Susan Sontag Metaphors

An excerpt from Susan Sontag’s book Illness opens a reader up to a realization that metphors used in relation to illness are the “ill prejudiced by the lurid metphors with which it has been landscaped”. Sontag’s attitude towards metaphors comes from her strong understanding of how they are just a made up illusion to capture an audience. Metaphors are just a made up illusion to capture an audience because they elude the seriousness of a true illness and dishonor it does to an illness. Sontag has a strong animosity toward the use of metaphors. She believes they elude the seriousness of a true illness. The “punitive or sentimental fantasies concocted” about the metaphors are the Lucifer of an illness itself. Words included in the piece as followed …show more content…
She does this because she wants to explain how metaphoric lingo “blows up” or over exaggerates the situation and in her case illness. Therefore, to begin her book, Sontag uses a metaphor. She exclaims, “Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. . . [and] sooner or later . . . is obliged to . . . identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”, this other place is simply a place of the sick. The metaphor puts this idea in one’s head that illness is out for everyone and its mission is to take them down and rule them when really the “kingdom of the sick” may only be a two day cold. Consequently, these metaphors also create “stereotypes of national character” where the sick are labeled for what ails them. For example, when a student coughs in class a common remark is “You have Ebola!” which is just a stereotype on the illness itself: that if you are coughing you have Ebola. People that are found with illnesses such as cancer or AIDS are postulated of an infinite death, even though they may possibly be able to