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Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl
I had to return my book to the library, but I was wondering afterwards how many times he used the word "war" within the text. The "deratization" vehicle was one war image that really hit me like a heavy hammer.
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There are several references to war in The Plague. These are from the Stuart Gilbert translation:
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There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.
In fact, like our fellow citizens, Rieux was caught off his guard, and we should understand his hesitations in the light of this fact; and similarly understand how he was torn between conflicting fears and confidence. When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid; it can't last long." But though a war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.
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But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination
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Suddenly he realized that Rambert was returning his gaze.
"You know, doctor, I've given a lot of thought to your campaign. And if I'm not with you, I have my reasons. No, I don't think it's that I'm afraid to risk my skin again. I took part in the Spanish Civil War."
"On which side?" Tarrou asked.
"The losing side. But since then I've done a bit of thinking." "About what?"
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As for the others, working themselves almost to a standstill throughout the day and far into the night, they never bothered to read a newspaper or listen to the radio. When told of some unlooked-for recovery, they made a show of interest, but actually received the news with the stolid indifference that we may imagine the fighting man in a great war to feel who, worn out by the incessant strain and mindful only of the duties daily assigned to him, has ceased even to hope for the decisive battle or the bugle-call of armistice.
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Tarrou, when told by Rieux what Paneloux had said, remarked that he'd known a priest who had lost his faith during the war, as the result of seeing a young man's face with both eyes destroyed.
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But the silence now enveloping his dead friend, so dense, so much akin to the nocturnal silence of the streets and of the town set free at last, made Rieux cruelly aware that this defeat was final, the last disastrous battle that ends a war and makes peace itself an ill beyond all remedy.
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Besides direct references to war, there is an odd reference, which I did not understand initially.
The idea was to confer a decoration on guards who died in the exercise of their duties, came to nothing. Since martial law had been declared and the guards might, from a certain angle, be regarded as on active service, they were awarded posthumously the military medal. But though the prisoners raised no protest, strong exception was taken in military circles, and it was pointed out, logically enough, that a most regrettable confusion in the public mind would certainly ensue. The civil authority conceded the point and decided that the simplest solution was to bestow on guards who died at their post a "plague medal".
I have been reading Richard Overy's The Bombing War. Overy noted that in Germany "There were strong demands that the dead in bombing raids should be marked in the newspapers with an iron cross, like the military dead." This was deprecated by the Nazi hierarchy and the military, but eventually
a compromise was reached, allowing civil defence workers of either sex who died while carrying out dangerous duties to have their death notices marked with an iron cross. They could also be described as ‘fallen’ for the Fatherland, but the rest of the bomb victims could not
This seems a striking parallel to the passage in The Plague about decorations for prison guards who died of the plague.