The Serum: A Look at Albert Camus' The Plague

The modern novel The Plague by Albert Camus shows us the inner workings of human emotions when confronted by a universal life consuming plague. The story follows Dr. Rieux as he attains the status of healer during the entire episode. The book brings up a ton of religion versus science questions. One of the questions takes the form of a serum that is created by another doctor. This serum plays a major role in the question of religion versus science in this novel but is also a relatively major character overall.

The serum is talked about from the very beginnings of the plague outbreak. Right from the get go there is not enough serum once plague is suspected. The good doctor must then request additional specimens sent in from Paris. When the shipment arrives from Paris it is pretty much non-effective in healing patients diagnosed with the now familiar symptoms. This starts Dr. Castel on his never-ending quest to concoct a serum to battle the plague and put it into submission once and for all. "Thus it was only natural that old Dr. Castel should plod away with unshaken confidence, never sparing himself, at making anti-plague serum on the spot with makeshift equipment at his disposal" (133). Dr. Castel starts using local specimens of the plague in hopes to make a more effective cocktail.

A pivotal scene for the serum is when it is administered to a young helpless boy whose case is determined to be helpless. This in effect makes the boy a test subject for the most up-to-date version of the serum. The serum has a profound effect on the boy. It fails to cure him but instead actually makes the boy suffer a longer more heat wrenching death. "For moments that seemed endless he stayed in a queer, contorted position, his body racked by convulsive tremors; it was as if his frail frame were bending before the fierce breath of the plague, breaking under the reiterated gusts of fever" (214).

There are several characters present when the young boy goes through his dying spasms. Among them are the priest Paneloux who states, "So if he is to die, he will have suffered longer" (215). The reader starts to get the understanding that the serum is not actually a good thing. The serum could have caused the plague to spread quicker due to it being constructed of original specimens from the beginning of the outbreak. This is evident when the plague starts mutating into an air contagious disease. The serum remains the same but the plague has changed.

The plague starts to die off and the serum is noted to have finally had some success. "Of a sudden Castel's anti-plague injections scored frequent successes, denied it until now. Indeed, all the treatments doctors had tentatively employed, without definite results, now seemed almost uniformly efficacious" (270). The serum actually had little effect on the ending of the plague, with the exception that it is no longer causing it too spread. Near the end the good doctor's friend Tarrou shows symptoms of being infected. Tarrou is showing signs of both kinds of the plague at the same time. The doctor then breaks out the serum and administers it to his friend who then ends up dying with the serum having no effect on this new type of plague.

It seems that the modern novel The Plague uses the serum as means to spread the disease. Every instance that it is used delivers us the same results, or a more gruesome death. It is only after the plague itself has changed that it starts dying off. The serum showed how science and religion should not be mixed. The plague could not be controlled by a scientific answer and was therefore useless, except to men who are scientist.

Works Cited
• Camus, Albert. The Plague. Random House Inc.: New York, 1948.