When Human Concerns are Reduced to the Question of Survival

A dreadful Plague in London was / In the Year Sixty Five, / Which swept an Hundred Thousand Souls / Away; yet I alive! 

                                          -- Daniel Defoe A Journal of the Plague Year

In the sixteenth and seventeen centuries, a malicious, horrible devil attacked Europe incessantly and swept away almost half of its population, a shock to the whole world even up till today. This devil is a frightening plague, the Black Death. The prestigious English writer Daniel Defoe recorded this black plague in his book, A Journal of the Plague Year, written from the point view of a fictitious and pseudo-autobiographical journalist.

Defoe's journal is a solid, substantial, flesh-and-blood display of catastrophes. The moaning and groaning of patients suffering in pain deafen our ears; ordinary citizens, young and old, men and women, suddenly dropped dead on the streets before our eyes; choking smells from rotten bodies of the dead animals and humans suffocate us; the fire set on the swelling of the unfortunate patient burns our skin; the desperate prayers pierce through our heart. What passed through the mind of the journalist passes, without the loss of a titter, through ours. The geographical, vivid description of the hopeless and helpless terrifies us and subjects us to endless nightmares.

The cover

Confronted with the apocalyptic threats, human concerns are reduced to the mere question of survival and the worst is brought out of the body. Soothsayers, witch doctors, pharmacists, physiotherapists, astrologists, all are eager to take advantage of the vulnerable, fragile psychology of the public and to reap as much as possible from the suffering people, reminiscent of the break out of SARS when the price of vinegar and the cheap Chinese medicine dyer's woad root roared and roared and roared. Those who are infected, afraid of being shut inside, hide the truth from others, flee their households and disperse wherever they can, thus spreading the plague even further. What's worse, the crazy, vindictive who are marked by the death begin to attack the innocent wildly. It is a hell of isolation, degradation, and abhorrence, which is abandoned by God.

The Europeans are lost. They blindly rush towards every claim of protection, no matter how ridiculous or senseless it sounds. They slaughter cats, dogs and many other animals in millions, which makes the situation even worse, since cats and dogs are the enemy of rats who are the carriers of the Black Death. In disguise as the journalist, Defoe laments,

"the Contagion despised all Medicine, Death raged in every Corner; and had it gone on as it did then, a few Weeks more would have cleared the Town of all, and every thing that had a Soul: men every where began to despire, every Heart failed them for Fear, People were made desperate through the Anguish of their Souls, and the Terrors of Death sat in the very Faces and Countenances of the People."

It's a terrifying year of the black plague. It puts mankind through a tough and grueling test. Unfortunately, many fail the test. If the patients had voluntarily stayed home instead of fleeing blindly, if the doctors had remained conscious instead of cheating the public, if the people hadn't killed cats and dogs wildly, perhaps many more people would have survived. As long as the gesture of love, of sympathy and of reason survives, the human race survives.