PEST

Do you know a book called, “The Pest” (The title might be “The Journal of the Plague Year, 1722)? Daniel Defoe who was a very famous English writer wrote the book. I read the book to write a paper for my History of English Literature class. Of course I read it in Japanese, and it was sometimes difficult to understand even in Japanese. It took me very very long time to read. I couldn’t read all of it, but it was good for me to have a chance to read one of historically famous book. Also, I hadn’t heard about the ill, plague, so I was very surprised to know that so many people had dead because of plague in 14 century in the Europe. The book is about the surroundings of London when plague struck London, and what Defoe saw and experienced were written. Plague is also known as Black Death because the skin color turns to black!


Some people got out of London and stayed in the country side. Defoe was thinking if he should get out of London, too, but he didn’t because he had his job there. That’s why he stayed there and experienced many weird things. In the city, sometimes the many people in London say that they saw a ghost in the city. Not only one person, but many people who were there said that they can see it, too. Defoe can’t see anything like people saying, and people thought Defoe was strange. It was not just one time. He sometimes experienced that. Also many people were depending on the fortunetelling, and not really nice doctor sold drugs which has no effects with very high price.


The number of the people with plague increases, and government said not to go out to people who are with Plague, and put a watcher in front of the house. Sometimes the people with plague used violence to the watcher. The city was wasted by the illness. Then they killed their pets, too. I remember the resent news about KOTEIEKI. They killed many cows. Isn’t it similar?
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Anyway, it wasn’t really interesting book for me, but it helped me to know many things. (369 words)