The novel that I chose to do this report on was, "The
Plague", by Albert Camus. It is about a plague that hit the
European countries in the middle ages. I chose to describe
the literary term of parallelism. Here are some following facts
about the story's plot that involve parallelism through the
novel. The novel begins at Oran where the plague becomes
known. The main character, Dr.
Gernard Rieux, is a doctor.In the beginning of the story he finds a dead rat on the floor.Even in those times rats were not found dead on the middle
of the floor. This was unusual, but he threw out the rat and
forgot about it. Eventually the dead rats began to pile into
large masses and burned. Soon after there were some
people that got very sick, which made Mr.
Rieux very
curious. These reports of these ill people and the death of
the rats were the beginning of the parallelism for this story.Since Bernard was a doctor he was the first to actually
attempt to help one of these sick people. Michael was his
first patient in this matter. He was the sickest person that the
doctor had ever seen. Michael was pale white and vomited
often, he hurt so much from the vomiting that he seemed
paralyzed.
Mr. Rieux tried to help the man the best that he
could, but he ended up dying. Michael was the first person
to die of this illness. After his death, many cases of this
illness were reported widespread.
Again more details of
sickness and death, this is the parallelism for this novel. As
the reports of sickness and death came to inform Dr. Rieux,
he tried to comfort and cure the plagued patients. About
ninety percent of the people infected had died.
He wanted a
stop to this plague. Quickly he linked the rats with the
people. He knew that the rats began to get sick before the
people did. At this time many people had the plague, except
for the Chinese visitors. They never were infected.
As the
plot moves on death, sickness and the plague are still
relevant. He studied their behaviors and everyday tasks and
learned that they do something that was never often done in
these middle ages. Not many people in these days bathed.The doctor began to notice that the people that bathed never
got sick.
So he asked all of his, still living patients, to take
baths frequently. This proved to be the miracle cure for the
people. The doctor asked his other fellow doctors to follow
the same practice with their patients. The word was spread
and the plague was soon wiped out.
So as you can see, the
literary term of parallelism was deemed very relevant
through the ongoing plot. Death, sickness, and the plague
epresented the story's parallelism. Albert Camus made
parallelism the main literary term for this novel, given away
by the title, "The Plague."
