Victories Never Last

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The current pandemic's end remains uncertain, as do the enduring narratives it will inspire. However, insights can be gleaned from writers who faced past plagues. Robert Zaretsky, a volunteer in a Texas nursing home during Covid-19, reflects on his experiences with the residents, many of whom faced isolation and loss. He intertwines his observations with the writings of six significant authors who lived through their own plague crises: Thucydides, Marcus Aurelius, Michel de Montaigne, Daniel Defoe, Mary Shelley, and Albert Camus. Each of these figures encountered mass mortality directly. Thucydides documented the Athenian plague in his History of the Peloponnesian War, while Marcus Aurelius ruled during the Antonine Plague. Montaigne's essays were shaped by his time as Bordeaux's mayor during the bubonic plague, and Defoe's Journal of a Plague Year influenced both Shelley’s The Last Man and Camus’s The Plague. Zaretsky skillfully combines accessible discussions of these authors with his personal narrative of the tragedy unfolding in his nursing home, marked by chronic loneliness and the deaths of residents he cared for. The result is a powerful testament to the enduring impact of literature in times of crisis.