Albert Camus’ The Plague: Conversations with Bill VanderWolk

Welcome to Distance Learning at Midcoast Senior College. This digital course is on Albert Camus’ novel The Plague and features recorded conversations with former professor of French at Bowdoin College and teacher of 19th and 20th Century French Literature, Bill VanderWolk. An online course discussion will be scheduled soon. Please contact us at mscoffice@midcoastseniorcollege.org if you would like to join us.

Albert Camus (1913-1960) is known as a French existentialist, but he might be described more accurately as a French/Algerian chronicler of revolt. The Plague (1947), Camus’s first novel after The Stranger, describes a modern-day plague in the Algerian city of Oran. The characters’ reactions to the epidemic reveal the myriad ways in which people respond to injustice and tyranny. The novel was written during the German occupation of France and in the decade preceding Algeria’s war of independence from France.

Plot Summary

Camus biography

Algeria

Camus quotations

Afterword – The Plague

CONVERSATIONS WITH BILL VANDERWOLK

Introduction

Part One – Themes

Part Two – Themes

Part Three -Themes

Characters

The novel may be found on-line. 

Bill VanderWolk holds a Ph.D. in French from the University of North Carolina and was the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Professor of Modern Languages and Associate Dean for Faculty Development at Bowdoin College before his retirement in 2013. His particular area of interest is the 19th and 20th century French novel and its intersections with history and memory. Bill lives in Brunswick.