Existentialism and the PlagueIn the mid-1940s, a man named Albert Camus began writing a story. He called this story The Plague. Written in French, the novel became extremely popular and has since been translated numerous times into many languages. This story has been read over and over again, but there is more to it than meets the eye. This story is about a town plagued by a deadly disease. That's true, but that's not what the novel is about. The Plague can be read as an allegory of the Second World War, of the French Resistance against the German occupation. “To simplify things, we can say that The Plague is an allegorical novel” (Picon 146). This is, however, an oversimplification and only tells part of the story. Camus is often considered an existentialist. “That existentialist philosophies offered him a vocabulary from which he occasionally borrows is of secondary importance in his case” (Brée, Camus 74). Perhaps this is the existentialism that is at the center of the novel? No, it's not that simple. The Plague tells the story of a fight: not a fight against a disease, not a fight against German soldiers, but a fight against indifference to human suffering. Each man responds to it in his own way, and this goes to the heart of existential philosophy: it is actions that truly define a man. “No, I am not an existentialist” (Doubrovsky 345). These words come from Albert Camus himself. It's true; Camus was not an existentialist. Yes, he embraced much of existentialism, but not all. So what do existentialists believe, and of this, what does Camus reject and what does he accept? For the existentialist, life has no meaning in itself. Therefore, "Since life...... middle of paper ......bert. Albert Camus: The Invisible Summer. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1958.Masters, Brian. Camus: Une study. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1974. McCarthy, Patrick: A critical study of his life and work London: Hamish Hamilton, 1982. McMullen, Laura Elizabeth. size 2K April 11, 96. Parker, Emmitt: The Artist in the Arena Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965. Picon, Gaëtan. Trans. Ellen Conroy Kennedy. The Use of Lechire. Paris: Mercure de France. 1960. 79-87. Sprintzen, David. Camus: A Critical Examination. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988.Thody, Philip. Albert Camus New York: Macmillan, 1961. Woelfel, James W. Camus: A Theological Perspective New York: Abdingdon Press., 1975.