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Daniel Defoe A Journal of a Plague Year (1722) - Coggle Diagram
Daniel Defoe
A Journal of a Plague Year
(1722)
How does the Plague reshape London life?
neighbors started shunning each other: "For all that could conceal their Distempers, did it to prevent their Neighbors shunning and refusing to converse with them; and also to prevent Authority shutting up their houses" (10) -- disease has a social function, city mandates to prevent the spread
outbursts of violence (on brand)
gender and plague life: sexual assault, painfful motherhood discovering her daughter's signs of plague (52);
remaps relationship to future and time
reshapes (shaky) notion of 18th century privacy (cause death and suffering so like, bye privacy)
"Orders conceived and published by the Lord Mayor" : searchers, examiners,
special "women-searchers" with honest reputations
The use of a red cross on the door to mark sick houses (very Biblical)
Covid parallels: people who hid status to socialize; death carts (oops, mobile morgue trailers and boats); COVID case numbers and dashboards, hospital bed counts
the undoing of medical progress: masking is psy-ops to kill brain cells; vaccines are chipping us; being transmitted by 5G towers; also, it's not real;
What causes the Plague?
"effluvia" (99)
H.F.'s dismissal of early germ theory (invisible creatures) (64)
"God will never forsake a Family that trust him as thou dost" (91) -- the moral framework of health
"Besides, there were some People, who notwithstanding Danger, did omit publickly to attend the Worship of God" (86)
Defoe
The Sick and the Sound
"removing those that were Sound from those that were Sick" (135-6)
"The Sick and the WELL" (150-1); visual proof, something you can see; contagion is here but "they did not show the consequences"; it's everywhere. They didn't even know
so thoroughly interrupts the social
makes people paranoid about their own bodies
creates a world of distrust
"Fathers and Mothers [...] Destruction of their whole Families" -- the rhetoric paints an antagonistic image/creates blame
"even perhaps in his tender Kissing and Embracing" (159)
creates a diagnostic crisis: who is going to sniff bad breath? Are we going to find dragons and devils in the blood? (159)
plague time stymies trust in scientific process
How does the microscope create a new "optic" for understanding bodies and the social?