One of the main themes in Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” poem and The Plague novel is love. In the final stanza of “Dover Beach,” the speaker proclaims that if the two lovers can be faithful to one another, then that will, in part, provide solace and certainty in a world that offers neither of these. In the poem, love is seen as the only answer to the problems of loneliness and loss of faith. In The Plague, Dr. Rieux’s love for humankind drives him to sacrifice his well-being in fighting for the good of society. There is an instance in the novel where a priest tries to say that the plague is the result of God’s loving his people too much. In the last chapter, we discover that Dr. Rieux does not love his wife, which explains his strange actions of choosing to serve others while abandoning his wife in the process as well as his attempted escape. It is evident from the novel that although love does not spare people from suffering, it gives them a reason to endure it more so because love makes suffering worse, as it makes a person suffer both for himself and his loved ones.
The final chapter in The Plague provides some closure to the stories of Grand and Cottard. Cottard cannot take part in the celebrations, because he attached himself to the thing that brought suffering to all his neighbors. His sense of belonging to a community was fleeting because it was not founded on “comprehension” or doing one’s duty, but on selfish ignorance. Grand, who Dr. Rieux called the “hero” of the story, heroically plunges back into attempts to write his book.
Dr. Rieux and his asthmatic patient find some common ground in this final chapter. The asthmatic man says that “plague” is just “life,” suggesting that life is full of “plagues” or that, since life ultimately leads to death, life itself is just a plague that can take many years to become fatal. Dr. Rieux says much the same things as he discusses his reasons for writing his account of the plague. He says they did not win a final victory over the plague but only did what needed to be done. The plague could return at any time because plagues and the suffering they cause are inevitable.
References
Arnold, M. (n.d.). Dover beach by Matthew Arnold. Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43588/dover-beach
Camus, A. (2012). The plague. Vintage.