Part III
- In part 3, the narrator takes a pause in the story to describe three areas in which the plague impacted the population: the excesses of the living, burials of the dead, and the plight of parted lovers (page 167).
As you read through these descriptions, jot down how the plague, “a shrewd, unflagging adversary, a skilled organizer,” as the narrator describes it, is “doing [its] work thoroughly and well” (180).- Why does the narrator describe the plague in this way?
- How do you see that it is “doing [its] work thoroughly and well”?
- How is the plague affecting the whole person (body, mind, spirit)?
- As we read this section, and specifically the narrator’s description of the increasingly inhumane burials, it seems that the God-given gift of mourning has been taken away. After you finish reading this part of the narrative, you are invited to write, sing, dance a lament for those who have died in the novel.
It may be an individual or communal lament; it may be from the perspective of someone in the novel, from the perspective of one of the gravediggers, stretcher-bearers, etc…or even from the perspective of the group of residents mentioned on page 178 who started tossing flowers into the streetcars carrying the bodies to the crematorium.
Reading of other’s experiences, even fictional, can open up for us new insight into our own experiences or the world around us.- What do you lament or mourn now?
- Who is lamenting near you or in your community? How might you come alongside them in that lament?
- Part 3 begins with the narrator’s reiteration of earlier claims that the range of human possibilities had narrowed to “a single collective destiny” and “the emotions shared by all” (167). The section is narrated in a kind of extended first-person plural--a series of ritual acts conducted by the townspeople.
- Does this seem true to your experience?
- To what extent has the pandemic created such a collective experience in your neighborhood or city?