Ms. Hen reviews A Journal of the Plague Year

 

A Journal of the Plague Year

Daniel Defoe

E. Nutt

1722

Ms. Hen decided to read this because she has been reading books about the plague recently. She decided to read this on her phone, because it was free, and easy to carry around. She doesn't like reading on her phone as much as she likes reading a book, but she does it once in a while.

Daniel Defoe is famous for writing ROBINSON CRUSOE. He came to write this book because it is based on a journal of his uncle's. Defoe never lived during the plague year in London in 1665. This book was originally presented as nonfiction, but has since been reclassified as fiction, since Defoe took some liberties with the details.

This book is about the last plague that struck London. Horrible things happened during this year: people would drop dead on the street, and the dead were taken away in dead carts. People who had the plague were nailed in their houses, and they would try to escape. Some people would offer to care for the sick in their homes, but then they would suffocate the patients, and steal all their valuables. Someone decided to exterminate all the cats and dogs because they were thought to have the plague, which made the rat population larger, since every house had a cat to keep out the rats. They tried to kill the rats, but they came back. Nobody had any idea of sanitation, but they did keep coins in the market in a jar of vinegar to keep the germs out.

Reading this novel made Ms. Hen appreciate that she did not live in the time. People had no education, and they were cruel to each other. They are cruel now, but she thinks the world was worse then.

This novel is upsetting, but it's important. It's necessary to know how people handled such a thing as the last plague outbreak in London, and how they managed that tells us a lot about how far we have come, and where we could be.

Ms. Hen thinks this novel fits in well with the other books about the Plague and the Spanish flu she has read recently. The world can be a demented, messy place, but we have to deal with it because it's the only one we have for right now.