The Plague Truth Quotes

The town itself, let us admit, is ugly (1.1.2)

These somewhat haphazard observations may give a fair idea of what our town is like. However, we must not exaggerate. Really, all that was to be conveyed was the banality of the town’s appearance and the life in it. But you can get through the day without trouble, once you have formed habits. And since habits are precisely what out town encourages, all is for the best. (1.1.6)

To some, these events will seem quite natural; to others, all but incredible. But obviously, a narrator cannot take accounts of these differences of outlook. His business is only to say: "This is what happened," when he knows that it actually did happen, that it closely affected the life of a whole populace, and that there are thousands of eyewitnesses who can appraise in their hearts the truth of what he writes. (1.1.8)

The present narrator has three kinds of data: first, what he saw himself; secondly, the accounts of other eyewitnesses (thanks to the part he played, he was able to learn their personal impressions from all those figuring into this chronicle,); and lastly, documents that subsequently came into his hands. He proposes to draw on these records whenever this seems desirable, and to employ them as he thinks best. (1.1.9)

When leaving his surgery on the morning of April 16, Dr. Bernard Rieux felt something soft under his foot. It was a dead rat lying in the middle of the landing. On the spur of the moment, he kicked it to one side and, without giving it a further thought, continued on his way downstairs. Only when he was stepping out into the street did it occur to him that a dead rat had no business to be on his landing, and he turned back to ask the concierge of the building to see to its removal. (1.2.1)

Personally, he had thought the presence of the dead rat rather odd, no more than that; the concierge, however, was genuinely outraged. On one point, he was categorical: "There weren’t no rats here." In vain, the doctor assured him that there was a rat, presumably dead, on the second floor landing; M. Michel’s conviction wasn’t to be shaken. (1.2.1)

Rieux replied that these conditions were not good. But, before he said any more, he wanted to know if the journalist would be allowed to tell the truth. (1.2.44)

He had put the question solely to find out if Rambert could or couldn’t state the facts without paltering with the truth.

"I’ve no use for statements in which something is kept back," he added. "That’s why I shall not furnish information in support of yours.

The journalist smiled. "You talk the language of Saint-Just." (1.2.48-49)

To tell the truth, he was rather perturbed; did the doctor think it meant anything serious? Rieux couldn’t give a definite opinion. (1.2.67)

Things went so far that the Ransdoc Information Bureau (inquiries on all subjects promptly and accurately answered), which ran a free-information talk on the radio, by way of

publicity, began its talk by announcing that no less than 6,231 rats had been collected and burned in a single day, April 25. (1.2.73)

The narrator proposes to give the opinion of another witness on the period that has been described. Jean Tarrou…Good humored, always ready with a smile, he seemed an addict of all normal pleasures without being their slave." (1.3.2)

Tarrou’s description of Dr. Rieux may be suitably inserted here. So far as the narrator can judge, it is fairly accurate.

"Looks about thirty-five. Moderate height. Broad shoulders. Almost rectangular face. Dark, steady eyes, but prominent jaws. A biggish, well-modeled nose. Black hair, cropped very close. A curving mouth with thick, usually tight-set lips. With his tanned skin, the black down on his hands and arms, the dark but becoming suits he always wears, he reminds one of a Sicilian peasant.

"He walks quickly. When crossing a street, he steps off the sidewalk without changing his pace, but two out of three times he makes a little hop when he steps on to the sidewalk on the other side. He is absentminded and, when driving his car, often leaves his side-signals on after he has turned a corner. Always bareheaded. Looks knowledgeable." (1.3.43-45)

But these extravagant forebodings dwindled in the light of reason. True, the word "plague" had been uttered; true, at this very moment one or two victims were being seized and laid low by the disease. Still, that could stop, or be stopped. It was only a matter of lucidly recognizing what had to be recognized; of dispelling extraneous shadows and doing what needed to be done. Then the plague would come to an end, because it was unthinkable, or rather, because one thought of it on misleading lines. (1.5.7)

Richard said it was a mistake to paint too gloomy a picture, and, moreover, the disease hadn’t been proved to be contagious; indeed, relatives of his parents, living under the same room, had escaped it.

"It’s not a question of painting too black a picture. It’s a question of taking precautions." (1.7.18-19)

"That’s your theory, anyhow. Actually, of course, we know next to nothing on the subject." (1.8.44)

Thus the bare statement that three hundred and two deaths had taken place in the third week of plague failed to strike their imagination. For one thing, all the three hundred and two deaths might not have been due to plague. Also, no one in the town had any idea of the average weekly death-rate in ordinary times. The population of the town was almost two hundred thousand. There was no knowing if the present death-rate were really so abnormal. This, in fact, the kind of statistics that nobody ever troubles much about—notwithstanding that its interest is obvious. The public lacked, in short, standards of comparison. It was only as time passed and the steady rise in the death-rate could not be ignored that the public opinions became alive to the truth. (2.2.3)

The doctor glanced up at the statue of the Republic, then said he did not know if he was using the language of reason, but he knew he was using the language of the facts as everybody could see them—which wasn’t necessarily the same thing. (2.2.52)

Though he knew little of the literary world, Rieux had a suspicion that things didn’t quite happen in it quite so picturesquely—that, for instance, publishers do not keep their hats on in their offices. But, of course, one never can tell, and Rieux preferred to hold his peace. (2.4.22)

"Is he a saint?" Tarrou asked himself, and answered: "Yes, if saintliness is an aggregate of habits." (2.6.22)

It is Tarrou once again who paints the most faithful picture of our life in those days. Needless to say, he outlines the progress of the plague and he, too, notes that a new phase of the epidemic was ushered in when the radio announced no longer weekly totals, but ninety-two, a hundred and seven, and a hundred and thirty deaths in a day. (2.6.6)