It's the plaaaaaague!

[damned_colonial]

It's July 1st. Let the "Plagues and Pandemics" discussion begin!

I'll be posting some questions/prompts for discussion over the next month, at least one a week and hopefully a bit more than that. If anyone else has points for discussion, please feel free to post with them. I am responsible for making sure *some* discussion posts happen, but I'm happy to share!

For now I'd like to open up with something very general:

What have you noticed are the main similarities and differences between the various plague stories you've read?

What impressions did you get regarding the author's historical research? How do you think the author's understanding of the period in question affected the way the story was told?

Comments

[legionseagle]

Wrt to "survivors" thing I wonder whether my attitude to the expectation that the pov character will survive is coloured by the fact that the first book I read (that I can recall) in which plague was a theme was The Children of Green Knowe over the course of which the pov character gradually comes to realise that his invisible friends, the four children from the 17th century portrait over the mantelpiece, are children precisely because they died in the plague, and are therefore captured in time at that moment. The big reveal of Charlotte Sometimes is to similar effect. I wonder if there's a difference between children/YA treatment of plague as a theme, perhaps because plague means something different as a theme (which reminds me, I need to re-read Camus, because I've forgotten who dies there).