The Plague

First we must describe the plague. Though it's not human nor a concrete object, it still affects the characters in this book as a ghost does the residents of a haunted house.

The plague is unbiased; it attacks rich and poor, black and white, and male and female. It is elusive in more ways than one; it can't be well defined, so no one can really fight it because they don't know what it is. Also, it can't be caught and contained. No one knows when and where it will strike next because it has no bounds. The plague is silent and invisible as well; there is no audible or visible signal that goes off when it hits, making it even harder to detect.

The last, if not most important, characteristic of the plague is that it is fatal. Those who come into contact with it have almost no chance of survival. The combination of these traits is what causes the reactions of the people in the story - the unbiased, elusive, invisible, silent nature of the deadly disease creates emotions of every sort among the characters. And this is what makes the story interesting: because the plague is not really living and is no real being, the characters act the way they do in response to their own primal natures.