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I viewed the ending as a call to make the most of the present. You never know when the rats are going to come again, so live and do what you want to do now before your time is up. Really, life itself is a bit of a plague because everyone is going to die eventually and unpredictably. When Dr. Rieux goes to see his asthma patient with the peas, the man comments, “You’d almost think they expected to be given medals for it [the plague]. But what does that mean-‘plague’? Just life, no more than that.”[p.307]

I think the reason that Thomas Kurton, in “Generosity,” had so much trouble with Camus’ ending is because Kurton wanted to control life through discovering genes that result in predictable outcomes. As with the plague, and despite our efforts to the contrary, life isn’t always predictable and controlled.