Death and Dying in Camus' The Plague

ABSTRACT: Albert Camus' allegorical novel The Plague provides meaningful insight into the process of death and dying. As with other literary masterpieces the author shares with his audience his concern with and knowledge of the vicissitudes of the human condition. In The Plague Camus employs the reactions and responses of a community and its citizenry to an epidemic of the bubonic plague as a symbolic representation of the individual's grappling with death and dying. His main themes are those of separation and exile, despair and despondency, and helplessness and hopefulness.