Argue How one Aspect of Literature (plot/structure, Character/characterization, Imagery/tone/diction, Point of View, or Setting), or one of the Four Parts of the Novel, Develops a Theme in the Plague.

The storyline of "The Plague" introduced by the author Camus seems to be a straightforward, simple story, yet when you look into the story in a more in-depth way, you may discover there are myriads meaningful themes expressed in the story. Among all the themes, I will be examining how the author used characters to show the theme of responsibility. The theme responsibility does not only limit to the responsibility of individuals, but also to the responsibility to the community.

First, the author used characters to show that the citizens and the government were irresponsible to the community in the first part of story. In the beginning of the story, when there were 2-3 cases of death from disease, no one paid attention to the dead and continue to live their lives normally as if nothing happened. ( p.37 "They went on doing business, arranged for journeys and formed views.) People denied the fact that there were more and more dying rats and may cause a serious health risk to human beings. M. Michel, the concierge at Dr. Rieux's surgery building, stated that the pranksters planted the dead rats in the building and one of the asthma patients of Dr. Rieux declares that hunger drove the rats out into the open to die. These two people represented the citizens in Oran who thought they were irresponsible to the dead of rats. The reporter Rambert was also showing his irresponsibility because he was trying to escape from Oran in order to meet his wife in Paris. Not only the citizens, even the government responded to the problem slowly. ( p.30 "but I can't do anything about it, such measures were outside my provinces." )They just put up some posters in places where they would not attract much attention. (p.51) The responsibility of a government should be reminding their citizens the potential danger in the society and help prevents the broke out of a disaster. Same situation happened in the press. They were unwilling to warn the citizens because they do not want to take the responsibility for alarming the people. (p.35 The local press, so lavish of news about the rats, now had nothing to say. For rats died in the street; men in their homes. And newspaper are concerned only with the street.)

In contrast with the irresponsible people in the beginning, Dr. Rieux can be named as Mr. Responsible in this story. He goes out day after day to save lives, regardless of the high risk of infecting the disease. He is a role model showing the people what is selfless. There's a sentence in the story I like a lot which is "The thing was to do your job as it should be done." Though It is a doctor's job to take care of the patient, but in this extreme case, I really appreciate the fact that he still insists of doing his job even though he knew that he might be dying from infecting the disease. Tarrou was another responsible character in this story. He contributed to the anti-plague by recruiting volunteers