by all. The town and citizens have moved to a point of awareness of the plague and whats going on around them. Riley claims that “Then the brutal statistics awaken them, and they psychologically gird for battle”(Riley 93). Throughout part one, there is a sense of urgency and frustration. Death is seen throughout the novel and we are among the few to realize what is happening as the toll increases. The frustration, however, is not wholly a life and death matter. Now, besides lives, there are values, which are being destroyed. Rhein declares that “But Camus is structuring an irony. Death does not seem as important as knowledge does”(Rhein75). We do not feel horror when the plague is acknowledged; the horror of the disease had already saturated us. We can see its ugly symptoms-the heaps of rats’ bodies and the blood-and pus-swollen sores. The plague is already very real to the characters and to us. Spritzen observes that “When the designation is officially announced the news seems good, for it means that although death, for awhile, is the victor, at least ignorance has been defeated. We read of the acknowledgement of the plague with a sense of relief. Truth has victory. A lucid evaluation of the crisis has been achieved, the enemy has been revealed and can now be confronted”(Spritzen 72). We now see Oran’s new environment and the adjustment of the townspeople toward it. They are taken by surprise and caught unprepared. Riley comments that “This new environment of Oran is like a world turned upside down-by accident, loved ones are away from the city, there are no letters, no telephone calls, no word from the Out There”(Riley 93). Few Oranians adjust to this. For most of the citizens there are two ways of coping with the quarantine. At first some people surrender; others invent diversionary escapes. Knapp notes that “Of particular interest is how the pla...
