Except that, in fact, it isn't -- it's a work of fiction. Defoe made use of actual journals (including possibly his own uncles), public records, and newspaper articles as his sources, mimicking the language, tone, and apparatus of his sources, tossing in their numbers and dates to set the seal of truth upon his sly fiction. He'd done it before, of course -- writing Robinson Crusoe as though it were the actual tale of a man who survived thirty years on a desert island (though again, he borrowed freely from history, particularly the tale of one Alexander Selkirk, whose history was similar in some respects.
So what do we call this? If written today, we might say "creative nonfiction" but that category didn't exist in 1722. Back then, it might have fallen under the broad umbrella of historical chronicles, many of which were embellished with fictitious or semi-fictitious episodes (Holinshead, who was the source for many of Shakespeare's plays, wrote a famous one), though there was also the category of facetiæ -- deliberately and patently untrue narratives posing as true ones to a greater or lesser extent (Swift's Gulliver's Travels is perhaps the best example), which often verged on broad satire (assuming one recognized the purport of its barbs.
Today, we live in a universe of 'alternative facts' and truthiness -- and the printed page seems to be growing almost as unreliable as the conspiracy-theory laden internet. Defoe, though, did not aim to deceive, nor to undercut any accepted notions of what happened during the plague in London -- he stays well within the lines -- but rather to add a sense of verisimilitude by using a direct first-person narrator. Like the long-running radio and television series once hosted by Walter Cronkite, he took the known history and made it more immediate -- because, as Cronkite intoned "You are There."
An interesting paragraph to me was a description of how the city endured the plague during the 9th to 16th of May. It mentioned how the weather was content enough for the city to still have hope it could return to a somewhat healthy state. Even if some perished it was not within the city and could not spread around easily. However, this relief only lasted for a few days and people within the city soon discovered to be sick within their homes. It spread wide enough into the city that many had died each day and St. Giles constantly had to hold burials. They not only had to bury individuals, they buried families and by the end of the week fifty had perished from the plague. Given the time period, it is sad to read that many died from the plague each day and since medicine was not as it is today, the rate at which a cure could be made was a slow process if even possible. Because of that many would die, people’s immune systems were not resilient, and their bodies could not fight off the sickness. For the few days that people had hope, it would not last long. Life was grim during this time in history and ultimately the plague would soon crush their hope as it did in this story.
ReplyDelete^ sorry I forgot to put my name in the text - Agustin Custer
DeleteWhen the plague started only a few people had died from it. Although, time slipped away from these people and until they knew it more and more people had been buried. Families were lost, friends, colleagues and neighbors had disappeared. During this time, the plague had infected and killed many people. I liked how Defoe mentioned at the beginning that people only thought that the plague was in one section of the town. However, the parishes and doctors were trying to keep these deaths from the public as long as they possibly could. As Defoe stated, “though they had taken care to keep it as much from the knowledge of the public as possible. This possessed the heads of the people very much…” Why would they want to keep the plague a secret from the public? Many people already had an idea about what was going on with so many people dying around them. It became even more clear when the plague kept spreading from parish to parish. Although, they didn’t know what the plague was at the time, it was certain that there was an illness spreading and nobody knew how to cure it.
ReplyDeleteIn Part II, Defoe’s narrator describes the ways that the people of the town were kept ‘in-line’ during the time of the plague. I thought that it was particularly interesting because of how much it mirrored COVID-19 regulations. For example, when one believed themself to be sick or had any signs of sickness, they were to report this to everyone in the town that they may have gotten sick. This is the same as contact tracing in today’s world. In the early stages of COVID-19, as soon as someone felt sick, they were to tell everyone they had come in contact with before even getting a test. People would then isolate in their homes, just like Defoe is describing. Although in the novel, there are watchmen to be sure that no one was leaving their home whilst sick. After people began to escape without their note, people were padlocked into their houses. This was something that people seemed to fear during 2020’s lockdown– the government or local officials stepping into their homes and forcing them to follow the rules through force. People were outraged that they were being told to stay in their homes to stop the spread, just like how the people in England were sneaking out of their homes to go other places or simply walk about the town. This is to note because although science and medicine is (obviously) much more advanced now than it was then, we are still using many of the same general concepts to slow/stop the spread, and people are still not believing that it works or that the rules apply to them. Though we now have a vaccine and know how the spread moves, there are still people who are not vaccinated, do not wear masks, do not stay home when they are sick, and believe that the scientific research is made-up as a form of control over them. Though many of the people that Defoe describes seem to want to slow/stop the spread of the plague, they are still breaking some of the guidelines or trying to leave the city before they can be added to the death toll or told that they have to stay where they are.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading the very beginning, it was interesting to see how the people were reacting. As well as the writer going on to say how there wasn't really a way to spread news around town like you can with newspaper. So no one was as aware of the plague around town or at least as aware as they could have been. Even the officials kept the plague a secret with how they were planning on dealing with it, without telling the people. So after a while it was forgotten by the people, and their fears subsided. Then it came back again, and again. Life without a constant threat that's very looming and prevalent is a nice way to feel comfortable, that's most like how the people were able to feel so calm after around a month when someone died from the plague. To also hear about a 16th century plague and what come with the territory of it is interesting and a nice insight into the time period.
ReplyDelete- Dylan Brazil
While reading A Journal of the Plague Year, a question came to mind as the narrator was faced with deciding whether he should stay in London or flee to the countryside: How does mass trauma relate to religion? I found it interesting that the narrator was looking for signs from God in order to make his decision, while his brother—described as “very religious himself”—determined that doing such a thing would be ridiculous. No one in this time period would have been free from the trauma induced by the plague as a worldly event, just as today no one is free from the mass trauma of COVID-19.
ReplyDeleteThis time period did not have the benefit of modern science on their side as they were just beginning to explore the “magic” behind vaccines. Instead, signs and omens were interpreted as things of the universe or as the Might of God. For many, the plague was seen as God’s wrath upon the earth, similar to the flood in the story of Noah. I simply find it interesting how religion could have been seen as a reason for such an ugly sickness, and how belief in a religion and/or God could bring comfort or further terror to those of the faith.
There are a number of interesting parallels I drew from the reading and our current world. The first are the themes of misinformation and miscommunication. The deaths were so under reported. The narrator and the people of London are left to guess how many people truly had the plague and how many many might be dying. With no testing, limited communication methods, and the sick being forced to hid away, it seems overwhelming confusing. Of course, in today's covid-19 world, under reporting cases is a major problem, though it's caused by a number of different reasons.
ReplyDeleteThe rise of the scammers in the first part of the pandemic was another aspect of the theming. The astrologers and magicians who would stand on the street corners and give predictions to the desperate and confused people seemed like an especially cruel parallel to the present. These con-artists and their misinformation reminded me of the wave of covid misinformation that's been flooding the internet for the past 3 years.
The second parallel is the difference of experience between the wealthy and the poor. The wealthy are quickly able to pack up their belongings and seek refuge in their country homes. The poor, with no way to leave the city and nowhere to go, are trapped. Servants were left to the whim of their employer, unsure if they'd be moved to the countryside or not. The poor neighborhoods are the most densely populated and thus the sickest. This is just like how essential workers have died of covid in higher numbers due to their forced exposures. It's so depressing to see how little things have changed.
- Isabel Rennick
I enjoyed reading the journal of plague year and it was very interesting. the part that got to me the most was how the rumors spread around about where the plague was and reported deaths. it's crazy how it was covered up and underreported because of how people thought it would look and just to keep privacy when it should be the other way around to spread awareness. that part shook me a little bit but nevertheless, I enjoyed reading it.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading the journal I couldn't help but think back in March 2020 and the horrors we all lived during the beginning of Covid 19. It's amazing how history can repeat itself in many ways especially within these diseases. Working in the hospital during the beginning of covid 19 I can assure you that just like the journal spoke about how the facts were being hidden from the general public is exactly what was going on not too long ago! People were dying left to right but because there were no answers/explanations/ or cures they figured the magnitude of things should be kept under discretion. To think that we lived something so similar I can say that the author did a great job making the journal feel so vivid especially for it to have been so long ago definitely a good read.
ReplyDeleteLearning, in the first class, that this wasn’t a journal changed my view of the book from the first few pages I had read before. Still, a few things throughout the story jumped out at me for their resemblance to our recent pandemic. I imagine there must have been a revival of this book recently, as it happened with other ones like Camu’s The Plague, because the feelings and events are eerily similar. His description of the empty cities at the beginning of the book, people turning to their contemporary ‘pseudo-scientific’ community (fortune tellers and charlatans), and the recklessness of a few still gathering despite state-sanctioned mandates to stay inside. It felt oddly familiar, like visiting a castle and finding a modern telephone, a sense of “hey, I know what this feels like.” I knew we had experienced pandemics before but reading what felt like first-hand experience, and I imagined a researched one, gave me a perspective of oneness. The world has changed so much since this book. Since then, cultural movements like romanticism have entirely changed how we relate to one another. Still, a pandemic brings us to a fatal common denominator: how we assimilate and make sense of times of indiscriminate mass mortality.
ReplyDeleteMatheus Moraes
While reading Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, I can’t help but look back to that week after spring break in 2020. In my seminar class, we had just been discussing the Ebola virus, watching a documentary on its origin and how many lives it had claimed, and we had planned to play the board game “Pandemic” when we got back from break. That never happened.
ReplyDeleteBefore COVID-19 was declared a national pandemic, it felt almost like Defoe described it. We may have technology that Defoe would have never dreamt of in order to communicate with not only all of America within minutes, but the entire modern world as well. Yet, the prospect of such a disease truly being a problem for America seemed like a far away concept, a rumor, something that surely wouldn’t even come to America, let alone be troublesome. That was, until it did.
People held counsel in order to address the threat, but such counsel was not private in 2020 as it might’ve been in 1664. News stations ran COVID-19 information 24/7: the number of bodies, the symptoms, what exactly happened in China; celebrities on social media posted videos of themselves quarantining in their mansions; even the advertisements were discouraging any social gatherings. Like the people that avoided the areas of town where the parishes had an abundance of corpses, we were going to stay inside for two weeks to “flatten the curve.” We had hope that it wouldn’t be that bad. It’s amazing how something from 1722 can be applied so fully today.
- Spock Nardone
This reading was highly interesting, and honestly really made me remember lots of things I learned throughout my first year of college. I studied the plague in my first college History class, and this book was an amazing refresher on all the knowledge I already had before reading this book on the plague. Some aspects that I picked up on that I had learned before were people told everyone when they were sick, the various deaths that the plague caused, precautions people took due to the plague being so contagious, and the various methods people used to protect themselves from catching the plague.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, besides the remembrance I had from my history class this also reminded me of the impacts COVID 19 has had on us for the past few years. These communities acted similar to how we acted during lockdown. For example they used masks to protect themselves, tried various methods as medicine, would stay home to try to prevent getting sick, and rules being implemented in order to stop the spread.
-Jessica Fandino
A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a compelling narrative of the year 1665 when the Bubonic Plague began taking its toll on the city of London. The point of view is from one man’s perspective in the style of a journal. It is not a real journal from the year, as it was written and published in 1722, but Defoe uses real journals, newspaper articles, and public records to create a realistic depiction of what would be a journal from that era. The parallels between A Journal and the recent COVID-19 pandemic are uncanny, beginning with questioning the origins of the plague. The entry begins with the journal’s author stating “they say, it was brought, some said Italy, others from the Levant, among some goods which were brought home by their Turkey fleet; others said it was brought from Canadia; others from Cyprus” (Defoe). This stuck out to me as I began reading, as it felt eerily similar to the discourse around COVID-19’s origin and China.
ReplyDeleteAs the entry continues, more astounding parallels emerge. The narrator states how the Government knew about it but kept it private, and how in the beginning of December 1664 when two frenchman died of it in Long Acre is when people began to take notice. This is strikingly similar to our own modern and recent pandemic, when our own US government may have been aware of the potential danger of COVID-19, but it wasn’t until December of 2019 that the population began to take notice as well. The narrator describes how once the plague started to spread “it quickly appeared that the infection had spread itself beyond all hopes of abatement” (Defoe). This is all too familiar a sentiment to us who have experienced the COVID-19 pandemic, as the narrator describes the initial hope that it won’t be too much of a cause for concern, until it inevitably becomes a national emergency.
As A Journal ensues, more notable parallels emerge yet again. The narrator describes how after months of the plague getting worse, around June now, people were silently panicking and “for all that could conceal their distempers did it, to prevent their neighbors shunning and refusing to converse with them, and also to prevent authority shutting up their houses; which, though not yet practised, yet was threatened, and people were extremely terrified of the thoughts of it” (Defoe). COVID-19 began the same way as well, and we eventually did have to go into lockdown, preventing us from conversing with our neighbors and being essentially locked in our houses. The narrator also describes how people wanted certificates of health to travel abroad, and “it was rumored that an order of the Government was to be issued out to place turnpikes and barriers on the road to prevent people travelling” (Defoe). Once again, the echoes of this rings all too familiar to us who have experienced the COVID pandemic, as there were eventual travel restrictions in state lines, quarantine practices and standards, and COVID testing for traveling abroad.