Tarrou: The Plague's Only Hero In "The Plague", Albert Camus pits humanity against an unstoppable force of nature: the bubonic plague. He creates a variety of characters who all deal with the plague in their own way, but only Tarrou acts heroically. Rieux comes close to a hero, but he fights the plague because it's expected of him and shows indifference at the end of the book. Besides Rieux and Tarrou, none of the other characters show any heroism or resistance to the plague, except the sanitation squad under Tarrou. Through Tarrou alone, Camus asks the reader how to heroically deal with death. Tarrou also provides an example of heroes who get crushed by fate for defiance.