Chapter 12: Doing the Decent Thing

The Night the Power Went Out

Margarida is fifty-two and works as a cook in a primary school kitchen. She lives on the fourth floor of an old apartment block where many of the residents are elderly. One winter evening, a storm brings down power lines across the area. The lights go out, the heating stops and the lift is frozen between floors. Outside, the snow keeps falling. The radio says the power may not return until the next afternoon.

Margarida has a torch, candles and a gas stove. She could lock her door, wrap herself in blankets and wait. Instead, almost without thinking, she knocks on her neighbours' doors. On the second floor, an old man who lives alone is sitting in the dark, frightened and cold. On the third floor, a young mother with a baby has no candles. On the fifth floor, a woman in her nineties cannot manage the stairs. Margarida brings candles, heats soup on her stove and carries it up and down the dark staircase. She persuades the young man on the first floor, whom she barely knows, to help her check on everyone. By midnight, the whole block has been visited, and the oldest residents are gathered in two warm flats, wrapped in blankets and sharing tea.

When the power returns the next day, a few neighbours thank her. One calls her a hero. Margarida laughs and shakes her head. "I did not do anything special," she says. "I just did what needed doing. Anybody would have done the same."

Not everybody would have done the same, of course. But Margarida's way of describing it, as simply doing what needed doing, is almost exactly the attitude that Albert Camus described in one of his most famous novels, The Plague. This chapter explores that novel and what it teaches about decency, courage and meaning in hard times.

A Town Closed by Illness

Camus published The Plague in 1947. It tells the story of an ordinary coastal town that is struck by an outbreak of plague. At first, rats begin dying in the streets. Then people fall ill. The authorities are slow to admit what is happening, but eventually the town is declared to be under plague and its gates are closed. Nobody may leave, and nobody may enter. For many months, the inhabitants live in isolation from the rest of the world, separated from loved ones outside, watching the illness spread and waiting for it to end.

The novel follows several characters as they respond to the crisis in different ways. Some try to escape. Some profit from the situation. Some look for religious explanations. Some fall into despair or indifference. And some quietly organize themselves to fight the illness, caring for the sick, keeping records, helping where they can.

Many readers have understood the plague as a symbol of the war and occupation that Camus and his generation had lived through, and of evil and suffering more generally. Camus himself suggested that the novel could be read on several levels. In times of epidemic and other shared crises, readers have often returned to the book and found it speaking to them very directly. But the book is not only about plagues or wars. It is about how ordinary people respond when life confronts them with suffering that they did not cause and cannot fully understand.

In this sense, The Plague is closely connected to Camus's ideas about the absurd, which we explored in the seventh and eighth chapters. The plague is absurd: it strikes without reason, it does not answer the townspeople's questions and it does not care about their hopes. The question is how to live in its presence.

The Doctor Who Did His Job

The central character of the novel is a doctor named Rieux, who is also, as we discover at the end, its narrator. From the beginning of the outbreak, Rieux works tirelessly, treating the sick, organizing care and pushing the authorities to act. He works long hours, often exhausted, and he cannot save most of his patients. The plague is stronger than his medicine.

What is striking about Rieux is how he describes his own actions. He does not see himself as a hero, and he does not talk about grand ideals. At one point in the novel, another character asks him, in effect, why he is fighting so hard. Rieux's answer, which I paraphrase, is that it is a matter of ordinary decency. And when he is asked what decency means, he says, in substance, that for him it means doing his job.

This simple answer has become one of the most loved ideas in Camus's work. Rieux does not fight the plague because he expects to win, or because he believes in a cosmic purpose, or because he wants to be admired. He fights it because people are suffering and he is a doctor, and helping them is what he can do. His decency is not a theory. It is a practice, lived out day after day in the work in front of him.

Rieux also refuses to accept the plague as somehow deserved or meaningful. When a priest in the town preaches that the plague is a punishment, Rieux cannot agree. Later, after watching a child die in terrible suffering, he makes it clear to the priest that no explanation could ever bring him to accept, let alone love, a world in which innocent children are tormented in this way. This is not anger at God or at the priest as a person. It is revolt, in Camus's sense: a refusal to accept suffering as right, combined with a determination to fight it.

Rieux's attitude offers a model for many of us. We often face situations where we cannot fix everything, where suffering seems pointless and where we do not know whether our efforts will make a difference. Rieux shows that it is still possible to act, simply and steadily, out of decency. We do not need to win to make our actions meaningful. We need only to do our part.

The Clerk Who Kept Counting

One of the most memorable characters in The Plague is a modest town clerk named Grand. He is a quiet, middle-aged man with a dull job in the town's administration. He has very little money and little social standing. In his spare time, he is trying to write a novel, but he has been working for years on its first sentence, rewriting it again and again in search of perfection.

When the plague comes, Grand volunteers to help the teams fighting it. His job is not dramatic. He keeps records and statistics, counting cases and deaths, organizing information so that the doctors and volunteers can work effectively. He does this in the evenings, after his regular job, without complaint or any wish for recognition.

When the narrator wonders who the hero of his story might be, he points, a little surprisingly, to Grand. Nobody would notice this quiet clerk in a crowd, and he has nothing remarkable about him except his good nature and his stubborn, slightly comic hope of writing a perfect book. Camus seems to be deliberately choosing a hero who is the opposite of the dramatic, powerful figures of traditional heroic stories.

Grand shows that meaningful action does not need to be dramatic. Much of what makes a community survive a crisis is quiet, unglamorous work: keeping records, delivering supplies, cooking meals, cleaning, answering phones, checking on neighbours. These tasks are rarely celebrated, but they are essential. People like Grand, and like Margarida in her apartment block, are the backbone of human solidarity.

There is also something touching in Grand's unfinished sentence. It reminds us that even people who do essential work in a crisis have their own small dreams, struggles and absurd hopes. Heroism, in Camus's vision, is not a separate category of person. It belongs to ordinary people with ordinary lives.

The Man Who Decided to Stay

Another character, a journalist named Rambert, is visiting the town when the plague begins. He is not from there. He is in love with a woman in another city, and his only wish is to escape and return to her. For much of the novel, he tries desperately to find a way out, through official requests and then through secret arrangements with smugglers.

Rieux does not condemn him. He understands Rambert's wish for love and happiness, and he even says that Rambert is right to want it. But as the plague goes on, and Rambert works alongside the volunteers while waiting for his chance to escape, something changes in him. When the chance finally comes, he decides to stay. He explains, in substance, that now he has seen what is happening, he would feel ashamed to go off and enjoy his own happiness while the town he has come to belong to is still fighting for its life.

Rambert's choice is moving because it is not forced on him. Nobody compels him to stay, and nobody would blame him for leaving. He chooses solidarity freely, after struggling honestly with his own desires. His story shows that decency is not always easy or instinctive. Sometimes it grows slowly, through experience, as we come to feel connected to others.

It also shows something important about meaning. Rambert's original meaning, his love for one woman, is real and valuable. But through the plague, he discovers another source of meaning: being part of a shared effort to help others. He does not give up his love. He adds to it a sense of belonging to something larger.

Heroism Without Heroics

Camus was suspicious of grand heroism and grand words. In The Plague, the narrator deliberately avoids praising the volunteers too highly. He suggests that if we make heroes of people who simply do their duty, we imply that decency is rare and exceptional, when it should be ordinary. He wants to show that fighting the plague was not a matter of extraordinary virtue, but something that anyone could do, and that many people did.

This is a valuable idea for ordinary life. If we think of decency as heroic, we may feel that it is not for us. We are not heroes, we tell ourselves, so we cannot be expected to act heroically. But if decency is ordinary, simply doing what needs doing, then it is available to everyone, every day.

At the end of the novel, the plague recedes and the town celebrates. But Rieux, the narrator, reflects that the germ of the plague is never truly gone. It can wait, hidden, for many years, and then return. This is not a gloomy ending, exactly. It is a realistic one. Suffering, illness and injustice will always return in some form. The fight against them is never finished. Rieux also says, near the end, that he wrote his account to bear witness, and that times of plague teach us that, on the whole, there is more good than bad to be found in human beings.

This balanced view, that suffering never disappears but that people have much good in them, is at the heart of Camus's ethics. It avoids both naive optimism and cynical despair. It says: the world is hard, and people are capable of great decency in it. Both are true.

Revolt That Creates Solidarity

In 1951, Camus published a long essay called The Rebel, in which he developed his ideas about revolt. In The Myth of Sisyphus, revolt had been mainly an individual's response to the absurd. In The Rebel, Camus argued that revolt also creates a bond between people.

His idea, in my own words, is this. When a person rebels against injustice, for example when a worker who has been mistreated finally refuses and says that a line has been crossed, they are not only defending themselves. They are defending something that they share with all human beings: a sense of dignity, of a limit that should not be crossed. In rebelling, they affirm a value that belongs to everyone. Camus summed this up by reworking the famous saying of the philosopher Descartes, that thinking proves that I exist, into the idea that rebelling shows that we exist, and exist together.

The "we" is the important word. Revolt, in Camus's sense, moves from the individual to the community. When I refuse to accept suffering and injustice, I discover that I am not alone, that others share this refusal and that we are bound together in it. This is solidarity: standing together in the face of what diminishes human life.

Camus also insisted that revolt must have limits. In The Rebel, he warned against movements that, in the name of fighting injustice, became unjust themselves, justifying violence and cruelty for the sake of a future ideal. True revolt, he argued, respects the human dignity it defends, including the dignity of opponents. This part of his thinking led to his public disagreement with Sartre, but we do not need to enter that dispute here. The point for ordinary life is simple: decency must be practised with decent means.

Decency in Ordinary Days

Most of us will never live through a plague like the one in Camus's novel, though many people have lived through epidemics, disasters, wars and crises. But every life contains its own smaller plagues: illness in the family, a neighbour in trouble, a colleague being treated unfairly, a community facing hardship. Each of these offers a chance for ordinary decency.

Decency in ordinary days might mean doing your own job well and honestly, especially when it serves other people. It might mean noticing who around you needs help and offering it simply, without making a show of it. It might mean joining with others in a shared effort, such as a neighbourhood clean-up, a school fundraiser or a support group. It might mean refusing to go along with something unjust, even in a small way.

Camus's vision suggests that these small acts are not trivial. They are exactly where meaning is made, in an absurd world. We may not be able to explain why suffering exists, or to end it. But we can, like Rieux, do our part, and like Grand, do the unglamorous work, and like Rambert, choose to belong to the struggle rather than to escape it alone.

And Camus's warning against making heroes of decent people is also a kind of gift. It means that decency is not reserved for special people. It is available to you, today, in whatever situation you find yourself.

It may also help to notice that decency often begins with attention. Margarida noticed that her neighbours were in the dark. Rieux noticed the first dead rats when others ignored them. Many acts of decency never happen, not because people are unkind, but because they are busy, distracted or looking elsewhere. Simply paying attention to the people around us, and asking whether anyone needs something, is the first step of the decency Camus described.

Four Lives of Ordinary Decency

Ivo is thirty-one and works as a delivery driver. During a week of heavy snow, many roads are closed and many older people in his area cannot get to the shops. Ivo's company keeps working, but Ivo also uses his breaks to knock on doors along his route, asking older customers whether they need anything urgent. He brings milk, bread and medicine to several people, paying with his own money and asking them to pay him back when they can. When his manager finds out, Ivo expects to be criticized. Instead, the manager organizes a small fund and asks other drivers to do the same. Ivo says he only did it because he could not drive past those houses knowing people might be stuck inside.

Mi-rae is forty-five and teaches at a secondary school. When a student's family loses their home in a fire, she quietly organizes a collection among teachers for clothes, books and school supplies, and arranges for the student to have breakfast at school each morning for a few months. She does not announce it in assemblies or make speeches. She simply does what needs doing, as Rieux might say. The student finishes the school year and later writes to thank her. Mi-rae replies that the whole staff helped and that she was just one of them.

Desmond is sixty-eight and a retired electrician. In his apartment block, many neighbours struggle with small repairs that they cannot afford to pay for. Desmond starts a simple system: on Saturday mornings, he leaves his door open, and neighbours can bring broken lamps, kettles and radios to be fixed. He charges nothing, but asks people to help someone else in the block in return. Over time, the block becomes a little community of small favours. Desmond calls it his "Saturday repair corner". He says that, since retiring, it is the most useful thing he has done.

Margarida, from the beginning of this chapter, finds that the night of the storm has changed her apartment block. Neighbours who never spoke now greet each other on the stairs. The young man from the first floor organizes a list of phone numbers so that residents can check on each other in future emergencies. The oldest woman on the fifth floor invites Margarida for tea every Sunday. Margarida still insists that she did nothing special. Perhaps, in Camus's sense, that is exactly right: she did the ordinary, decent thing, and it turned out to matter a great deal.

Ivo, Mi-rae, Desmond and Margarida are not famous, and none of them would call themselves heroes. Each simply saw people in need and did what they could. In each case, their decency spread to others, creating small communities of solidarity. In an absurd world, this is how meaning is made.

Practical Steps

First, do your job as decency. Whatever your work, look for the ways it serves other people, and do it as well and honestly as you can, as an act of decency.

Second, notice the small plagues around you. Pay attention to who in your family, neighbourhood or workplace is struggling. Ask what simple help you could offer.

Third, value the unglamorous work. Like Grand, be willing to do the quiet, essential tasks that keep people going, and appreciate those who do them.

Fourth, join a shared effort. Look for a group or project where people work together to help others, and take part, even in a small way.

Fifth, refuse what diminishes people. When you see someone treated unfairly, find a decent way to say no, as Camus's rebel does. Use decent means.

Sixth, do not wait to be a hero. Remember that decency is ordinary and available to everyone. Do what needs doing, today.

A Short Exercise: My Volunteer Team

This exercise takes about twenty minutes. It is inspired by the volunteer teams in The Plague, who organized themselves to fight the illness.

Imagine that your town, neighbourhood or community faces a difficult period, such as a storm, an illness or a hard winter. Write down what skills, resources and time you could offer. Be specific: perhaps you can cook, drive, listen, repair things, organize lists, care for children, speak another language, use computers or simply visit people.

Next, write down the names of a few people around you who you think would also help in such a time. These might be neighbours, friends, colleagues or relatives. Next to each name, write what they might offer.

Now look at your list. You have just sketched a small team of decency. Ask yourself: is there anything this team could do now, before any crisis? Perhaps checking on an elderly neighbour, sharing a phone list, helping a family that is struggling or simply getting to know each other better.

Choose one small action from your list and do it this month. Then write a few sentences about what happened. You may find, as Margarida's neighbours did, that decency practised in ordinary times makes a community stronger for whatever comes.

Questions People Often Ask

"Is it naive to believe in decency when the world is full of cruelty?" Camus did not think so. He saw cruelty and suffering clearly, perhaps more clearly than most. But he also saw that people are capable of great decency, and he believed that it is more honest to recognize both than to see only one. His narrator concludes that, in the end, people show more that is good than bad. You do not have to agree completely, but his view is not naive. It is hard-won.

"What if I am too busy or tired to help others?" Many people have very little spare time or energy, and caring for oneself and one's own family is also important. Decency does not require exhausting yourself. It may mean small acts that fit into your life: a kind word, a phone call, doing your work well, sharing something you have. And sometimes, being decent to yourself, resting and asking for help, is part of being able to help others later.

"Is The Plague a difficult book to read?" It is a novel, written in clear prose, and many readers find it gripping. Some parts move slowly, especially the descriptions of the town's long months of isolation, but that slowness is part of what the book is trying to show: the endless, grinding quality of a long crisis. If you are interested in Camus, it is one of the best places to start.

Chapter Summary

In The Plague (1947), Camus told the story of an ordinary town struck by illness and closed off from the world. Dr Rieux fights the plague not as a hero but out of ordinary decency, which for him means doing his job. Grand, a modest clerk, does essential, unglamorous work and is presented as the closest thing the story has to a hero. Rambert, who wants to escape to the woman he loves, finally chooses to stay, because a happiness that left the others behind no longer feels right to him.

Camus avoided grand heroism, suggesting that decency should be seen as ordinary, and ended by noting that suffering always returns but that the good in people outweighs the bad. In The Rebel (1951), he argued that revolt against injustice creates solidarity, summed up in his reworking of Descartes into the idea that rebellion shows that we exist together, and that it must respect limits and use decent means.

In the next chapter, we look at commitment: how a person can keep choosing, freely, the same path day after day, and what Kierkegaard said about the difference between a life of passing pleasures and a life of commitment.