7
Society and Rebellion
It is simply a matter of not adding to the profound miseries of our condition an entirely human injustice (E, 1528).
SLAVERY AND FREEDOM
A Medieval Morality Play
Camus writes of “The State of Siege” that his avowed aim “was to divest the stage of psychological speculations in muffled voices so mat it might ring with the loud shouts that today enslave or liberate masses of men. … I focused my play on what seems to me the only living religion in the century of tyrants and slaves—I mean liberty” (CTOP, ix).
“The State of Siege” is a medieval morality play in modern dress. Offering a perspective on the contemporary world, its characters are dramatized attitudes and intellectual positions. They are people only so far as people may take up and embody such attitudes. The developing confrontation of these embodied perspectives reveals the logic of revolt for Camus. The spectacle may be viewed as a dramatic commentary on his statement to the Dominican monks in 1946: “Between the forces of dialogue and the forces of tyranny a great unequal battle has begun” (RRD, 53).
The Plague Strikes
The action begins with the appearance of a dreaded and frightful omen, a comet, over the city of Cadiz. Like the rats in Oran, the appearance of the comet disturbs the normal routine. The citizens are at loose ends. The resident nihilist, Nada, is engaged in argument with The Judge “for taking liberties . . . with the Creator” (CTOP, 140).’ The metaphysical rebel is accused of blasphemy by the spokesman for the creator. The omen, says The Judge, reminiscent of the “first” Father Paneloux, was meant for those whose hearts are evil, “and who of you can say his heart is pure? . . . Fear and kneel!” The Judge stands as the creator’s self-appointed representative on earth. Guilt and self-flagellation ate probably the best ways to keep the people in line, the
herd docile.
Diego, a medical student, perhaps a young Dr. Rieux, refuses to join in with Nada’s negativism. At one with the status quo, on the side of righteousness, his initial attitude is simple and unreflective. (Diego never loses his attachment to the concrete present, even in his revolt. This attachment prescribes the limits to his revolt and makes his death so much more tragic.) Meanwhile the Herald appears with orders from The Governor (reminiscent of the official response to the appearance of the rats in Oran): “Good Governments arc governments under which nothing happens. . . . And accordingly each of you is ordered to deny that any comet has ever risen on the horizon of our city” (CTOP, 141-2).
Comets are to be referred to as natural phenomena, no more. To this posi-tion of The Governor and Nada, Diego counterposes his defense of honor. But his position remains immediate, naive: events have yet to challenge it. His first rejection of that which would destroy the human occurs in his encounter with Nada, but only as an impulsive, still inarticulate and unself-conscious reaction. The Governor and Nada suggest the union Camus sees, and later studies in The Rebel, between the passion for total order and that for total destruction: one attitude is built on a lie, the other on scorn. Both lack a positive intersubjective base. In Nada’s encounter with The Plague, this will become clearer. Actually The Governor has no passion for total order, just for things as they are, for habit: he doesn’t aim so high.
The chorus provides the social context, witnessing to the vitality and poetry of daily life. “So now [man’s produce] throng[s] the cities of men in testimony that the fathering sky has kept its tryst with fertile mother earth” (CTOP, 144).
With the engagement of Diego and Victoria, we celebrate rebirth, remi-niscent of Nuptials, to which the chorus subscribes: “Yes, thank heaven, all is as it should be; the world has kept its balance. .. . Summer is here, happiness is ours. Nothing else counts, for we stake all on happiness.” These affirma-tions are contrasted with Nada’s nihilism. As for The Governor: “I like my habits, and change is the one thing I detest. . . . Nothing new is good. … I stand for immobility.”
Then the plague strikes.
The response of the authorities to the epidemic is characteristic: The Judge will not sully his hands with involvement in the collective calamity. He is above it all, as was Judge Othon in The Plague. He speaks of guilt, evinces recrimination, insists upon isolation—and will not make common cause with others. The Priest, meanwhile, revels in sin. Preying upon guilt, he seeks to turn the people into a helpless, supplicating mass, while The Governor maintains the facade: business as usual. The effect of these official responses upon the populace is clearly demoralizing: “Thou hast signed in the sand, / Thou hast written in the sea; / Nothing endures but misery.”
Thematically continuous with Dr. Rieux in The Plague, Diego, “wearing the plague-doctor’s mask,” is “busy with the sick.” In times of plague, life cannot continue as before. The naive immediacy of his previous attitude is shattered. “Has something changed between us?” asks Victoria. “I’ve been hunting for you everywhere. . . . And now I’ve found you, you are wearing that mask, that ghastly reminder of the disease. Do please take it off and hold me in your arms” (CTOP, 157).
As it must, plague has come between single individuals and their love. In the play as in the novel, individual life can remain isolated and self-contained only at the expense of the collectivity. The assured world is cracking. Our normal life supports are threatened. “Even honor is no help.” The initial reaction, however, tends toward avoidance, denial, even of the most courageous and moral. Inevitably, love is attenuated, and suffers.
Plague has shaken beliefs. The common people bear the brunt, “Who is wrong and who is right: / Truth is but surmise. / Death and death alone is sure, / All the rest is lies!”
Nothing, of course, that has happened to this point could not have been accounted for within the framework of the novel. But when The Plague and The Secretary appear, the situation is transformed.
Regulations Are Promulgated
The human plague displaces the natural authorities without much struggle, but with an appropriate air of legality. In the process of convincing The Governor, he is about to eliminate Nada when The Secretary observes “that this fellow is the sort that doesn’t believe in anything, in other words the sort of man who can be very useful to us” (CTOP, 163). With The Governor agreeing “of his own free will,” and the First Alcade maintaining the appearance of continuity and normality, The Plague takes over.
In this encounter between Plague and Governor, the play’s structural weaknesses—which contributed to its popular failure—first become apparent. The Governor emerges as nothing but a stick figure, not a person but a symbol without depth or resonance. He strikes no responsive chord, being but a caricature of the uncaring bureaucrat. Since he stands for nothing, no struggle takes place, and the action lacks drama. It is as if, in the manner of medieval morality plays, the author is imposing the action upon the audience in order to illustrate a predetermined thesis. The force of the play can thus only reside in the espoused ideas—however caricatured their expression— and the orchestrated spectacle. Hardly an appealing scenario for a modern audience.
With The Plague now in control, regulations are promulgated in bureau-cratese. “It is intended to get them used to that touch of obscurity which gives all government regulations their peculiar charm and efficacy. The less
these people understand, the better they’ll behave” (CTOP, 165). The principle of tyranny is clearly the destruction of sense, the impossibility of dialogue: Shared meanings are replaced by commands sustained by collective intimidation. Total order will now be obtained, though Nada questions the difference. “What can that matter to you [people of Cadiz] ? Plague or Governor, the government goes on.” A series of five orders is promulgated.
1. Contamination is marked and isolated. The destruction of person-to-person relations is begun under the slogan of brotherhood.
2. The staff of life is subjected to detailed regulations— and the human being is assumed guilty until proven “innocent.”
3. The restriction of movement and denial of all forms of liberty bring to light by negative means the constituents of human liberty.
With the last two regulations, this atomization of individuals from that community which alone can support them is made total.
4. “It is strictly forbidden to give help to any person stricken with disease. … A favorable view is taken of reports made by any member of a family as regards any other member or members of the said family, and such reports will entitle their makers to the double food ration, known as the Good Citizenship Ration” (CTOP, 167).
As the regulations take effect—and The Plague seeks to destroy the bonds that might tie citizens together, thus forming a potentially significant resistance factor—the citizens fall to fighting among themselves while the authorities abdicate their responsibility to unite the community. A voice cries out: “Do not leave me, Priest; I am one of the poor men of your flock. (The Priest begins to walk away.) Look! He’s going. . . . No, stand by me, it’s your duty to look after me, and if I lose you, then I’ve lost all. (The Priest quickens his steps. The poor man falls to the ground with a great cry.) Christians of Spain, you are forsaken!”2