Camus's "La Peste": Sanitation, Rats, and Messy Ethics

Abstract

Critical readings of Albert Camus's "La Peste" (1947) tend to concede an element of ambiguity in the novel, but also to tie it to relatively clear and fixed moral positions. This is reflected in the novel itself by the narrator's endeavour to find clarity in a confusing environment. Yet the novel retains a residue of uncertainty and hesitation which resists the desire for certainties. Its ethical interest lies in its failure to rank competing demands according to a stable hierarchy of values rather than in the particular judgements of any one character or in its narrator's attempt to impose order onto his material.