Nobody cares about dead rats
Below is a summary of my thoughts on the first part of "The Plague," by Albert Camus. In the opening scenes of "The Plague," we are introduced to a narrator by the name of Dr. Rieux. He describes the town of Oran from his perspective. In this description, we find that the people of Oran are very habitual. People work during the week, to make the most money they can, and party on the weekends (when it is acceptable). Therefore, they do not take immediate action when the rats begin to die. Instead, they make up false realities. For example, the concierge claims the dead rats were brought into his building by pranksters. Then, when the deaths increase, he is more worried about being at "the same level" as the rest of the town than the implications of the mass amounts of rat deaths. Everyone just assumes it's someone else's job to care about the rats that nothing is done about it for a long while. The reporters even refuse to publish on it, at first. O...