress messages and beg for essential medical supplies.

This is where I disagree with Camus. Towards the end of the book, he writes:

“The truth is that nothing is less sensational than pestilence, and by reason of their very duration great misfortunes are monotonous. In the memories of those who lived through them, the grim days of plague do not stand out like vivid flames, ravenous and inextinguishable, beaconing a troubled sky, but rather like the slow, deliberate progress of some monstrous thing crushing out all upon its path.”

However, in fact, everything is vivid and aflame. You only have to look at the pictures for proof.

Throughout much of Albert Camus' "The Plague", I had the distinct impression of delving into the author's unique perspective on life, which many refer to as existentialism, all under the guise of a fictional narrative. The story of the plague outbreak in Oran, Algeria, is rich with elements that echo Camus' essays in "Resistance, Rebellion & Death" and "The Myth of Sisyphus". At first, it was a struggle to push through the storyline, but as the novel progressed, everything seemed to fall into place, and I was uplifted by the beautiful prose.

The main character, Dr. Bernard Rieux, is a watchful and stoic figure when it comes to mankind. Initially, he is hesitant to officially declare a plague outbreak in the port of Oran. However, when the plague is finally declared and Oran is cut off from the outside world, the people experience a profound sense of exile. They long for the past, speed up time, and are haunted by memories.

Despite efforts such as rat eradication programs and "Sanitary squads", the hoped-for serum arrives slowly, and the number of deaths continues to rise. Dr. Rieux and others try to maintain hope, but the situation seems bleak. Meanwhile, Fr. Paneloux, a Jesuit priest, enlists those who still believe in prayer, but he too eventually perishes.

Countering what some may see as false hope, it is said that "again & again there comes a time in history when a man who says that two plus two is four is punished with death", suggesting that meaningful life has become almost impossible for many in Oran.

While the plague-related conditions serve as an extended metaphor or allegory, the dominant theme in the novel seems to be that of exile in a more philosophical sense. Camus' existentialist philosophy sometimes overshadows the clarity of the individual characters, and the novel lacks a sense of the Arab population and the North African culture. However, Camus' works, both fictional and non-fiction, continue to offer hope and stoic guidance to mankind in the face of various afflictions, and "The Plague" is a novel that is well worth the time and effort to understand.

This Godrej sometimes starts a revolution. My nerves are also a mess, and I give up easily.

I think for the beginning, choosing "Taavon" was not a good choice. If I had read "Saghot" instead, I might have had a better entry into the world of comics. I read "Taavon" very indifferently. At first, I was confused, sometimes it would peak for me and I would read it quickly. But mostly it was boring for me. Although throughout the whole time I was telling myself that its story is very wonderful, the author is very intelligent, has done very well in the details, and had dialogues that made me close the book and savor them in my mind. But its cold and dry space didn't allow me to enjoy it as much as I should. Of course, this was also the requirement of the story.

The review of FeReSHte is so complete that I won't say more than this. Everything that was necessary was said much better, more completely, and more accurately than I could. I don't interfere too much in my own writing style so as not to do injustice to it. "Taavon" didn't catch my interest, but it wasn't a bad book at all. I also highly praised it and when the opportunity arises, I will read it again. At a much better and more peaceful time, with calmer nerves. :D

The Plague was written by the French author Albert Camus and was published in 1947.

If I had read this book four years ago, I wouldn't have established such a connection.

However, due to the coronavirus, I was able to empathize with the book's space and some of its characters.

At the beginning of the book, Camus, by quoting Daniel Defoe (showing an allusion through another allusion is as logical as explaining what exists through what does not exist),

aims to depict the theme of enslavement by fascism through another allusion, namely the plague.

The story takes place in the city of Oran in Algeria,

a city where the people have no particular concerns and waste their time and money in cafes and casinos.

Until in the spring, the rats in the city die and the plague epidemic spreads.

The main character of the story is Dr. Rieux, who sends his sick wife out of the city

and helps the people in the fight against this disease as the plague spreads.

The character of Dr. Rieux was very interesting to me. He seems to be a non-believer, and in my opinion, only this sense of duty has given meaning to his life. Because at the end of the book, although he lost his wife and his best friend, he didn't show any particular reaction and dealt with this matter normally.

The character of Rambert, a journalist who tried to escape when the plague came and the city was quarantined to reach his lover, this action of Rambert was not acceptable to me because he could have transmitted the virus to the rest of the world,

no matter how much he was in love.

We also understood these conditions during the coronavirus pandemic. Although we really wanted to meet our families and friends, we didn't dare to do so because of the coronavirus

and we attached importance to their health.

In the book, there is a character of a priest who at the beginning of the story believes that the plague is the result of the people's sins and wants the people to repent.

But later, he changes his position and in a sermon, he uses the word "us" instead of "you" and orders all the people to take precautions and abide by the quarantine measures. And in the end, he himself succumbs to this disease.

In the book, there were people similar to them who are often found during the coronavirus pandemic.

An old man whose writing ability flourishes with the coming of the plague and quarantine, and a merchant who hoards his goods so that the prices go up.

Overall, the story was interesting and moving. I was glad that at the beginning of the story, Camus addressed the people of the city as happy-go-lucky and carefree, but later, with the coming of the plague, the people became purposeful in the fight against this disease, and so did the people's decisions and views during the quarantine.

Alber Camus
__The Plague__

You won't convince others with your arguments, your sincerity, the truth of your sufferings except with your death.

The truth is like light, it blinds.
The lie is like the beautiful tenderness that charms every being.

I love life - this is my weakness.
I love it so much that I can't imagine the opposite.

To be happy, it is necessary not to care too much about others.

Man cannot be certain of anything.

We are extraordinary creations.
Each of us wants to rule something.
Each one insists on his innocence, no matter what.
Even if it forces him to accuse all of humanity and the sky as well.

Many people climb onto the cross
Just so that you can watch them from a greater distance
Even if they force a long-existing horror to fade away.

Covered in ashes,
My hair tousled,
My face is overcome by filth
And with sharp eyes, I stand before humanity on Friday
A naked summary without losing focus on the effect I create
And I say that I am the lowest of the low
And then, gradually
You move from "I" to "we".

I will measure the years that separate me from my end
I will look for examples of people in my situation and those who have died
And the idea that I won't have enough time to fulfill my mission has tormented me

Man plays the role of the mortal man
And after a few weeks, he doesn't know if he can continue until the next day

Do you know what magic is?
To get the answer with a yes without asking clear questions.

Life is brief.

Camus was well aware of this, and it was tragically proven when he met his untimely end in a car accident at the relatively young age of 46. Death is an inevitable reality that awaits us all, and nothing can prevent it from coming.

The question then arises: do we choose to ignore this fact and live in a world of false bliss, where everything seems perfect? Or do we take a more pessimistic approach and simply give up?

Some have argued that Camus should have focused solely on journalism, using his political awareness and writing short essays on philosophy. However, I believe that his diverse output is a testament to his creativity and versatility. After all, life would be rather dull without a bit of variety.

In "The Plague," Camus introduces the idea of a deadly epidemic in the town of Oran. This forces the people to confront death directly, something that humans are generally reluctant to do. The story shows how different people react in the face of mortality. Some barricade themselves indoors, while others try to flee. Some embrace a carefree lifestyle, while others continue to work, hoping that routine will protect them.

In the end, many people die, but some survive. And by the time the plague has passed, the survivors have already forgotten how close they came to death. This highlights the fact that humans can be both stupid and forgetful.

Regardless of which philosophical school of thought we subscribe to, we cannot escape the fact that death will always have the final say. But perhaps by reflecting on our mortality, we can learn to live more meaningful lives.

If anyone has any insights into what that final word might be, I would love to hear them.