Crisis Points and Creeping Onsets
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 suspicious symptoms that mean cats refuse to touch them, but the authorities respond with denial, defensiveness, and indignance when Rieux prevails upon them to address the issue. Finally, the municipal office institutes a collection system once things are at a crisis point, but it is already too late. This foreshadows the later plague, as cases exponentially multiply while the government stays in denial so as not to alarm the public. Once they finally admit there is a crisis, it is again too late. They must now take drastic measures to fix things because they failed to recognize or take action against the warning signs.
Fascism works in a similar way. It builds slowly, with people brushing off or denying red flags because they don't want to rock the boat, but escalates until it can no longer be ignored. By the time people acknowledge the problem and try to take action, it is too late already and full-blown fascist government is underway. The preliminary signs seem irrelevant on their own, but are unmistakable when viewed together. Hitler's rise in the 1930s started as a series of lesser warning signs, but soon he was taking over every country near him. Britain and France delayed action as long as possible because they wanted to appease him and were hesitant about declaring war so soon after WWI, but this only lead to a devastatingly bloody war that involved most of the world's countries and caused more harm than if Hitler had been unseated earlier. It can be dangerous and harmful to let things get to a crisis point.
Here are the early signs of fascism:
I had forgotten that the epidemic was compared to fascism. I think I kind of brushed over it because I was unsure how they could be seen as similar, but this makes a lot of sense. I think the thing that strikes me the most about your comparison is people's hesitation to act against the plague/fascism, because both cases show how fear prevents people from doing the right thing. In The Plague, the authorities are afraid at first to announce that there is a plague in Oran because of the implications of the word, and then the people of the town tend to go about business as usual, perhaps because of an unconscious fear of what is required to prevent spread of disease--separation from loved ones, loss of outdoor activities, etc. And, like you said, the plague may not have spread as badly if the people of Oran had acted earlier, just like fascism.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting commentary on the parallel between the plague and fascism that I hadn't thought about before. I actually just published a blog post about how this is a poor allegory in many ways, but the particular comparison that you describe here is very accurate. The growth of both fascism and plagues are often exponential, and catch people by surprise because they ignore the warning signs.
ReplyDeleteI never considered this comparison but you present a very compelling argument. I think the similarities are uncanny and it's very interesting to compare them. I find it unfortunate that in both cases people are unwilling to act, especially if it doesn't personally affect them, until it's too late. They let it build up over time slowly ,even when some (like Rieux in The Plague) warn about the possible consequences, until it's almost impossible to control.
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