Lamron Lit - Journal of the Plague Year
Lamron Lit Corner: Journal of the Plague Year and the unchanged response to death
“Here I cannot but take notice that the strange temper of the people of London at that time contributed extremely to their own destruction.”
~Daniel Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year
Trigger warning: Plague and mass-death
Daniel Defoe, most known for his “novels” Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, falls into a sort of liminal literary space that few other authors do; despite being fairly recognizable (Robinson Crusoe being a well-known book), not many readers have the time or energy to read what can be easily seen as the “antique” or “unintuitive” pieces that he produced. Additionally, his work falls outside of strict fiction or nonfiction labels makes it difficult to even categorize, much less understand, what Defoe stood for back in the early 1700s when he wrote. I offer that instead of reading the more recognizable novels he produced, readers in the 2020s should instead look to his 1722 book Journal of the Plague Year to see not only why classic literature matters, but how human nature in response to large-scale catastrophe is nothing more than a horrid, never-ending cycle.
As the title suggests, Defoe’s Journal is a recounting of a plague that ravaged Britain, primarily London, in 1665. While Defoe was only five years old when this occurred, it is theorized that he had access to his uncle’s actual journal when this plague was sweeping through, one of the many reasons critics have trouble fully categorizing the book as fiction. It is, mostly, seen as an incredibly early prototype of what a modern novel would someday look like, as Defoe fictionalized many aspects of the plague in order to make it more streamlined. But that’s not to say that the book is in any way easy to read; Defoe’s style is far less a form of creative writing than a novel-length newspaper article, with not a single chapter or section break appearing in its hundreds of pages. It’s important, therefore, to understand that because Defoe was not writing to entertain—he was writing to try and save lives.
Just as our world was scarcely ready for the COVID-19 pandemic that scorched through the lives of us all, London in 1665 was not ready for the sheer masses of dead that would soon inhabit it. And, again similar to our own time, that influx of death contributed to how horrific the plague was. Defoe goes into great detail describing the “dead-carts” that traveled around London, hoisting the piles of dead off the streets to bring them to mass graves strewn haphazardly throughout the city. He describes those who, caring nothing for those around them, knowingly spread the disease to families with children, setting them up to die; he describes how the city was without food and supplies for years, and how the neighboring towns and cities shut their doors and offered nothing but a “be gone!” for those that requested aid.
Journal of the Plague Year is not technically a horror novel, even though it may seem so to modern readers. I have a theory, however, that the only reason the novel remains so fear-invoking to this day is because we know the subject matter all too well. Perhaps, had I read this book in 2019, I’d have not even a fraction of the connection I have to it now.
Have you heard the news stories of people in the United States who would wipe their noses on the shirts of employees who asked them to wear a mask? Do you remember the videos from China in January and February of 2020 of their government burning piles of bodies in the streets? How about the mass shortages in supermarkets? How many Zoom funerals were attended because the world was so locked-down? How much of it was worth it?
There is no better indicator of human nature in the face of plague than this Journal. It is a mirror, and one that bids us stare into it, 350 years later, asking, “How guilty are you of this? How little have we progressed when push comes to shove?”