The State of siege

See also: State of siege (homonymy)

the State of siege , a Play written by Albert Camus in 1948, milked fear, and more exactly of the installation of a totalitarian mode by the instrumentalisation of the fear. In spite of its serious subject, the part is light because the features of the characters are exaggerated, even turned in derision (but interpretations can vary).

The question is the following one: what does it occur when the Plague, personified under the features of an opportunist young person, seizes the power in a country where nothing does not move?

Written the shortly after the Second world war, this part denounces the operation of the totalitarian modes by dismounting the mechanism of tender of the fear. Albert Camus thinks obviously of the dictatorship of Hitler, but especially of that of Franco which will end only in 1975. Indeed, the part occurs in Andalusia, with Cadiz.

But the speech is universal and concerns all the men. Camus wants above all to prevent against a possible return of this type of mode. It thus approaches the topics of the resistance, the Révolte and the Liberté like parapet against the handling, resignation, the tender, the passivity… To push back this danger supposes concessions political, social, or even private it seems.

This play was not very well accommodated at the beginning by the criticism, which expected an adaptation of the novel the Plague . Camus was however proud, the more so as it could consider this work as “ one of the writings which resembles more ”.

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