Written after the horrendous events that happened in London and published in 1722, Defoe’s novel presents the Great Plague that struck London in 1665, from a character’s point of view. First person narration makes this fictional writing seem verisimilar to most of the readers who know nothing about Defoe.

Born in 1660, Daniel Defoe was 5 years old when the plague reached London. Therefore it is thought that the novel has the journals of his uncle as a starting point. It is also worth mentioning the fact that he was born in the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate, in London, one of the worst hit areas by the plague and by the fire afterwards. So his childhood was inevitably influenced by these events that became the subjects of his future works.

The book starts abruptly with statistics, involving weekly death counts. He showed us, even from the beginning, how things were about to get worse in the city that wasn’t prepared for the calamity that was sitting at their doorstep. Strong and powerful images greet us with an uncomfortable, apocalyptic image: that of thousands of people fleeing from London, to take refuge in the countryside. Hordes of people left while they still could, leaving behind those who were poor or didn’t have relatives, nor friends outside London. Although the weekly death counts were showing a significant increase in the number of deaths, people were not instructed on how to behave for the plague not to manifest itself with such intensity…as it did afterwards.

The narrator takes the difficult decision of remaining in the infested city, discrediting his brother’s requests of joining him in his journey to safety, outside London. Thus, he takes some measures in order to avoid getting ill, although every reader would tend to think that he was lucky to escape alive.

The author manages to maintain the reader’s attention upon the content using well thought storytelling strategies, such as partitioning the story not chronologically, but rather thematically. Maybe this story was somewhat dull when it was published, but this doesn’t apply now, since we haven’t been confronted with such a large scale disaster. While reading the book, the powerful images created by the impeccable narration help us imagine and sometimes feel the horrors endured by those poor people who didn’t ask for any disease to invade them. Throughout the story we, as readers, are bombarded with countless fireworks that explode and leave a mark in our own thoughts, and the show, although powerful is by far one of the most dark and sad in history. The viciousness of the plague is immortalized by Defoe using many stories to picture the immense tragedy of those times: desperate people committing suicide just to escape the horrendous pains caused by the illness, entire families that were literally decimated by the invisible foe, people dropping dead in the middle of the street and many other similar events. Defoe also approaches the subject of Christianity in those difficult times: his character witnessed incredible acts of faith demonstrated even in the most difficult of situations.

The book analyses many more aspects regarding the authorities’ reactions, people’s way of living, the situation of the poor in comparison with the richer citizens who had the possibility of fleeing, and if not doing so their financial situation didn’t matter at all in the common burial places, etc.

I would conclude that this is a good book, although it has some flaws regarding the accuracy of the actual events. But what makes it great is the ability of portraying the difficult times London had to endure, concentrating mainly on the suffering and agony of people who found themselves victims of the plague in one way or another. Difficult moments truly test our abilities, draining our hope, faith, will and sanity, stressing out our capacities to the limits. A tragedy is truly complete not only when the numbers are high, but when the suffering applies to all in such an equal and non-discriminatory way.