A Journal of the Plague Year and Its Connection to the Pandemic

A Journal of the Plague Year
and the its
Connection to the Pandemic
[name]
[school/course]
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[date]I have been reading Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, and I am past half the book. I have reached the part where the narrator ponders on the infecting of people to others. There is a question of whether infected people intentionally spread the illness, they are subconscious about it or they do not mean to infect people but it just happens. The narrator thinks about what may run in the people's minds to be spreading the illness as if they want their kind to perish with them. It was also the part where the narrator questions again the shutting of houses calling it the "subject of discontent" (Defoe, 1904).
There is something that has caught my attention. There is a part where the passing of a comet is being narrated. In the narration, superstitious beliefs are discussed by the female elderly. The narrator, though, finds their beliefs questionable because he thinks that the earth has its natural phenomenon. The narrator asks "how far the People were really overcome with Delusions; and as they had a Notion of Approach of a Visitation, all their Predictions run upon a most dreadful Plague..." referring to the comet which the people believe is an omen (Dofoe, 1904). I am amazed by how the narrator has his faith in God but still believes in the natural dynamics on earth. Despite recognizing God's existence, the narrator refuses to claim superstitious beliefs on things that can be explained by science and are naturall...