Monday, April 27, 2020

Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year"

Back in March, the New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote an editorial about how the covid-19 pandemic might bring out the worst in people. You can read that piece here. In the editorial, Brooks refers to Daniel Defoe's book, A Journal of the Plague Year, which offers an account of the 1665 London plague, as told by a fictional saddler who had remained in the city while the wealthy fled. That reference led me to revisit this book that I had not read since college. I highly recommend reading it, as Defoe shines a light on human motivations and behavior that we see today in our own health crisis.

The saddler could have left London but chose to stay because he's convinced that God would preserve him "in the midst of all the death and danger that would surround me." "...If I attempted to secure myself by fleeing from my habitation, and acted contrary to these intimations, which I believe to be Divine, it was a kind of flying from God, and that He could cause His justice to overtake me when and where He thought fit." When his brother casts doubt on these convictions, the saddler reads the 91st Psalm, which led him to become more resolute than ever: "[F]rom that moment I resolved that I would stay in the town, and casting myself entirely upon the goodness and protection of the Almighty, would not seek any other shelter whatever; and that, as my times were in His hands, He was as able to keep me in a time of the infection as in a time of health...." Throughout the book the saddler shares his theological views, including his conviction that the plague is God's judgment and that a proper response to it involves spiritual meditation, humility, and repentance for one's sins. (In this respect, A Journal of the Plague Year is similar to Defoe's more well-known work, Robinson Crusoe, which is also quite theological in nature.)

A Journal of the Plague Year offers a masterful, vivid depiction of a diseased city and of the many different types of people living--and barely living--in it. Defoe's saddler plumbs the depths of human depravity, while also recounting numerous acts of kindness, mercy, and self-sacrifice. Still, what stands out in the narration are the lengths to which individuals will go to preserve themselves in the face of incomprehensible suffering and widespread death from disease.

Defoe, who was a mere five years old in 1665, wrote this account in 1721, when the Black Death was again threatening England. He was troubled that so many of his fellow citizens were seemingly indifferent to the danger. He wanted to warn them of the misery that was coming, and to share with them the lessons he thought people had learned from that earlier disaster.

What struck me, as I re-read the book, are the many parallels between scenes in the "journal" and events of today. We read about how the rich and wealthier citizens were able to flee the city with large stores of goods and food, and so escape the sickness, while the poor people were stuck. Business owners and family members are angry that the government has restricted their freedom. Defoe devotes many pages to the delusions of the masses. "The apprehension of the people were likewise strangely increased by the error of the times, in which, I think, the people, from what principle I cannot imagine, were more addicted to prophecies and astrological conjurations, dreams, and old wives' tales than ever they were before or since." It seems that conspiracy theories were as rampant in 1665 as they are today (and Defoe makes a point of stressing how those who devised these "follies" made some money in the process).

Out of desperation, citizens bought and used quack remedies, some of which caused the user to die. (On the day I was reading about those "remedies," President Trump was talking publicly about encouraging doctors to look into injecting disinfectant into people as a possible cure for covid; he also wanted scientists to investigate how to shine light and heat into sick peoples' bodies to serve as yet another "cure"....) The saddler: "There is no doubt but these quacking sort of fellows raised great gains out of the miserable people, for we daily found the crowds that ran after them were infinitely greater" than those who went to reputable doctors.

While the Saddler is quite religious and even occasionally theological (reflecting a form of Calvinism), he doesn't hesitate to criticize "bad religion." "Neither can I acquit those ministers that in their sermons rather sank than lifted up the hearts of their hearers...."

The saddler generally commends the government for having taken the public measures that it did "for the general safety, and to prevent the spreading of the distemper," although he concludes that shutting people up in their homes and restraining them did little good on the whole. The need for food and supplies ensured that the disease would spread: "...[N]othing was more fatal to the inhabitants of this city than the supine negligence of the people themselves, who, during the long notice or warning they had of the [plague], made no provision for it, by laying in store of provisions, or of other necessaries, by which they might have lived retired, and within their own houses, as I have observed others did, and who were in a great measure preserved by that caution.... [T]his necessity of going out of our houses to buy provisions was in great measure the ruin of the whole city, for the people catched the distemper on these occasions one of another, and even the provisions themselves were often tainted.... However, the poor people could not lay up provisions, and there was a necessity that they must go to market to buy, and others to send servants or their children; and as this was a necessity which renewed itself daily, it brought abundance of unsound people to the markets, and a great many that went thither sound brought death home with them."

Still, the saddler generally supports the government's actions for the sake of the public's overall good. In such a time of crisis, individual freedoms need to be curtailed.

Other parts of the book resonate with today's headlines, too: e.g., the lengthy complaints against the government's orders by business owners, whose businesses suffered and failed during the health crisis; the decision of individuals and families to leave their homes, visit taverns and eating establishments, and who thereby got sick (and got others sick) and died; the rise in theft and fraud; the poor who "went about their employment with a sort of brutal courage"; and so on.

It seems to me that someone could write the story of the covid-19 pandemic by using Defoe's template and even some of his pertinent paragraphs. A constant, common refrain in both books would be, "Lord, have mercy."

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