Tarrou, the Plague's Only Hero in The Plague by Albert Campus

        In 'The Plague', Albert Camus pits humanity against an unstoppable force of nature: the bubonic plague. He creates a variety of characters who all deal with the plague in their own way, but only Tarrou acts heroically. Rieux comes close to a hero, but he fights the plague because it's expected of him and shows indifference at the end of the book. Besides Rieux and Tarrou, none of the other characters show any heroism or …

…saint because he resists death and fate and thus attains sainthood. He's a hero because he provides a correct model on how to deal with death. For fighting the plague, he gets symbolically crushed. Without Tarrou, 'The Plague' wouldn't have the hero common to almost all literature. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bree, Germaine. Camus. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1962. McCarthy, Patrick. 'The Plague.' In Albert Camus, p.107-113. Edited by Harold Bloom. New York:         Chelsea House Publishers, 1989.