The effects of the plague on the mental stability of Oran's townspeople during its exile from the rest of the world vary as the plague progresses. Camus initially portrays the townspeople how I expected them to be: at first, everyone works ceaselessly to escape the plague or to rejoin their loved ones while many people begin to live in regret with their past lives and longing for more, eventually falling into a state of despair. But as the plague stays around, Camus describes the aftermath of being quarantined for so long on the mental health of Oran's citizens. Everyone feels alone in their suffering and hesitates to trust the people around them, even though every citizen of Oran is feeling the exact same state of imprisonment. It seems that those who are able to accept their state of exile while struggling against it, such as Rambert, are the only ones able to find content and freedom.
While reading The Plague, I instinctively compared the situation in Oran to the global COVID-19 pandemic that we are all currently living through. Our isolation is not as strict as in Oran due to our access to facets of the internet such as social media, but it has definitely had a negative impact on my mental health. Although I am with my family almost all the time, I have felt increasingly lonely at times due to the fact that I can't see most of my friends, and on the rare occasions when I do go out, I am anxious about contracting the virus and possibly bringing it home to my family. Though incredibly less severe, my loneliness and unofficial exile from society is one of the many negative impacts that the quarantine of Oran has on its citizens.
