A Journal Of The Plague Year

“[T]hese Disappointments must have something in them extraordinary; and I ought to consider whether it did not evidently point out, or intimate to me, that it was the Will of Heaven I should not go.” 

After facing several delays and obstacles to leaving London, the narrator begins to believe that they are messages from God. While the narrator is very judgmental of other Londoners’ beliefs in dreams and signs, he does not hesitate to interpret the events of his own life as signs, despite his brother’s protestations. 

“The Apprehensions of the People, were likewise strangely encreas’d by the Error of the Times; in which, I think, the People from what Principle I cannot imagine, were more adicted [sic] to Prophesies, and Astrological Conjurations, Dreams, and Old Wives Tales, than ever they were before or sense.”

The narrator notes that, at the beginning of the plague, superstition, and a belief in the supernatural is on the rise. He claims he “cannot imagine” why people are looking for signs at this time, although he himself is looking for signs from God. This passage also demonstrates Defoe’s general style: long sentences divided by semicolons.

“With what blind, absurd, and ridiculous Stuff, these Oracles of the Devil pleas’d and satisfy’d the People, I really know not, but certain it is, that innumerable Attendants crouded about their Doors every Day; […] there was no Remedy for it, till the Plague itself put an End to it all.” 

The narrator criticizes the purveyors of dreams and signs, associating them with the devil. While he has some criticism for people’s gullibility, he believes that those who take advantage of the poor are truly evil. He compares their wares to a “sickness” that, just like the plague, needs a remedy.