Even those aren't that high. Most are often 8, or 9 at most.
That's pretty true. Even the study guides you can buy with supposed A+ essays at the back are usually only worthy of an 8 or 9.
Anyway, here's a text response I wrote a few days before the exam back in '06, which ended up being very similar to the text response I wrote in the exam.
“The Plague is a pessimistic novel because of its grim assertion that life is random, meaningless and absurd.”
Discuss.
Camus’ absurdist novel The Plague explores, through the tale of the onset of the plague bacillus in the Algerian town of Oran, how man reacts to the realisation of the inevitability of death. Camus uses the disease to show how life is brief, and death random and absolute, and how such aspects make life meaningless and absurd. Though such a seemingly nihilistic philosophical view may be pessimistic, the author goes on to suggest that despite the inherent absurdity of life, meaning can still be found. It is through engaging in the noble struggle against the inevitability of his fate that man can achieve freedom and, with it, meaning to life.
It is chiefly through the Oranais that Camus present the lack of meaning to life. Characterised by the narrator as being “ugly” and devoid of “soul”, Oran is a city where the people do not “have an inkling of something else”; that is, their lives are without meaning. Camus heavily criticises the materialism of the Oranais; the townspeople only work in order to finance the pleasures they engage in on the weekends. We are told that the outsider Tarrou “seemed to enjoy all the normal pleasures of life without being enslaved by them” – a comment by the narrator showing direct contrast with the hedonism of the Oranais. Likewise, they are characterised as being self-centred, with the French journalist Rambert’s reaction to the onset of plague reflecting that of the general populace: his selfish pursuit of his own happiness indicative of the lack of virtue apparent in the Oranais’ way of life. It is clear throughout the text that Camus is critical of the lack of direction in the lives of the people of Oran; as such, they are a vehicle for the author to assert the meaninglessness of life.
The onset of the plague bacillus, the centre of the plot in The Plague, is used by Camus to explore the absurd nature of life. It is the reactions of the Oranais to the plague that are important; the hotel manager is despondent that “now we are like everyone else” in having to deal with the disease, while one of the plague victims, a wealthy shopkeeper, is evidence to the fact that “you can’t buy off the plague.” The townspeople are faced with the sudden realisation that “there were no longer any individual destinies”. But in fact, Camus suggests that there never have been individual destinies; that all mankind faces the same fate: death. The random nature of death is most evident through the pestilence; rather than smiting the “unjust”, as the Jesuit priest Paneloux initially suggests, the “ghastly and ridiculous justice” of the plague is chaotic in nature, killing even the very innocent, as seen trough the brutal suffering experienced by the young Philippe Othon. Death does not discriminate: eventually everyone must submit to it. Camus shows us through the plague that life is “a creation in which children are tortured.” Thus The Plague is a testimony by Camus that life is both meaningless and chaotic in nature, and therefore absurd.
It is at the end of the novel that we observe the changes – or lack thereof – in the Oranais, but more importantly, the enlightenment experienced by a select few. While during the reign of the plague “a lot of new moralists… [argued] that nothing was of any use and that we should go down on our knees”, with the lifting of the siege the Oranais collectively “calmly denied that we had ever known this senseless world in which the murder of a man was as banal as the death of a fly”, showing a lack of development from their initial attitudes towards life. For those participating in the health squads, however, a different response is apparent. The civil servant Grand, “who had nothing heroic about him” and giving every semblance of “insignificance”, rises above himself by actively engaging in fighting the suffering experienced by those at the throes of the pestilence. In realising that “we have the plague and we must get rid of it”, Joseph Grand and the others like him – Rieux, Tarrou, and eventually Rambert – display a sense of nobility. For their “endless defeats” in fighting the plague can be likened to man’s struggle with coping with the inevitability of death. Essentially, Camus is suggesting that it is through these struggles that some sense of meaning can be gleamed from life. By advocating an active fight in preserving the sanctity of life, Camus is therefore not putting forth a nihilistic point of view; The Plague is, in fact, an optimistic text.
In The Plague, Albert Camus puts forth the view that life is without meaning, as seen through the hedonistic lives of the Oranais, and chaotic in nature, evident by the “ghastly and ridiculous justice” of the pestilence in striking down men at random. The plague is used by Camus to symbolise the brutality and inevitability of death, and it is therefore crucial that he portrays so positively those who act against it. For though their “victories will only be temporary”, such an act in attempting to preserve life transcends the human condition and returns meaning to life. Rather than being a nihilistic novel discussing the futility of man’s time on earth, The Plague is actually a celebration of the inherent good nature of man and his ability to restore meaning to his existence.
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