Crisis Points and Creeping Onsets
In Albert Camus's The Plague , he likens an epidemic of the bubonic plague to the spread of fascism in France. While some people think this claim is tenuous, I think it makes a lot of sense with the build-up to each. Fascism itself and the Nazi occupation could be characterized as a sort of plague themselves, though a moral and political plague instead of a biological one. Both the plague and occupation led to strict suppressive measures on the part of the government, though these were for different purposes. But I think the most glaring similarity between the two concepts is the subtle onset of each. No one just wakes up one day to the middle of a plague epidemic, just like fascism doesn't just show up without warning. There must be early signs increasing in intensity that go unnoticed at first, to necessitate the crisis in the first place. At the beginning of the plague, Dr. Rieux discovers a dead rat in his building, but quickly brushes it off. The rats multiply, each with