The Old Spaniard

    During these first few chapters of the Plague, one character has stood out to me: the old asthmatic Spaniard who sits in his room moving dried peas around. Dr. Rieux visits the old Spaniard a couple times in these chapters as he is one of his regular patients. In these scenes, we get some strange moments with the character that make him stand out from the rest of the cast thus far. In the first scene, we get the first inklings that the rats may be a widespread problem, but not in a presentation that the reader may expect.

    The wealthier people who live downtown and the newspaper reporters do not catch on to the rat problem as quickly as those living on the outskirts of town. The rats are what everyone is gossiping about in the outskirts. What attracts Dr. Rieux’s attention to the problem is the old Spaniard evidently quite pleased with the increase in rat appearances, saying, “‘They're coming out’” multiple times with a grin. This is certainly a different attitude than the rest of the town who quickly picks up on the rats as ominous and a sign of impending tragedy. In a book that is supposed to be allegory for the rise of Nazis, what does this little old man represent? He is certainly pleased and has a different outlook on the situation as a whole but he has not been affected; he has not caught the plague himself. 

    The rats aren’t the only the thing the old Spaniard has a different attitude about. The weather takes a turn for the worse halfway through the chapter, becoming a torrential downpour for several days. While the rest of the town laments this new weather, the Spaniard has different thoughts, and he “welcomed this weather with enthusiasm.” The Spaniard believes it helps his asthma, the ailment the Doctor regularly visits him for. The weather seems to set an ominous tone for the book, marking the beginning of the plague infections in the residents of Oran. Once again, this calls into the old man’s attitude towards this change. 

    The old Spaniard seems to take a opposing position towards the rats and the weather, both seemingly foreshadowing the future of the town. The man is not worried and embraces these changes instead even though I doubt an increased number of dead rats is very useful to many. With the context of an allegory of Nazism, the old Spaniard seems to represent the antisemitic population who applaud the actions the Nazis take. Perhaps I am reading more into the man’s character than I am meant to and he just a crazy old man but knowing that the plague depicted in this book has another meaning makes it hard to not try to analyze the reactions to said plague.

Comments

  1. KatelynNovember 6, 2020 at 1:19 PM

    This specific character really stood out to me when I was reading these first few chapters as well (although I think that the allegory will probably become more clear later in the book). Still, looking at this character from the viewpoint of both Camus' situation in the midst of Nazism as well as our current situation in the midst of Covid, the first thing that personally came to mind when the narrator mentioned he was asthmatic was that asthma was an illness that made you "high-risk" when it came to other infectious diseases (possibly more applicable to today than to the bubonic plague but still). I think it would be interesting if this character who "supported" the plague (read Nazis) was actually one of the people they ended up targeting. As in, he isn't Jewish himself, but harbors some other trait that is somehow against the Nazi population and thereby supporting them, he is proverbially shooting himself in the foot.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Swan in Black Swan Green

At the end of Black Swan Green , Jason sees a swan despite his claim throughout the book that “Black Swan Green hasn’t got any swans. That’s the village joke.” Swans have long been a symbol of transformation, a classic example of this is the story of the ugly duckling. Jason’s coming of age is tied in with the idea of the swan and more specifically that his coming of age was inevitable. Firstly, the swan in literature has a relation to transformation. Jason has completed his own transformation at the end of the book, he has come of age as it were. Throughout the year, he has put up with immense bullying and has changed and become a different person than he was at the beginning of the book. He sees the swan in the exact same place that the book began a year ago, on the frozen lake in the woods. This all goes to signify the internal change that has occurred and that Jason has grown up, becoming a beautiful swan himself.  The Goose fair is a moment that defines his coming of age. He h...
Read more

Raymond Rambert

     Rambert is a character that has annoyed me for a variety of reasons but he is also the character who has kept me engaged while reading. Since the lockdown, he has put himself first and pestered all the officials into seeing how they could help him out. He believes that he is special because he does not actually live in the town of Oran and he was only there coincidentally when the plague broke out. He does not seem to grasp that he is not the only person that is trapped in the town nor that the lockdown is supposed to protect the rest of the world from the plague. This is just our introduction to the character, already painting as this somewhat self interested individual.      With that introduction, you may be able to empathize with him but he has been painted as an annoying character in the novel. Despite this, his story has arguably been the most interesting portions of this book. Since he decided to escape, he has been at the center of the best par...
Read more

Tricky Bruce

In Fun Home , Bechdel draws a parallel between Oscar Wilde’s trial and her father’s own trial. She compares and contrasts the bizarre public trial of Wilde’s homosexuality and the quiet hush-hush of her father’s trial. This is an interesting story to parallel but Bechdel seems to also be comparing her father’s trial to another event: Watergate. This second parallel is not one that Bechdel ever seems to elaborate on unlike Wilde’s but the thought is there. Nixon is ever present in this chapter. Watergate is first mentioned by Bechdel early in the chapter on page 154 when she is recounting how hectic the summer was for her. This is immediately following a scene in which her father talks about his own trial and how he must go to counseling on page 153. Bechdel mentions them both at the same time to loosely show that they were both happening in her life in the summer of 1973. As the chapter goes on, Bechdel makes reference to Watergate a few times. She talks about how it reached a point of...
Read more