The Plague Themes

This Study Guide consists of approximately 75 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Plague.

The Plague Themes

This Study Guide consists of approximately 75 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Plague.
This section contains 1,400 words
(approx. 4 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Plague Study Guide

Exile and Separation

The theme of exile and separation is embodied in two characters, Rieux and Rambert, both of whom are separated from the women they love. The theme is also present in the many other nameless citizens who are separated from loved ones in other towns or from those who happened to be out of town when the gates of Oran were closed. In another sense, the entire town feels in exile, since it is completely cut off from the outside world. Rieux, as the narrator, describes what exile meant to them all:

[T]hat sensation of a void within which never left us, that irrational longing to hark back to the past or else to speed up the march of time, and those keen shafts of memory that stung like fire.

Some, like Rambert, are exiles in double measure since they are not only cut off from...

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This section contains 1,400 words
(approx. 4 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Plague Study Guide
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The Plague from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.