Reviewing “A Journal of the Plague Year” by Daniel Defoe

 

This has been a rough year. I have hardly read any good books. And not for lack of trying.* If I have often thought of and felt books to be my friends, I have been cruelly betrayed many times these past several months. Old, trusted “go-to” authors have inflicted bitter disappointments such as Agatha Christie’s The Clocks and H. Rider Haggard’s The Yellow God. Even ancient writings like The Nibelungenlied made me less inclined to cradle the volume in my arms (as I am wont to do) than throw it across the room (as usually would be unthinkable!).

I have been searching for solace in reading, and haven’t found a safe haven. It’s a feeling hard to describe, but not usually quite so difficult to find. The feeling of comfort when one lays open a few pages of paper and looks at them, and somehow is transported out of one’s life and enters the existence of someone else.

But as Escapism has consistently eluded me this year, I decided that perhaps I was approaching the problem in the wrong way. I was trying to avoid reality. But books are more than an escape; they delve into reality so that we can understand our lives in a new, different, better way.  So I reversed my course completely, and read A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe. 

I had ironically been thinking of it since March. When I came across a duplicate copy in my family’s Donation Box of Books, it was too good a coincidence to disregard. And before I was many pages into it (for there are NO chapters marked, or really any natural "breaks" in this narrative) I knew I had finally broken my losing streak. As I continued, I realized that this was one of the precious books that would come to mind throughout my day-to-day routine and which would repeatedly come up in conversation (sorry, people within earshot).

This so-called “journal” is not really Defoe’s journal, though he did live through an outbreak of the bubonic plague (or “Black Death”) and keep notes that probably formed the basis of this book. Neither is it like Robinson Crusoe, a fictional novel based on true-life accounts. There is not really a “plot” so much as an observation of a wave of disaster that washes through the city of London in the late 1500s. There are not really “characters,” as there aren’t many people even named. Like Crusoe, the narration is first-person, but the narrator is not named, and his life is not the center of the action. He is an observer who documents public sentiments and private fears.

In an odd way, this is a hopeful book. 

I’m not sure that Defoe meant it to be so, though he does profess a devout faith in God’s providence and protection throughout this turbulent time. However, what was most comforting to me was the reminder that in four hundred years the world is not changed. People are still people, and while science and information and technology may be different, our emotions are fundamentally the same as those of people who lived centuries before.

Defoe’s book describes hearing rumors and reports of a contagion spreading through foreign countries, looming closer and closer to home until it is in one’s neighborhood, perhaps even one’s own house. He talks about how the governments of various countries censored information to prevent widespread panic. How, in anticipation of quarantine, people stockpiled supplies, buying out necessities** and shops began requiring “exact change.”

The streets were empty and silent, with people crossing the street to avoid other pedestrians. People were encouraged—or forced—to stay in their homes. The sick would sometimes not know it, going around contaminating others until minutes before their death. Other sick people would hide their symptoms, apparently more afraid of the ostracism of their community than the illness itself.

With their limited understanding of medicine and the human body, theories of the cause and treatment of the disease abounded. There were plenty of scam artists who used these dire circumstances as an opportunity to get rich—though often they contracted the plague themselves, and so didn’t live long enough to enjoy their ill-gotten gains.

There were times that the parallels were eerie. But all this must be taken into context. At the end of the book, the bubonic plague dissipated. There was no vaccine, and the records are too vague to argue for “herd immunity” or any other theory. All Defoe could say for sure was that the plague didn’t seem to be as powerful anymore; fewer people got sick, and the mortality rate was not as high for those who did get sick. It was not due to anything the population had done to stop the spread or flatten the curve. It was, essentially, a force of nature, beyond full comprehension and out of human control.

It was as if there had been a torrential rain, but the wind blew away the dark clouds, and everyone was out walking in the streets, wondering at the sunshine.

I look forward to this time, myself.

 

*Admittedly, I have consistently been ten books behind in my goal of reading 100 books before next January. But for this I blame the library being closed. And Stardew Valley.

**Though he does not mention toilet paper….