A Journal of the Plague Year

Infer Review the narrator's description of the mass grave. What do details about the historical setting reveal about a possible theme, or message about life or human nature, in the text?

They had supposed this pit would have supplied them for a month or a more when they dug it, and some blamed the churchwardens for suffering such a frightful thing, telling them they were making preparations to bury the whole parish, and the like; but time made it appear the churchwardens knew the condition of the parish better than they did, for the pit being finished the 4th of September, I think, they began to bury in it the 6th, 40 and by the 20th, which was just two weeks, they had thrown into it 1,114 bodies when they were obliged to fill it up, the bodies being then come to lie within six feet of the surface.... It was about the 10th of September that my curiosity led, or rather drove, me to go and see this pit again, when there had been near 400 people buried in it; and I was not content to see it in the daytime, as I had done before, for then there would have been nothing to have been seen but the loose earth; for all the bodies that were thrown in were immediately covered with earth were by those they called the buriers, which at other times were called bearers; but I resolved to go in the night and see some of them thrown in.

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In context, the references to the mass grave illustrate how common death and fear became.... bodies were thrown into the pit, respect for the dead was eliminated by fear, and the extent of death is addressed by how quickly the pit is filled.... how quickly the people of the parish were succumbing to the plague.

Source(s)

A Journal of the Plague Year