Religion In The Plague

When people are going through tough times, one comfort that they often find themselves reaching for is religion. Religion allows others to feel content, knowing that there is a higher power above them, watching over them and guiding them through their life. This helps those in need by providing them with faith and hope in any struggle they may face. In The Plague, the town of Oran is taken over by a deadly disease and the people inside are left to evaluate their past, present, and future with the help of religion.

Picture this, you arrive at work one day and find, to your surprise a dead rat on the floor. Although shocked, you think nothing of it, until the body count piles up and the whole street is filled with them. Now this is an odd occurrence,

Until the rodent bodies turn into human bodies and the word “plague” is being thrown around. This, of course, causes a commotion and worst case scenarios are filling up the townspeople's heads as fast as the church fills up with sinners searching for forgiveness. The major theme of religion is present throughout the novel and can be used to help comprehend the reasons why the people of Oran react to the plague in the ways they do and well as who influences them to do so. The preacher of the town, Father Paneloux, is introduced when he presents his first sermon. He begins his message with “Calamity has come on you, my brethren, and, my brethren, you deserved it” (Camus 94) His listeners are appalled by the tone of his dramatic introduction and taken back as he labels them as the cause of this epidemic. The townspeople come to church in search of some piece of mind and insurance that the plague will soon pass because

Father’s second sermon was preached, but in a much different way, for example “instead of saying ‘you’ he now said ‘we.’ ” (222) Although he still wholeheartedly believes in his words from the first sermon it is clear that he was can no longer provide proof from the words of God to support him. There can be no explanation for why God would let children suffer or innocent people die and Father knew this. He knew that he can not preach God’s word in such a way that they can understand why this terrible epidemic is happening, so instead he tells them “My brothers, a time of testing has come for us all. We must believe everything or deny everything. And who among you, I ask, would dare to deny everything?” (224) Towards the end of the novel, around the time of the second sermon, the town's preacher accepts the fact that human suffering has no true explanation. It is not the outcome of people skipping church, nor is it caused by the abundance of people’s sins. Suffering is not explained in the book because it is irrational. It is an inevitable thing that everyone must face in their life, maybe not to the extent of a deadly disease but we all encounter suffering. The only difference is how people deal with that pain and suffering. Father Paneloux, like many other faith-driven humans, chooses to believe in a higher power that may not