Stories woven around an epidemic

Apparently there is a difference between a pandemic and an epidemic. Some organizations and scientists decided to call the coronavirus a pandemic.

Like many ordinary people I think pandemic better describes coronavirus that has spread globally. It is so severe that we must move away from semantic ambiguity. The disease has taken such wide scale proportions we have to call it that, bigger and wider than an epidemic.

Frankly I was not aware of the difference between epidemics or pandemics. I only became conscious of what a pandemic can do watching the movie “Downton Abbey,” a favorite British TV serial around the world. The pandemic called the Spanish flu in 1918 killed Lavinia whom Matthew Carley would have married instead of his true love, Lady Mary Crawley. Lavinia was conveniently taken off the scene, thanks to the Spanish flu. Matthew Crawley and Lady Mary Crawley were able to get together again and eventually they were married.

Two of my favorite writers, Albert Camus and Gabriel Garcia Marquez also use epidemics as the background of their plots in two books.

The Plague (French: La Peste) is a novel by Albert Camus, published in 1947. Peste means more an epidemic and it happens in the French Algerian city of Oran.

Camus wrote it to ask questions on the nature of destiny and the human condition. It is called a philosophical novel. The characters in the book are doctors, tourists and fugitives. Camus shows how they all interact. It. has been compared to Franz Kafka’s “The Trial” as a
mystery novel. The novel has been read as an allegorical treatment of the French resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II.

Additionally, he further illustrates the human reaction toward the “absurd.” The Plague represents how the world deals with the philosophical notion of the Absurd, a theory that Camus himself helped to define.

Among the characters are Dr. Bernard Rieux: At the beginning of the novel, Rieux’s wife, who has been ill for a year, leaves for a sanatorium. It is Rieux who treats the first victim of plague and first uses the word plague to describe the disease. He urges the authorities to take action to stop the spread of the epidemic. However, at first, along with everyone else, the danger the town faces seems unreal to him. He feels uneasy but does not realise the gravity
of the situation.

Within a short while, he grasps what is at stake. He warns the authorities that unless steps are taken immediately, the epidemic could kill off half the town’s population of 200,000 within a couple of months.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Love in the time of Cholera” was first published in Spanish in 1985. The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Florentino and Fermina fall in love in their youth. A secret relationship blossoms between the two with the help of Fermina’s Aunt Escolástica. They exchange several love letters.

However, once Fermina’s father, Lorenzo Daza, finds out about the two, he forces his daughter to stop seeing Florentino immediately.

When she refuses, he and his daughter move in with his deceased wife’s family in another city. Fermina and Florentino continue to
communicate by telegraph. However, upon her return, Fermina realizes that her relationship with Florentino was nothing but a dream since they are practically strangers; she breaks off her engagement to Florentino and returns all his letters.

A young and accomplished national hero, Dr. Juvenal Urbino, meets Fermina and begins to court her. Despite her initial dislike of Urbino, Fermina gives in to her father’s wishes and the security and wealth Urbino offers. Urbino is a physician devoted to science, modernity, and “order and progress.” He is committed to the eradication of cholera and to the promotion of public works. He is a rational man whose life is organized and values his importance and
reputation in society. He depicts progress and modernization.

Even after Fermina’s engagement and marriage, Florentino swore to stay faithful and wait for her. However, his promiscuity gets the better of him. Even with all the women he is with, he makes sure that Fermina will never find out. Meanwhile, Fermina and Urbino grow old together, going through happy years and unhappy ones and experiencing all the reality of marriage. At an elderly age, Urbino attempts to get his pet parrot out of his mango tree, only to fall off the ladder he was standing on and die. After the funeral, Florentino proclaims his love for Fermina once again and tells her he has stayed faithful to her all these years.

She has only recently become a widow, and finds his advances untoward but Fermina eventually gives him a second chance. They attempt a life together, having lived two lives separately for over five decades.

Urbino proves in the end he was not an entirely faithful husband, confessing one affair to Fermina many years into their marriage. Though the novel seems to suggest that Urbino’s love for Fermina was never as spiritually chaste as Florentino’s was, it also complicates Florentino’s devotion by writing his many trysts as well as a few potentially genuine loves. By the end of the book, Fermina comes to recognize Florentino’s wisdom and maturity, and their love blossoms during their old age.