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A summary of Part I: Chapters 1-3 in Albert Camus's The Plague. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of The Plague and what it means. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans.

As the plague gently begins its slaughter, Dr. Rieux discovers in Chapter 4 that he must battle another plague-like phenomenon — the so-called red tape of bureaucracy. The frustration is Kafkaesque.

The Plague is a novel about a plague epidemic in the large Algerian city of Oran. In April, thousands of rats stagger into the open and die. When a mild hysteria grips the population, the newspapers begin clamoring for action.

Part 1, Chapter 1: The "unusual events" of the story, told by an as-yet-unnamed narrator, begin in the port town of Oran, Algeria, in the 1... Read More: Part 1, Chapter 2: As Dr. Bernard Rieux is leaving his surgery one April morning, he steps on a dead rat and kicks it aside. He tells the c... Read More: Part 1, Chapter 3

On the morning of April 16, Dr. Bernard Rieux accidentally steps on a dead rat outside his door as he prepares to go to surgery. The concierge, Michel, is aghast, and claims there are no dead rats here. Later, even though he sees another one, Rieux is concerned only with his wife, who is about to go stay in a sanitarium.

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After the death toll reaches thirty a day, the Prefect proclaims the plague and closes the town. The narrator, Dr. Rieux, using his own memory, other eyewitnesses, and the diary of Jean Tarrou, tells the story of the bubonic plague in Oran, on the coast of Algeria.

Albert Camus divided The Plague into five parts. This study guide provides a summary and analysis of each chapter within those parts. The "unusual events" of the story, told by an as-yet-unnamed narrator, begin in the port town of Oran, Algeria, in …

Part 1 The Plague concerns an outbreak of bubonic plague in the French-Algerian port city of Oran, sometime in the 1940s. The first-person narrator is unnamed but mostly follows Dr. Bernard Rieux .