This article examines the mechanisms the characters as well as the text apply in response to a traumatic childhood experience: the destruction of the symbiotic unity of the Ego and the world. The walk the child and grandfather take together affirms this split reality as the characteristic order of things when referring to central anthropological moments: the erect posture of man, speech, work, learning and memory. According to my thesis, the plague story serves to internalise the inaccessible catastrophe at the same time: Following the model of tragedy, the plague story aims at immunising the listener by vaccinating them narratively.