PRESIDENT ' S MESSAGE
A Pandemic Year
A . CRAIG CLELAND Ogletree , Deakins , Nash , Smoak & Stewart , PC Craig . Cleland @ ogletreedeakins . com
I n Albert Camus ’ 1947 novel The Plague , a fictional outbreak of bubonic plague strikes the French-Algerian port city of Oran shortly after World War II . As the disease monotonously plows through the population and the death toll mounts , the government shuts down the city , imposing a Draconian quarantine on its citizens . Exiled in their homes , they may not so much as mail a letter to the outside world on the chance that the contagion might spread by some envelope or stamp . The people react in a familiar way : “ The furious revolt of the first weeks had given place to a vast despondency .” Soon , “ the whole town lived as if it had no future .”
At the heart of the novel are three friends : Dr . Bernard Rieux , a physician ; Jean Tarrou , who was only vacationing in Oran when the plague hit ; and Father Paneloux , a Catholic priest . During such unrelenting suffering , the three individuals give themselves over to the only possible meaning they can find : “ One must fight , in one way or another , and not go down on one ’ s knees . The whole question was to prevent the largest possible number of people from dying and suffering a definitive separation . There was only one way to do this , which was to fight the plague .” As Tarrou puts it , “ All I maintain is that on earth there are pestilences and there are victims , and it ’ s up to us , so far as possible , not to join forces with the pestilences .”
Toward the novel ’ s end , Rieux and Tarrou retreat from their endless work to swim in the Mediterranean , seizing a moment of joy amid countless patients and the dead : “ They saw the sea spread out before them , a gently heaving expanse of deep-piled velvet , supple and sleek as a creature of the wild . Slowly , the waters rose and sank , and with their tranquil breathing sudden oily glints formed and flickered over the surface in a haze of broken lights . Before them , the darkness stretched out into infinity .... They undressed , and Rieux dived in first .”
As randomly as the plague came , so it retreats . The citizens ’ despondence and hopelessness are lifted , and some measure of happiness returns . Still , people are
4 April / May 2021