As your read Susan Sontag’s essay “Illness as Metaphor,” consider the following questions as you prepare for class:
• In the introduction to this essay, Susan Sontag writes, “It is toward an elucidation of those metaphors, and a liberation from them, that I dedicate this inquiry.” What kind of knowledge about illness does Sontag’s inquiry reflect and create? What kind of liberation does is offer us? Do you think this liberation can be achieved through text alone?
• How does thinking of illness—either TB or cancer—as a metaphor do harm? (Either for people living with such diseases or for those who are not?) Can you imagine ways in which such metaphors might not be harmful? How could such thinking empower people living with an illness or enhance our understanding of it?
• Which passage from the essay do you think is the most significant? Or the most provocative? Or the most interesting? Why?
Feel free to leave an initial impression here before class. Or, come prepared to discuss when we meet on Wednesday.
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