Reviews for A journal of the plague year

The average rating for A journal of the plague year based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-02-02 00:00:00 Stanley Gowan Because writing is an expression of human character, what is true of one's character is true of one's writing as well. A person's strengths and weaknesses are often two sides of the same coin'the sympathetic character is often permissive, the assertive unreasonable, the ardent rash'and the same thing can be said of an author's beauties and his faults. A brief study of Daniel Defoe's book on the London plague of 1665-1666 illustrates this principle. Perhaps the most impressive thing about "A Journal of the Plague Year" is that it is an extraordinarily convincing account narrated by the voice of a mature, solid citizen'thoroughly respectable and reliable--who has personally witnessed the extraordinary and often horrific incidents he describes. Defoe, however, although did he live in London at the time, was born in 1660, and was therefore only five years old when the Hand of Death fell upon the city of London. Defoe creates a convincing persona by making his narrator a stolid burgher who fears his God, respects his fellow Londoners, and admires his city, an unimaginative man who above all reverences reliable testimony and verifiable facts. "Plague Year" is crammed with rolls of the dead and other helpful lists, as well as page upon page of city regulations governing the duties of citizens, the conduct of the inspectors, etc. Although there are many vivid glimpses of life during plague'crazed sufferers expiring in the streets, healthy families shut up in their houses by decree, diseased individuals defying city orders, open pits waiting for wagons stacked high with the dead'-these scenes are often obscured by heaps of accumulated detail, piles of haphazardly organized materials. The book, although impressive, is inelegant, its organizational principles unclear; it appears to be the work of a literate layman, not a professional writer. Paradoxically, it is precisely this impression of amateurishness that makes the voice'and therefore the work itself'so powerful and convincing a performance. As with "Robinson Crusoe," so it is with "A Journal of the Plague Year": I can never decide whether Defoe is merely an unsophisticated novelist, addicted to lists and repetitive details, or whether'like the poet satirists of his own 18th Century'he is a master at constructing personae that convince the reader with their sincerity and authority. Is the hobbling, inartful appearance of "Plague Year" a strength or is it a weakness? I for one think it's a toss up. Two sides of the same coin.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-08-14 00:00:00 Scott Persinger 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.