Part 2: Chapter 6 Summary

Following Father Paneloux's sermon, a heat wave sets in, which is followed by a dramatic increase in the number of victims. The townspeople are very discouraged. People are responding to the pain of the victims with either curiosity or sympathy at first, but soon it becomes so commonplace that they do not respond at all. In the past, summer had been a welcome season with the sea at hand for swimming, but even that was closed because of the plague. The radio is now reporting a hundred or more deaths a day.

Tarrou records that M. Othon, the magistrate, brought his two children to a café one evening without his wife, who was quarantined because she had nursed her mother, who died of the plague. The father's policeman role is not left at the office but dictates how he deals with...