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augusth0ts's review
4.0
Sontag presents a convincing argument for society to be more mindful of the metaphors we use that includes the eponymous illnesses or metaphors centered around war.
delasondas's review
3.0
It was intriguing to think about tuberculosis as a disease that afflicted those who felt too much who are simply overflowing in creativity and angst, but cancer as a disease of people who don't feel enough, who are eaten alive by their repressed emotions. I was impressed by Sontag's ability to cite the obscurest texts/reference (or at least super obscure to me). For instance, here is an example of one of her footnotes:
At times these arcane references overwhelmed me a bit, and I struggled a bit due to the subject feeling dated (we don't think of cancer in the same way in 2019 that we did in 1977), but I'm glad I read this.
"Godefroy's Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue francaise cites Bernard de Gordon's Pratiqum (1495): Tisis, c'est ung ulcere du polmon qui consume tout le corp."
At times these arcane references overwhelmed me a bit, and I struggled a bit due to the subject feeling dated (we don't think of cancer in the same way in 2019 that we did in 1977), but I'm glad I read this.
arliealizzi's review
5.0
This is so interesting, I can't believe it took me so long to get around to reading it.
I started reading it after a day and a half of having being shut in my room with a cold, not really seeing anyone and feeling kind of dramatic. And it was really soothing. The stuff about cancer as metaphor for middle class repression and emotional restraint made me think a lot about people I know with potentially fatal/terminal/incurable illnesses who have gone on the Gawler diet or similar; my mum and her partner are really into it and she once told me that "breast cancer is just something you never got off your chest".
I started reading it after a day and a half of having being shut in my room with a cold, not really seeing anyone and feeling kind of dramatic. And it was really soothing. The stuff about cancer as metaphor for middle class repression and emotional restraint made me think a lot about people I know with potentially fatal/terminal/incurable illnesses who have gone on the Gawler diet or similar; my mum and her partner are really into it and she once told me that "breast cancer is just something you never got off your chest".
jberry09's review
4.0
A fascinating and quick read exploring how we have transformed truly terrible diseases into metaphors, with the final argument that as we better understand a given disease, we see it as such rather than as some sort of symbol or revelation of an inner reality. She takes TB (from the romantic perspective) and Cancer (from the mid-twentieth century) as case examples and while medical and social perspectives have changed today, there are still glimmers remaining and the underlying insight is quite illustrative.
dngoldman's review
challenging
dark
informative
3.75
Illness as Metaphor is a 1978 work of critical theory by Susan Sontag, exploring the social construction of how we view disease. Diseases, like TB in the 19th century and cancer in the 20th century, share the feature that they are “treated as a mystery and acutely enough feared [that they] will be felt to be morally, if not literally, contagious.” These types of diseases become ciphers for the culture’s beliefs, fears, and moral judgments. Both TB and cancer served this purpose, reflecting differences in society as much in the illness itself. In the end, Sontag argues, the attitudes about disease are less about the illness and patient but societies at large. As such, the metaphors do little to help the patient either physically or by understanding the illness. The essay is insightful, particularly the difference between the romantic notions of TB and the warlike descriptions of cancer. Yet, the argument is very elastic, making too easy to consider illness for anything one perceives about society.
Their is a moral component to how we judge disease has changed of the years. In most ancient cultures, design is desease is a collective punishment, think the plagues in the Illiad, the Pelopenisian Wars, or the Bible. To the extent there is individual culpability it is how the person reacts to the difficulty. With Christianity thr idea of disease as punishment yielded the idea that a disease could be a particularly appropriate and just punishment. In the nineteenth century, the notion that the disease fits the patient's character, as the punishment fits the sinner, was replaced by the notion that it expresses character. It is a product of will. "
dngoldman's review against another edition
challenging
informative
3.75
Illness as Metaphor is a 1978 work of critical theory by Susan Sontag, exploring the social construction of how we view disease. Diseases, like TB in the 19th century and cancer in the 20th century, share the feature that they are “treated as a mystery and acutely enough feared [that they] will be felt to be morally, if not literally, contagious.” These types of diseases become ciphers for the culture’s beliefs, fears, and moral judgments. Both TB and cancer served this purpose, reflecting differences in society as much in the illness itself. In the end, Sontag argues, the attitudes about disease are less about the illness and patient but societies at large. As such, the metaphors do little to help the patient either physically or by understanding the illness. The essay is insightful, particularly the difference between the romantic notions of TB and the warlike descriptions of cancer. Yet, the argument is very elastic, making too easy to consider illness for anything one perceives about society.
yellowcloudintrousers's review
3.0
" 'Look at that poor Byron, how interesting he looks in dying.' Perhaps the main gift to sensibility made by the Romantics is not the aesthetics of cruelty and the beauty of the morbid (as Mario Praz suggested in his famous book), or even the demand for unlimited personal liberty, but the nihilistic and sentimental idea of "the interesting"."
"Sadness made one "interesting." It was a mark of refinement, of sensibility, to be sad."
"In the twentieth century, the repellent, harrowing disease that is made the index of a superior sensitivity, the vehicle of "spiritual" feelings and "critical" discontent, is insanity."
"A fitful strain of melancholy," Poe wrote, "will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful. " Depression is melancholy minus its charms."
"the happy man would not get plague
"Illness is interpreted as, basically, a psychological event, and people are encouraged to believe that they get sick because they (unconsciously) want to, and that they can cure themselves by the mobilization of will; that they can choose not to die of the disease."
"Sadness made one "interesting." It was a mark of refinement, of sensibility, to be sad."
"In the twentieth century, the repellent, harrowing disease that is made the index of a superior sensitivity, the vehicle of "spiritual" feelings and "critical" discontent, is insanity."
"A fitful strain of melancholy," Poe wrote, "will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful. " Depression is melancholy minus its charms."
"the happy man would not get plague
"Illness is interpreted as, basically, a psychological event, and people are encouraged to believe that they get sick because they (unconsciously) want to, and that they can cure themselves by the mobilization of will; that they can choose not to die of the disease."