Susan Sontag was born January 16, 1933 and died December 28, 2004. She was a patient suffering from Leukemia. Her father died of Tuberculosis (TB). She focused her work on cultural attitudes on illnesses. She wrote Illness as Metaphor in 1986. She attempts to speak with pathos primarily at audiences who use metaphors as illnesses.
Sontag argues that metaphors help us understand illnesses, but can only go so far. She uses TB and cancer as her examples. TB at the time was equivalent to the cancer-scare of her time or AIDs in modern era (7). Now the prevalent disease is cancer. We did not know the etiology of the TB disease back then, and we attempted to quarantine it. After advent of technological innovations, we soon found out the source of TB. In today’s society certain information is refrained from being disclosed to the patients – the methodology of disclosing information varies from country to country. The reason behind this was because it was thought to have had an indirect pernicious effect on the patients – it may have caused premature death. The metaphors of the illnesses provide some “horror” account for the patients. The patients were left to think of cancer (and previously TB) as “ill-omened, repugnant to the senses” (7). In other words, there were some sentimental values for these patients that the word cancer delineates a horrible feeling.
However, she’s not saying that these metaphors are all bad. She provides us with many comparing and contrasting metaphors to help describe both TB and cancer. She attempts to “aestheticize” both TB and cancer; and realizes cancer, with our current understanding of technology, cannot be “aestheticized” (20). She illustrates this by suggesting “Cancer is rare and still scandalous subject for poetry; and it seems unimaginable to aestheticize the disease” (20). She emphasizes that in no way can cancer be beautified like TB. She illustrates one of many examples by describing a patient’s body with TB as becoming “consumed”, or “burned up” or experiencing a sudden spurt of energy through his/her last days of life; as opposed to a cancer patient’s body becoming “shrivel(ed)”, dying a slow painful death (14). In addition, she provided many positive connotations geared towards TB, but many negative connotations geared toward cancer. Positive metaphors could hardly characterize cancer. Moreover, Sontag addresses how TB and Cancer were also viewed as a “passion for love”. Again, the connotations of this metaphor points to TB as “too much passion”, the positive, and points to cancer as the complete opposite, “insufficient passion”, the negative (20-21). Using metaphors in certain situations help us better understand the diseases and where our current information is at in current society.
Works Cited:
Sontag, Susan. “Chapters 1-3.” Illness as Metaphor. New York: Picador, 1977. Print. 5-26,.
I am confused as to what Sontag means when she is referring TB to positive connotations and cancer to negative connotations. If TB was considered to be the AIDS of early 1900's then how could there be positive metaphors associated with the disease? Also when you say that the patients where left to think of the disease as "omened, and repugnant to the senses," then wouldn't this contradict the idea that TB is beautified and cancer is seen as something of the opposite?
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, I should have clarified on what I thought Sontag meant. During Sontag's era, it was cancer that was prevalent and malevolent. TB in Sontag's era was not, but it was before her time, prehistorically. With the advent of technology, TB's etiology was soon discovered and beautified because it could be treated. To be considered "positive" and "negative, one would have to place one word in reference with the other. For example, AIDS is prevalent today, even though I don't one could say it is more prevalent than cancer. Let's just assume AIDS is more prevalent than cancer by a longshot because we found the "cure" for cancer (not true). Cancer would be displayed "positively" in juxtaposition with AIDS because it would be nothing compared to AIDS. So in context, this is what I thought Sontag meant when she "beautified" TB and "horrified" cancer. This should also attempt to explain the "omened, and repugnant to the senses". Prehistorically, TB was thought of as "omened, and repugnant to the senses"; that's why it was prevalent.
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