Dive Into A Journal Of The Plague Year: 1665The Great Plague Formulated By Daniel Defoe Published As Leaflet

writing is an expression of human character, what is true of one's character is true of one's writing as well, A person's strengths and weaknesses are often two sides of the same cointhe sympathetic character is often permissive, the assertive unreasonable, the ardent rashand the same thing can be said of an author's beauties and his faults.
A brief study of Daniel Defoe's book on the London plague ofillustrates this principle,

Perhaps the most impressive thing about “A Journal of the Plague Year" is that it is an extraordinarily convincing account narrated by the voice of a mature, solid citizenthoroughly respectable and reliablewho has personally witnessed the extraordinary and often horrific incidents he describes.
Defoe, however, although did he live in London at the time, was born in, and was therefore only five years old when the Hand of Death fell upon the city of London.


Defoe creates a convincing persona by making his narrator a stolid burgher who fears his God, respects his fellow Londoners, and admires his city, an unimaginative man who above all reverences reliable testimony and verifiable facts.
“Plague Year” is crammed with rolls of the dead and other helpful lists, as well as page upon page of city regulations governing the duties of citizens, the conduct of the inspectors, etc.
Although there are many vivid glimpses of life during plaguecrazed sufferers expiring in the streets, healthy families shut up in their houses by decree, diseased individuals defying city orders, open pits waiting for wagons stacked high with the deadthese scenes are often obscured by heaps of accumulated detail, piles of haphazardly organized materials.
The book, although impressive, is inelegant, its organizational principles unclear it appears to be the work of a literate layman, not a professional writer, Paradoxically, it is precisely this impression of amateurishness that makes the voiceand therefore the work itselfso powerful and convincing a performance,

As with “Robinson Crusoe,” so it is with “A Journal of the Plague Year”: I can never decide whether Defoe is merely an unsophisticated novelist, addicted to lists and repetitive details, or whetherlike the poet satirists of his ownth Centuryhe is a master at constructing personae that convince the reader with their sincerity and authority.


Is the hobbling, inartful appearance of “Plague Year” a strength or is it a weakness I for one think it's a toss up, Two sides of the same coin, A Journal of the Plague Year is a dense, repetitive, dismal collection of fictional observations based on factual evidence derived from the events of the Black Death epidemic of.
This “journal” completely lacks a narrative, relying solely on a journalistic approach, although it reads nothing like a reliable news source and more like a completely random collection of thoughts and observations that all bleed together.


Suffering pervades and death is king,

To put it bluntly, this book is boring, But having thus far survived a modern pandemic, I

found quite a bit of the book to be depressingly relatable, I would like to believe that humanity will learn from its mistakes and grow away from ignorance, but recent evidence leads me to believe that we have a long way to go.


Another plague year would reconcile all these differences a close conversing with death, or with diseases that threaten death, would scum off the gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on things with before.
A journey through Londons “plague year” ofmight offer some valuable lessons for the people of, living as we have been through a pandemic disease outbreak of our own.
Such, at any rate, were my reflections after reading Daniel Defoesnovel A Journal of the Plague Year,

Defoe is wellknown to modern readers as the author of classic novels like Robinson Crusoeand Moll Flanders, These books helped to define the novel as a literary genre a longform prose fiction narrative in which one main plot is artfully interwoven with a number of subplots.
But Defoe had already done a great deal of important work as a man of letters in earlythcentury England before he began composing those classic novels in his later years.


A religious nonconformist, at a time when failing to subscribe to the tenets of the Church of England was a prosecutable and punishable crime, Defoe fearlessly stood up for the right of individual conscience placed in the stocks once for his nonconformist ways, Defoe was cheered as a hero, and London crowds placed flowers on the stocks in which Defoe had been confined.
The ordinary people of London, and of England, knew that he cared about them, and they loved him for it,

A Journal of the Plague Year, published in the same year as Moll Flanders, should not be misinterpreted as being an autobiographical account of Defoes actual experiences during theoutbreak of bubonic plague in and around London after all, Defoe was but a child of five years age when the plague struck the city.
Rather, A Journal of the Plague Year works mainly as an historical novel, combined with elements of what we might nowadays call creative nonfiction, He conducted extensive research, drew upon his own gifts for observation of human character, and crafted a compelling narrative of a terrible time,

Inspired in part, perhaps, by a plague outbreak in Marseilles in, A Journal of the Plague Year begins by introducing the reader to the books narrator, one “H.
F. ” whose initials may refer to Defoes reallife uncle Henry Foe, H. F. tells the reader of how, in September, he heard of the plague being back in Holland, after a violent outbreak of the disease the year before:

We had no such thing as printed News Papers in those days, to spread Rumours and Reports of Things and to improve them by the Invention of Men, as I have livd to see practisd since.
But such things as these were gatherd from the letters of Merchants and others who corresponded abroad, and from them was handed about by word of mouth only so that things did not spread instantly over the whole nation, as they do now.
p.

Once the plague arrived at London, the bills of mortality for the various parishes throughout the city showed an immediate increase in the number of deaths.
In response, those Londoners who could leave the city did so and H, F. recalls how this mass evacuation “was a very terrible and melancholy Thing to see, and as it was a Sight which I coud not but look on from Morning to Night for indeed there was nothing else of Moment to be seen, it filled me with very serious Thoughts of the Misery that was coming upon the City, and the unhappy Condition of those that would be left in it” p.
.

H. F. s older brother advises him to follow the exodus, get out of London, and seek shelter from the plague in the country, In response, H. F. expresses a fear of losing his trade and his goods if he leaves the sort of anxieties that might afflict many people who are trying to decide how best to respond to the onset of a new pandemic and says, in the spirit of Defoes belief in a benevolent personal God, that he wants to trust that God will protect his health.
H. F. s brother replies with impeccable logic: “Is it not as reasonable that you should trust God with the Chance or Risque of losing your Trade, as that you should stay in so imminent a Point of Danger, and trust him with your Life” p.


Yet H. F. stays inevitably, perhaps, for the sake of the main plotline of the book and therefore he has the chance to bear witness, for the readers benefit, of how quickly and how completely the plague changes the life of London:

Sorrow and Sadness sat upon every Face.
Tears and Lamentations were seen almost in every House, especially in the first Part of the Visitation for towards the latter End, Mens Hearts were hardned, and Death was always so before their Eyes, that they did not so much concern themselves for the Loss of their Friends, expecting, that themselves should be summoned the next Hour.
p.

When one takes into account the wide range of strange and downright irrational ways in which some people responded to the COVIDpandemic, I suppose we cannot be surprised when Defoe, through his “H.
F. ” narrator, describes comparably unreasoning responses to Londons bubonic plague epidemic of: “The Apprehensions of the People, were likewise strangely encreasd by the Error of the Times in which, I think, the People, from what Principle I cannot imagine, were more addicted to Prophesies, and Astrological Conjurations, Dreams, and old Wives Tales, than ever they were before or since”.
p.Defoes narrator sums up by saying that “These things serve to shew, how far the People were really overcome with Delusions” p,

Indeed, it is disheartening to note how assiduously the quacks of London offered plague “cures” to the lesseducated members of the citys terrified public:

“INFALLIBLE preventive pills against the Plague.
NEVERFAILING Preservatives against the Infection, SOVEREIGN Cordials against the Corruption of the Air, EXACT Regulations for the Conduct of the Body, in Case of an Infection: Antipestilential Pills, INCOMPARABLE Drink against the Plague, never found out before, An UNIVERSAL Remedy for the Plague, The ONLYTRUE PlagueWater. The ROYALANTIDOTE against all Kinds of Infection” and such a Number more that I cannot reckon up, and if I could, would fill a Book of themselves to set them down.
p.

All those who remember the pandemic lockdown empty streets empty office buildings and factories and shopping malls entire populations sheltering at home, with at most an occasional trip to the grocery store will note with interest the antiplague precautions undertaken by the London city government infor instance, “THAT all Plays, BearBaitings, Games, singing of Ballads, Bucklerplay, or such like Causes of Assemblies of People, be utterly prohibited, and the Parties offending severely punished by every Alderman in his Ward” p.
.

Trying to keep people from gathering together for public entertainments while a contagious epidemic disease is ravaging an entire city is certainly a rational response, Unfortunately, not all publichealth measures undertaken by the London authorities were quite as wellconsidered for instance, the Lord Mayors order that all cats were to be killed on sight.
We know now that Yersinia pestis, the plague bacterium, spreads mainly through bites from fleas that are carried on rats therefore, it is clear today that killing cats was the worst antiplague measure imaginable.


Defoe, through narrator H, F. , takes particular issue with the practice, by city authorities called “Examiners,” of shutting up the homes of the infected, confining entire families of noninfected people with an infected family member.
As H. F. points out, this practice encouraged family members to seek any escape possible from homes that had become prisons and when these people escaped, they often carried the plague with them and spread the disease further.


H. F. says that he was compelled to work for a time as one of the Examiners, but dispensed with the work as soon as he possibly could, As Defoe always spoke his mind without fear, it should be no surprise that H, F. publicly takes issue with the city's policy of shutting up whole families in the homes of a single plagueinfected family member:

In the execution of this Office, I coud not refrain speaking my Opinion among my Neighbours, as to this shutting up the People in their Houses in which we saw most evidently the Severities that were used, tho grievous in themselves, had also this particular Objection against them, namely, that they did not answer the End, as I have said, but that the distemperd People went Day by Day about the Streets and it was our united Opinion, that a Method to have removed the Sound from the Sick in Case of a particular House being visited, woud ha been much more reasonable on many Accounts, leaving no Body with the sick Persons, but such as shoud on such Occasion request to stay and declare themselves content to be shut up with them.
p.

Defoe works like Moll Flanders the story of an impoverished woman who must survive by her wits in a society that does not care whether she lives or dies show the authors compassion for the poor.
A Journal of the Plague Year similarly shows the author expressing sympathy and understanding for the poor, while at the same time acknowledging that poverty can drive people to the most difficult of choices:

It must be confest, that tho the Plague was chiefly among the Poor yet, were the Poor the most Venturous and Fearless of it, and went about their Employment, with a sort of brutal Courage I must call it so, for it was founded neither on Religion or Prudence scarse did they use any Caution, but run into any Business, which they could get Employment in, tho it was the most hazardous such was that of tending the Sick, watching Houses shut up, carrying infected Persons to the PestHouse, and which was still worse, carrying the Dead away to their Graves.
p.

A striking moment in A Journal of the Plague Year comes when two people, John the biscuit baker and his brother Thomas the sailmaker, engage in a bit of dramatized dialogue about whether to stay in London or try to leave the city, at a time when Londoners are being ordered to stay home, and residents of neighbouring towns are telling Londoners to stay away:

Tho.
You talk your old Soldiers Languagebut this is a serious thing, The People have good Reason to keep any Body off, that they are not satisfied are found, at such a Time as this and we must not plunder them.


John. No, Brother, you mistake the Case, and mistake me, too, I would plunder no Body but for any Town upon the Road to deny me Leave to pass thro the Town in the open HighWay, and deny me Provisions for my Money, is to say the Town has a Right to Starve me to Death, which cannot be true.


Tho. But they do not deny you Liberty to go back again from whence you came, and therefore they do not starve you,

John. But the next Town behind me will by the same Rule deny me leave to go back, and they do starve me between them besides there is no Law to prohibit my travelling wherever I will on the Road.


Tho. You will go away. Whither will you go and what can you do I would as willingly go away as you, if I knew whither: But we have no Acquaintance, no Friends.
Here we were born, and here we must die,

John. Look you, Tom, the whole Kingdom is my Native Country as well as this Town, You may as well say, I must not go out of my House if it is on Fire, as that I must not go out of the Town I was born in, when it is infected with the Plague.
I was born in England, and have a Right to live in it if I can, p.

Nowadays, there are COVID vaccines and boosters and even as new variants of COVIDhave emerged, the numbers of new cases and new deaths from the novel coronavirus have declined greatly from where they once were.
But Defoe would no doubt prescribe caution for the people of any community that is coming out of a pandemic, judging from what H, F. describes of the behaviour of Londoners who learned that the bills of mortality from the various parishes were lessening, The physicians advised people “to continue reservd, and to use still the utmost Caution in their ordinary Conduct, notwithstanding the Decrease of the Distemper” but their sound advice was in vain, as ordinary Londoners

were so possessd with the first Joy, and so surprizd with the Satisfaction of seeing a vast Decrease in the weekly Bills, that they were impenetrable by any new Terrors, and would not be persuaded, but that the Bitterness of Death was passd and it was to no more purpose to talk to them, than to an Eastwind but they opend Shops, went about Streets, did Business, and conversed with any Body that came in their Wayneither inquiring of their Health, or so much as being Apprehensive of any Danger from them, tho they knew them not to be sound.
p.

It should be no surprise that, as H, F. notes, “This imprudent rash Conduct cost a great many their Lives” p,people who had survived the worst of the plague epidemic, and might have lived to see many more years yet,

A Journal of the Plague Year takes the reader back to an epidemic of the past, and encourages the reader to think about the pandemic that we are still living with now.
History is supposed to serve, for the people of the present day, as a sort of rearview mirror we are supposed to emulate the good things, and avoid the bad things, that people and societies of the past have done.
Defoe would want us to benefit from the advice that he set downyears ago advice that remains valuable today, .