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Marc Horowitz \\
21.512
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\large Reactions to ``Illness as Metaphor''
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In Susan Sontag's essay, ``Illness as Metaphor'', she gives many
examples of how cultures as old as Ancient Rome have used illnesses as
metaphors for societal issues and problems.  My primary reaction is
that of a scientist.  Namely, that these societies in many cases
placed meanings in disease which were often anti-causal, or unrelated.
Society creates an image that a weak ``life force'' brings about
tuberculosis, or that living in a rigid manner causes cancer, while in
the former case, it is the opposite, and in the second case, there is
little relation.  Although this is not true, before the causes and
treatments of TB and cancer were known, these views had enough popular
support that they were useful as metaphors.  This is unfortunate, as
this would cause people to have views of people infected by
tuberculosis or cancer which were not at all grounded in fact.

One point which I did not understand in the essay was that of the
relationship of emotional sensitivity to tuberculosis.  I do not
understand where this relationship comes from, especially since
observation, even in the eighteenth century, would seem to make this
relationship seem awkward.  Not all people with TB would be sensitive,
caring people.  But this view was treated as ``scientific''.  Today,
we can at most call it metaphor, since we know that these are not
facts.  There is no causal relation between sensitivity and TB.

Besides using illness as a metaphor for certain types of individual
behavior, the other use of illness as metaphor in society is to
compare disagreeable societal conditions to disagreeable individual
diseases, removing the individual from the disease.  As disease (and
death) frighten people, so would anything equated with ``a cancer'' or
``a tumor''.  Sontag claims that this comparison, like the personal
comparisons above, is a ``cheap shot'', that it is at best a limited
comparison.  Although I agree that use of terms like ``cancer'' to
describe a problem causes an immediate response which may be
unwarranted (such as Hitler's describing of Jews as a cancer), this is
not always the case.  A cancer in a person is an unwanted growth, but
one which is part of the body, diffcult to control or cure without
causing damage to the carrier.  A deeply rooted societal problem is
very similar.  A problem such as discrimination or racism is often so
deeply rooted that it cannot be removed through normal law
enforcement, since that would involve eliminating large segments of
the population.  It must be slowly treated, and it can bring about the
downfall of a society.

After reading the essay, I see some of Sontag's points, but I fail to
see what direction the essay was going in.  It seemed to lack a
coherent thesis, but rather spent most of the time citing examples of
metaphor in the literature, to what end I am not sure.

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