Journal of the Plague Year: Authoritative Text Backgrounds Contexts Criticism Book

In the crowded unhealthy unclean foul, pest dominated filthy city of London the Black Plague breaks out in 1665, no surprise it had occurred before in fact just a few years previously but this escalates, felling some say 100,000 people who never rise again. Daniel Defoe the inventor of the English language novel (Robinson Crusoe, 1719) yet because of his earlier employment, was more a journalist than a novelist, writes a memoir of this catastrophe almost sixty years later. The author was only five -years old at the time, but his Uncle Henry Foe ( Defoe added De, to make himself seem a gentleman, his father was a butcher) takes this eyewitness account from this relative's journal, the narrator is only described as H.F. The alarmed inhabitants of the city mostly flee for their lives the rich first, King Charles the Second to Oxford, others to the nearby countryside the poor survive in the woods, old ruined shacks or in tents even outside, the locals don't help at first afraid to get sick too. Many refugees starve to death, some succumb to the unmerciful disease the very brave stay in London those that work for the city government, the least well off remain also nowhere to go the hardest hit and die frequently in the streets, their minds inflamed by illness babbling words incomprehensible before dropping to the ground. The Dead- Carts pick up the victims and bury them in deep holes, mass graves are quickly covered and another one dug for the next batch. The narrator's brother had urged him to get out of town like him, but H.F. had a store to run , a house to take care of with servants and warehouses full of his goods; how could he? Still his sister would welcome him, she lived faraway in a different city. The curious yet frightened man roams the streets, seeing the dead scattered everywhere, hearing unearthly screams from ill women in their homes, windows opened, moans flowing from above dazed men in nightshirts cursing, groaning people asking God to save them why did he not leave? Whole families dying inside a house fathers, mothers, children, servants the stench of the bodies spreading to passersby they keep walking. Londoners afraid to come near strangers they believe are infected by their polluted air not knowing the diseased rats, and flees that bite them and the many citizens of the city are the real killers. Pitiful beggars abound asking for help, houses are shut with the owners inside either by the government, with the sick there or healthy ones trying to avoid the deadly plague by hiding . Vicious thieves break into the empty homes stealing all, not afraid of the danger so desperate the situation, nothing to lose thinking everybody is doomed. And the Dead-Carts continue to roll down the pestilent streets the drivers throwing the deceased in, filling it to the top until no more living humans are left? A splendid glance back to a depressing time with little medicine, more ignorance and superstitions that dominated the scene a mirror into yesteryear.