Professor Hunter
Freshman English II
29 May 2014
The Black Death
In Barbara Tuchman’s work titled “This is the End of the World: The Black Death”, she describes the devastating impact the bubonic plague had on mid-fourteenth century society, economy, and religion. The bubonic plague was a vicious fast spreading terminal disease for which there was no known prevention or cure. The author graphically describes the symptoms of the plague, the most characteristic being the foul odor, severe pain and necrotic swollen lymph nodes (1). Contracted either by contact or airborne transmission, once acquired the victim would die within a very short time period (1).
Tuchman depicts how the bubonic plague ravaged entire towns and countries