“But in the plague year people no
longer wished to be reminded of their
dead.
Because ,indeed, they were thinking
all too much about them as it was.
There was no more question of revisiting
them with a shade of regret and much
melancholy.
There were no longer the forsaken to
whom, one day in the year, you came to
justify yourself. There were intruders
whom you would rather forget. This is
why the Day of the Dead this
year was tacity but willfully ignored.
As Cottard dryly remarked, Tarrou noted
that the habit of irony was growing on
him more and more, each day was for us
a Day of the Dead.”

 

Fragment p.114

 

 The Plague,

Albert Camus