The Plague Mortality Quotes

To tell the truth, there was much heavy drinking. One of the cafes had the brilliant idea of putting up a slogan: "The best protection against infection is a bottle of good wine." (2.2.7)

Since this first onslaught of the heat synchronized with a startling increase in the number of victims—there were now nearly seven hundred deaths a week—a mood of profound discouragement settled on the town. (2.6.2)

A system of patrols was instituted and often in the empty, sweltering streets, heralded by a clatter of horse hoofs on the cobbles, a detachment of mounted police would make its way between the parallel lines of close-shut windows. Now and again a gunshot was heard; the special brigade recently detailed to destroy cats and dogs, as possible carriers of infection, was at work. And these whipcrack sounds startling the silence increased the nervous tension already existing in the town. (2.6.4)

The incessant sunlight and those bright hours associated with siesta or with holiday no longer invited, as in the past, to frolics and flirtation on the beaches. Now they rang hollow in the silence of the closed town, they had lost the golden spell of happier summers. Plague had killed all colors, vetoed pleasure. (2.6.5)

To Tarrou, who had shown surprise at the secluded life he led, he had given the following explanation, more or less. According to religion, the first half of a man’s life is an upgrade; the second goes downhill. One the descending days he has no claim, they may be snatched from him at any moment; thus he an do nothing with them and the best thing, precisely, is to do nothing with them. He obviously had no compunction about contradicting himself, for a few minutes later he told Tarrou that God did not exist, since otherwise there would be no need for priests. But from some observations which followed, Tarrou realized that the old fellow’s philosophy was closely involved with the irritation caused by the house-to-house collections in aid of charities, which took place almost incessantly in that part of the town. What completed the picture of the old man was a desire he expressed several times, and which seemed deeply rooted; the desire to die at a very advanced age. (2.6.21)

"In spite of the growing shortage of paper, which ash compelled some dailies to reduce their pages, a new paper has been launched: the Plague Chronicle, which sets out to inform out townspeople, with scrupulous veracity, of the daily progress or recession of the disease, to supply them with the most authoritative opinions available as to its future course. […] Actually this newspaper very soon came to devote its columns to advertisements of new, ‘infallible’ antidotes against plague. (2.6.23)

In the early days, when they thought this epidemic was much like other epidemics, religion held its ground. But once these people realized their instant peril, they gave their thoughts to pleasure. (2.6.30)

Tarrou agreed that he’d predicated a disaster, but reminded him that the event predicted by him was an earthquake. To which the old fellow replied: "Ah, if only it had been an earthquake! A good bad shock, and there you are! You count the dead and living, and that’s an end of it. But this here damned disease—even them who haven’t got it can’t think of anything else. (2.6.8)

"And I, too, am no different. But what matter? Death means nothing to men like me. It is the event that proves them right." (2.6.31)

"And then I had to see people die. Do you know that there are some people who refuse to die? Have you ever witnessed a woman scream "Never!" with her last gasp? Well, I have. And then I saw that I could never get hardened to it." (2.7.63)

These groups enabled our townsfolk to come to grips with the disease and convinced them that now that plague was among us, it was up to them to do whatever could be done to fight it. Since plague became in this way some men’s duty, it revealed itself as what it really was; that is, the concern of all. (2.8.4)

No longer were they individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and the emotions shared by all. (3.1.1)

About the same time we had a recrudescence of outbreaks of fire, especially in the residential area near the west gate. It was found, after inquiry, that people who had returned from quarantine were responsible for these fires. Thrown off their balance by bereavement and anxiety, they were burning their houses under the odd delusion that they were killing off the plague in the holocaust. (3.1.5)

It cannot be denied that, anyhow, in the early days, the natural feelings of the family were somewhat outraged by these lightning funerals. But obviously in a time of plague such sentiments can’t be taken into account, and all was sacrificed to efficiency. And though, to start with, the moral of the population was shaken by this summary procedure—for the desire to have a "proper funeral" is more widespread than is generally believed—as time went on, fortunately enough, the food problem became more urgent and the thoughts of our townsfolk were diverted to more instant needs. So much energy was expended on filling up forms, hunting around for supplies, and lining up that people had no time to think of the manner in which others were dying around them and they themselves would die one day. (3.1.13)

In a patch of open ground dotted with lentiscus trees at the far end of the cemetery, two big pits had been dug. One was reserved for the men, the other for the women. Thus, in this respect, the authorities still gave thought to propriety and it was only later that, by the force of things, this last remnant of decorum went by the board, and men and women were flung into the death-pits indiscriminately. Happily, this ultimate indignity synchronized with the plague’s last ravages. (3.1.16)

In the period we are now concerned with, the separation of the sexes was still in force and the authorities set great store by it. At the bottom of each pit a deep layer of quicklime steamed and seethed. […] The naked, somewhat contorted bodies were slid off into the pit almost side by side, then covered with a layer of quicklime and another of earth, the latter only a few inches deep, so as to leave space for subsequent consignments. On the following day the next of kin were asked to sign the register of burials, which showed the distinction that can be made between me and, for example, dogs; men’s deaths are checked and entered up. (3.1.16)

The first step taken was to bury the dead by night, which obviously permitted a more summary procedure. The bodies were piled into ambulances in larger and larger numbers. And the few belated wayfarers who, in defiance of the regulations, were abroad in the outlying districts after curfew hour, or whose duties took them there, often saw the long white ambulances hurtling past, making the night bound streets reverberate with the dull clangor of their bells. The corpses were tipped pell-mell into the pits and had hardly settled into place when spadefuls of quicklime began to sear their faces and the earth covered them indistinctively, in holes dug steadily deeper as time went on. (3.1.17)

What with the gunshots echoing at the gates, the punctual thuds of rubber stamps marking the rhythm of lives and deaths, the files and fires, the panics and formalities, all alive were pledged to an ugly but recorded death, and, amidst noxious fumes and the muted clang of ambulances, all of us at the same sour bread of exile, unconsciously waiting for the same reunion, the same miracle of peace regained. (3.1.31)

"Yes, yes," he said ,"you, too, are working for man’s salvation."

Rieux tried to smile.

"Salvation’s much too big a word for me. I don’t aim so high. I’m concerned with man’s health; and for me his health comes first. (4.3.57-59)

"From that day on […] I took a horrified interest in legal proceedings, death sentences, executions, and I realized with dismay that my father must have often witnessed those brutal murders." (4.6.23)