The plague chapter focuses on a few different aspects of plagues and other diseases. The beginning is a personal anecdote about John not being able to get his antidepressant medicine. The chapter then shifts into a focus on the history of plagues and the parallels between older plagues such as the black death and modern day Covid-19. This middle part is the main focus of the chapter. My favorite section was the opening line, where John proclaims, “In 2020, I read about nothing except pandemics. We often hear that we live in unprecedented times. But what worries me is that these times actually feel quite precedent” ( Green 206). I heard so many times over the past few years that we were living in unprecedented times so this quote really hit home for me.The end focuses on our response to these plagues as a society.
Green was inspired to write this topic because he is calling us to have a better reaction to these plagues. He knows that placing all the blame on minority or immigrant groups is never the answer. He recognized how it happened hundreds of years ago and unfortunately also presently.
This chapter does help Green to live a life of significance, and he is inspiring us to be better. Any chapter that is asking us to live better, more meaningful lives is significant to some degree. We should also take away that history repeats itself and if we look back at how we poorly handled past situations it can help us to better handle future ones.
I liked the chapter and topic. It brought up aspects of covid and other plagues that I had never really considered before. I would give this chapter three stars. It was definitely not my favorite one but an important one nonetheless.