People choose to ignore tragedy because it's an unwanted reminder of their own mortality. They are reminded that, no matter who they are, no matter what their occupation, no one is able to "cheat" death. After the tragedy, they cannot escape the stories that emerge from that fateful day. The backstory of the victims suddenly becomes the central focus of every news channel on television as their pictures pop up on the screen. A photo of a short, brown-haired girl with two missing teeth smiling up at the camera -- nine-year-old Becky Sue who wanted to become a doctor when she grew up. John Smith: a tall, slightly-balding, devoted father of three, who liked to build birdhouses in his spare time and volunteered at a soup kitchen two saturdays a month. The news channels aim their melancholy stories to pull at the heartstrings of their viewers.
People ignore tragedy because they just can't face the truth. They would rather live an ignorant, happy life than deal with life's struggles. The people in The Plague are choosing not to call this epidemic a plague because once they put a name to that epidemic, it becomes a real tragedy. Everyone has heard the horror stories of the mass deaths from the other plagues, so nobody wants to think that they must also face this as well. Going through tragedies is awful and sometimes, people just can't deal with it. The only way they know how to get through it is to ignore it. Ignorance is bliss especially in the face of a tragedy.
