Here is a brief info about The Plague, courtesy Wikipedia.
Albert Camus’ novel, The Plague offers us a synergy of Christianity and western concepts like absurdism and atheism, concepts that have shaken the modern age in its struggle to understand a world at war with itself. Because of the allegorical richness of this work with its universal appeal, and because of its rich religious implications, however, we can add another critical perspective to its many thematic layers: Hinduism. Reading it from this point of view, we can see clear implications of Hindu ideologies sprinkled throughout the novel. The fundamental Hindu philosophy that God can have several human incarnations and that human can be regarded as God seems like an inherent idea of the novel. As we humans seek answers to the fundamental question of life, such as the nature of our existence, we can discover how Camus has woven the many layers of religious philosophy in an attempt to make sense out of this chaos. We can argue, by using a South Asian critical reading of this novel, that The Plague subtly merges its Christian and absurdist implications with a Hindu philosophy.
For many centuries, God has been regarded as the “all knowing” creator of this world. Similar to every other religion, Hinduism, an ancient eastern religion, also defines God as the creator of the universe; however, Hinduism is unique in describing and portraying God as human, ascribing many human characters to Him. It envisions God as having many incarnations, all of which are human like, and it goes further to preach that every human can be regarded as God. The Vedas, a set of sacred Hindu texts preach, “Matru Devo Bhava, Pitru Devo Bhava, Acharya Devo Bhava, Atithi Devo Bhava,” which translates as, “Revere your mother, father, preceptor and guest as God” (srisathyasai.org.in). Indeed, Hinduism requires that its followers treat all these four figures, which represent mankind as a whole, as God and hence they are worshipped as God giving equal if not more respect that God. In the same way, The Ramayana, a great epic of the Hindus, for instance has clear illustrations of numerous human incarnations of God like Rama, an incarnation of the Preserver Lord Vishnu, or Sita, the wife of Rama and an incarnation of Goddess Laxmi, the wife Lord Vishnu.
The more than 330 million incarnations of the Hindu God live in societies in heaven that are almost similar to human beings and indulge themselves in entertainment and discussions, much like us (Hemenway, 19). Each of these incarnations is assigned a particular job or manifests itself as a particular phenomenon like Natraj, the Goddess of Dance; however, quarrels and misunderstandings among them are also common like the frequent misunderstanding between Lord Indra, the King of Heaven and his subjects, other incarnations of God.
In his novel, The Plague Albert Camus is credited for establishing the concept of absurdism, which can be defined as a “tabula rasa on which we must invest our own meaning and imprint our own ethical system” because no meaning of life exists (Sharkey, 6). In this relation, The Plague is a real life description of several aspects of humanity narrated in terms of an epidemic, which shows the differences and similarities in the logic system of men and how their views about God reflect the meanings they attach to life. In this novel, the protagonist and narrator of the story, Dr. Bernard Rieux, who is “tired of the world” but who still continues to practice his medical profession during the epidemic of the plague, can be identified as a typical example of Camus’ description of an absurdist. Jean Tarrou, the writer of a diary referred to by the narrator several times and a close friend of Dr. Rieux, has similar views about life. In contrast to these two characters, Father Paneloux, a Jesuit priest, is undoubtedly a highly religious Christian, and he describes the plague as a punishment by God to the people of Oran. Other characters like Cottard, Grand and Rambert can be placed in between these two belief systems and provide the description of a generally confused human being, concerned with his own problems. Thus all of these characters collectively describe human life and how an individual’s philosophy is expressed in his actions. Even though the real concept of absurdism, which is a basic concept of the novel, does not acknowledge a belief in God, and thus provides no basis for comparison between God and man, this novel extends the concept of absurdism to explain that God seems non-existent because He is man.
While the novel can be read from both a Christian and absurdist perspective, a Hindu reading of this text can enrich the ideas for understanding our purpose or non-purpose in life that Camus advances. For example, this can be seen in the Christian Father Paneloux’s first Mass sermon where he hints that God is human. His second line of the sermon says, “The first time this scourge appears in history, it was wielded to strike down the enemies of God” (95). He describes the plague as, “the flail of God” and the world as “His threshing-floor” and that “implacably He will thresh out His harvest until the wheat is separated from the chaff” (95). Why would God have any enemies? If he created men, it is logically flawed to say that men could be his enemies. Almost every religion preaches that if one doesn’t abide by what God wants, they will be punished while also saying that everything is controlled by Him. In such circumstances, there seems to be no concept of freewill. The way Father Paneloux describes the actions of God, one cannot help but wonder about the numerous human attributes in God like taking revenge, punishment and so on. Hinduism explains the words of Father Paneloux by stating that all suffering is caused by people holding themselves responsible for their actions, while in fact, it was God who was the real doer of those actions all along. Thus Father Paneloux’s referral of God’s actions as being manlike is just an extrapolation of the Hindu idea that man and God are the same being.
A famous Hindu proverb, “Even God makes mistakes,” seems to find its relevance in Paneloux’s second sermon. Indeed, the Hindu mythologies have shown occasions where His incarnations have made mistakes. Having lived through the plague and observed an innocent child fight to death, he realizes that the concept of God’s punishing the evil doers is wrong and looks like a mistake made by God. In the latter part of the novel, he is seen as a confused person who doesn’t know what to make of God. Should he accept everything or deny everything? Accepting everything doesn’t make sense to him, and he is scared to deny everything. With a Hindu basis of thinking, one can view God as being man himself, and hence see the chain of events in The Plague in a new light. In the novel, God, like man, can be understood as being arrogant. Father Paneloux acknowledges the arrogance of God when he asks the people of Oran to submit them to God or risk being punished. An arrogant God, like man, can always revert to evil to prove his point while at other times, he could simply make mistakes.
As the plague hits Oran, many people react in many different ways: Rambert starts looking for means to get out of the city and Tarrou volunteers for the sake of the epidemic. While most people were tense about the plague striking the city, Cottard was enjoying himself: “F[f]or Cottard was anything but upset by the turn events were taking” (195). Dr. Rieux, an absurdist who doesn’t believe in God, starts spending selfless hours for the sake of the epidemic. This action of Dr. Rieux is in line with one of the greatest teachings of the Bhagwad Gita, a holy book of Hinduism, which preaches an existential view that every man must be engaged in some sort of activity in this material world just for the sake of spending their time here. It says, “Treating pleasure and pain, gain and loss, and victory and defeat alike, engage yourself in your duty. By doing your duty this way you will not incur sin” (2.38, Bhagwad Gita). Dr. Rieux can thus be seen as taking full responsibility to bring order to the society, treating pleasure and pain, loss and gain alike and devoting to his duty as a physician. As he finds himself in a situation where his wife is away and his town is struck with plague, it occurs to him that devoting to the needs of the patients is a duty which he has to perform.
A very important question that every belief system like Christianity, absurdism and Hinduism raises about God is how God came into being. Hinduism describes everything related to God in simple human light so as to make the concepts more acceptable and understandable to man. Father Paneloux did the same during his sermon. Almost every belief system has come up with the idea of God from a human perspective so it doesn’t take long for anyone to see that God was actually created by man. Dr. Rieux’s views of God also clearly hint that Albert Camus and his absurdist concept always recognized this fact; hence an absurdist is right in thinking that God doesn’t exist. Could it be that we live in a world of imagination, where man imagined God, who in turn imagined man and thus both came into existence when in reality none of us exist?
The presence of Hindu philosophy in the novel and its subtle similarities with Christianity and absurdism shows that in essence, these belief systems have much in common. No matter how new or out of the world these views about God may seem initially, they seem to converge in more than one way since all human beliefs are subjected to human interpretation. In the context of this novel, one can say that the writer, a human, was able to portray the life of ordinary people in extraordinary situations with varying views about life and God and that inherent in every belief in the novel was an unrealized base that God is human.
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The Plague (Fr. La Peste) is a novel by Albert Camus, published in 1947, that tells the story of medical workers finding solidarity in their labour as the Algerian city of Oran is swept by a plague epidemic. It asks a number of questions relating to the nature of destiny and the human condition. The characters in the book, ranging from doctors to vacationers to fugitives, all help to show the effects the plague has on a populace.
Here is an article by Abhyudaya Joshi - a sophomore at Weill Cornell Medical College, and my very good friend - entitled Hindu Ideologies in Albert Camus' "The Plague".
Albert Camus’ novel, The Plague offers us a synergy of Christianity and western concepts like absurdism and atheism, concepts that have shaken the modern age in its struggle to understand a world at war with itself. Because of the allegorical richness of this work with its universal appeal, and because of its rich religious implications, however, we can add another critical perspective to its many thematic layers: Hinduism. Reading it from this point of view, we can see clear implications of Hindu ideologies sprinkled throughout the novel. The fundamental Hindu philosophy that God can have several human incarnations and that human can be regarded as God seems like an inherent idea of the novel. As we humans seek answers to the fundamental question of life, such as the nature of our existence, we can discover how Camus has woven the many layers of religious philosophy in an attempt to make sense out of this chaos. We can argue, by using a South Asian critical reading of this novel, that The Plague subtly merges its Christian and absurdist implications with a Hindu philosophy.
For many centuries, God has been regarded as the “all knowing” creator of this world. Similar to every other religion, Hinduism, an ancient eastern religion, also defines God as the creator of the universe; however, Hinduism is unique in describing and portraying God as human, ascribing many human characters to Him. It envisions God as having many incarnations, all of which are human like, and it goes further to preach that every human can be regarded as God. The Vedas, a set of sacred Hindu texts preach, “Matru Devo Bhava, Pitru Devo Bhava, Acharya Devo Bhava, Atithi Devo Bhava,” which translates as, “Revere your mother, father, preceptor and guest as God” (srisathyasai.org.in). Indeed, Hinduism requires that its followers treat all these four figures, which represent mankind as a whole, as God and hence they are worshipped as God giving equal if not more respect that God. In the same way, The Ramayana, a great epic of the Hindus, for instance has clear illustrations of numerous human incarnations of God like Rama, an incarnation of the Preserver Lord Vishnu, or Sita, the wife of Rama and an incarnation of Goddess Laxmi, the wife Lord Vishnu.
The more than 330 million incarnations of the Hindu God live in societies in heaven that are almost similar to human beings and indulge themselves in entertainment and discussions, much like us (Hemenway, 19). Each of these incarnations is assigned a particular job or manifests itself as a particular phenomenon like Natraj, the Goddess of Dance; however, quarrels and misunderstandings among them are also common like the frequent misunderstanding between Lord Indra, the King of Heaven and his subjects, other incarnations of God.
In his novel, The Plague Albert Camus is credited for establishing the concept of absurdism, which can be defined as a “tabula rasa on which we must invest our own meaning and imprint our own ethical system” because no meaning of life exists (Sharkey, 6). In this relation, The Plague is a real life description of several aspects of humanity narrated in terms of an epidemic, which shows the differences and similarities in the logic system of men and how their views about God reflect the meanings they attach to life. In this novel, the protagonist and narrator of the story, Dr. Bernard Rieux, who is “tired of the world” but who still continues to practice his medical profession during the epidemic of the plague, can be identified as a typical example of Camus’ description of an absurdist. Jean Tarrou, the writer of a diary referred to by the narrator several times and a close friend of Dr. Rieux, has similar views about life. In contrast to these two characters, Father Paneloux, a Jesuit priest, is undoubtedly a highly religious Christian, and he describes the plague as a punishment by God to the people of Oran. Other characters like Cottard, Grand and Rambert can be placed in between these two belief systems and provide the description of a generally confused human being, concerned with his own problems. Thus all of these characters collectively describe human life and how an individual’s philosophy is expressed in his actions. Even though the real concept of absurdism, which is a basic concept of the novel, does not acknowledge a belief in God, and thus provides no basis for comparison between God and man, this novel extends the concept of absurdism to explain that God seems non-existent because He is man.
While the novel can be read from both a Christian and absurdist perspective, a Hindu reading of this text can enrich the ideas for understanding our purpose or non-purpose in life that Camus advances. For example, this can be seen in the Christian Father Paneloux’s first Mass sermon where he hints that God is human. His second line of the sermon says, “The first time this scourge appears in history, it was wielded to strike down the enemies of God” (95). He describes the plague as, “the flail of God” and the world as “His threshing-floor” and that “implacably He will thresh out His harvest until the wheat is separated from the chaff” (95). Why would God have any enemies? If he created men, it is logically flawed to say that men could be his enemies. Almost every religion preaches that if one doesn’t abide by what God wants, they will be punished while also saying that everything is controlled by Him. In such circumstances, there seems to be no concept of freewill. The way Father Paneloux describes the actions of God, one cannot help but wonder about the numerous human attributes in God like taking revenge, punishment and so on. Hinduism explains the words of Father Paneloux by stating that all suffering is caused by people holding themselves responsible for their actions, while in fact, it was God who was the real doer of those actions all along. Thus Father Paneloux’s referral of God’s actions as being manlike is just an extrapolation of the Hindu idea that man and God are the same being.
A famous Hindu proverb, “Even God makes mistakes,” seems to find its relevance in Paneloux’s second sermon. Indeed, the Hindu mythologies have shown occasions where His incarnations have made mistakes. Having lived through the plague and observed an innocent child fight to death, he realizes that the concept of God’s punishing the evil doers is wrong and looks like a mistake made by God. In the latter part of the novel, he is seen as a confused person who doesn’t know what to make of God. Should he accept everything or deny everything? Accepting everything doesn’t make sense to him, and he is scared to deny everything. With a Hindu basis of thinking, one can view God as being man himself, and hence see the chain of events in The Plague in a new light. In the novel, God, like man, can be understood as being arrogant. Father Paneloux acknowledges the arrogance of God when he asks the people of Oran to submit them to God or risk being punished. An arrogant God, like man, can always revert to evil to prove his point while at other times, he could simply make mistakes.
As the plague hits Oran, many people react in many different ways: Rambert starts looking for means to get out of the city and Tarrou volunteers for the sake of the epidemic. While most people were tense about the plague striking the city, Cottard was enjoying himself: “F[f]or Cottard was anything but upset by the turn events were taking” (195). Dr. Rieux, an absurdist who doesn’t believe in God, starts spending selfless hours for the sake of the epidemic. This action of Dr. Rieux is in line with one of the greatest teachings of the Bhagwad Gita, a holy book of Hinduism, which preaches an existential view that every man must be engaged in some sort of activity in this material world just for the sake of spending their time here. It says, “Treating pleasure and pain, gain and loss, and victory and defeat alike, engage yourself in your duty. By doing your duty this way you will not incur sin” (2.38, Bhagwad Gita). Dr. Rieux can thus be seen as taking full responsibility to bring order to the society, treating pleasure and pain, loss and gain alike and devoting to his duty as a physician. As he finds himself in a situation where his wife is away and his town is struck with plague, it occurs to him that devoting to the needs of the patients is a duty which he has to perform.
A very important question that every belief system like Christianity, absurdism and Hinduism raises about God is how God came into being. Hinduism describes everything related to God in simple human light so as to make the concepts more acceptable and understandable to man. Father Paneloux did the same during his sermon. Almost every belief system has come up with the idea of God from a human perspective so it doesn’t take long for anyone to see that God was actually created by man. Dr. Rieux’s views of God also clearly hint that Albert Camus and his absurdist concept always recognized this fact; hence an absurdist is right in thinking that God doesn’t exist. Could it be that we live in a world of imagination, where man imagined God, who in turn imagined man and thus both came into existence when in reality none of us exist?
The presence of Hindu philosophy in the novel and its subtle similarities with Christianity and absurdism shows that in essence, these belief systems have much in common. No matter how new or out of the world these views about God may seem initially, they seem to converge in more than one way since all human beliefs are subjected to human interpretation. In the context of this novel, one can say that the writer, a human, was able to portray the life of ordinary people in extraordinary situations with varying views about life and God and that inherent in every belief in the novel was an unrealized base that God is human.
