And its discussion of representation immediately tips us off that, sniff sniff, we can smell an allegory headed our way. It comes from the preface to Volume III of Robinson Crusoe, also written by Defoe. Actually, this quote doesn’t come from A Journal of the Plague Year. But more than homage to another writer with similar tastes for subject matter, this epigraph, like all good epigraphs, gives us a hint about how to read this novel. Much like the narrator of The Plague, the storyteller of A Journal of the Plague Year doesn’t reveal his identity until the very end, and even then only with his initials. It’s likely that Camus used this as a reference – or, you know, as some comforting bedtime reading. "It is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another, as it is to represent anything that really exists by that which exists not." –Daniel Defoe Who is this man Defoe? What is this about? Well, first of all, Daniel Defoe wrote fictional book in 1722 called A Journal of the Plague Year about, yes, that’s right, a plague that ravages London the 17th century.
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