Time Period in The Plague
When I read the line “A few moments later all the street-lamps went on, dimming the sky…” on page 42 of The Plague , the line was surprisingly jarring to me as it brought me back to the time period the book was set in. To me the book has a strange quality of feeling pretty timeless and perhaps from a time period before the 20 th century – the descriptions of the streets, fashion, and behaviors of the characters for some reason bring the 1880s or so to mind, though I know it was clearly mentioned at the beginning to be set in the 1940s. Why is this so? I think the fact that a mention of electric street lamps that brought me to this analysis of time in the book, directly relates to exactly what about the book gives me the vibe of an earlier time. Of course, streetlamps themselves aren’t even modern technology – according to a Google search, they’ve been in use since the 1890s. So why is it them that made me think? Skimming the earlier parts of the book, I’m unable to ...