Beyond the physical manifestation of the disease, the plague profoundly affects the citizens of Oran socially and psychologically. The town's prolonged sequestering severely limits its citizens relationships with outsiders and each other by deteriorating everyone's imagination and memory. Initially, in the first stage of the plague, only the isolated people's imaginations were affected as it was difficult for them to imagine the loved ones they were cut off from, outside of the town. Eventually, after the more prolonged separation during the second stage of the plague, even the townspeople's memory diminishes (163-164). "Thus, too, they came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose" (66).
With this useless memory, and a depleted sense of hope, the townspeople become incapable of both friendship and love. That is, "they lived for the moment only. Indeed, the here and now had come to mean everything to them. For there is no denying that the plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship. Naturally enough, since love asks something of the future, and nothing was left us but a series of present moments" (165). Even in these "present moments" nobody was "capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity" because there were always little distractions (flies, itches, etc.) and diligent attention is required to really think of someone, especially with a diminished sense of memory and imagination.
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