Metaphors: Demons in Society Draft

From a young age, people use metaphors to describe the unfamiliar. By offering a basis of comparison, people are able to use information they already possess to familiarize themselves with something foreign. This can prove to be helpful, as one is able to broaden their horizon of knowledge without coming in direct contact with what is being described, but this mode of creating correlations can also have a negative effect on someone’s perception and foundation of knowledge. This negative effect can be seen in the way people identify and address certain illnesses as illustrated in Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. In this article Sontag exposes readers to a variety of metaphors created about illnesses and describes how these metaphors not only affected the victims of these illnesses but how it affected society’s view and response to these illnesses. However, Sontag also addresses how these metaphors change due to the time period, medical advancements, and societal values and also how these metaphors differ between different illnesses. Throughout Sontag’s article there are several examples of these metaphors that can be compared to another illness’s metaphor and its effect on the viewpoint society had of the illness. Two illnesses we can use for comparison in regard to Sontag’s writing and an outside reference are cancer and AIDS/HIV respectively. Since cancer’s metaphor of being a demonic pregnancy and AIDS/HIV’s metaphor of being gay cancer both caused health care professionals to assume that cancer is an invincible force that is caused by a deficiency of will in the sufferer and the metaphors of both these illnesses prevented adequate treatment from being administered and placed stereotypes upon the victims of the illnesses, Sontag’s metaphor of cancer being a demonic pregnancy extends the metaphor of AIDS/HIV being a gay cancer.

In order to understand the relationship between two metaphors and their meanings, it is important to understand the mechanics of a metaphor and how it works in language. A metaphor is a direct comparison that does not utilize the words “like” or “as”. In literature, this literary device is used to build a readers’ knowledge on an unfamiliar topic/object by using something that they are familiar with. This can help readers create a better image of what an author is trying to portray in their writing and put things in perspective. An example of a helpful metaphor is, “Conscience is a man’s compass.” By Vincent Van Gogh. In this metaphor we have a word with a meaning that readers may be unsure of: conscience. And following this word we have a word with a basic meaning that most people would be not only familiar with but have a good understanding of: compass. As a reader, one would identify that a compass is something that leads you in the correct direction; it is a navigating tool. Therefore, we can build an assumption that conscience is something that leads people in the right direction. This metaphor is direct and builds the correct idea in the readers mind. On the other hand, this can also work to create false stereotypes and bias perceptions by using unrealistic comparisons or using comparative items that people may already have a bias perception on, which will then translate to the object that is being compared to it. An example of this is from Sontag’s article, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. In this article, Sontag brings up the metaphor, “Cancer is a demonic pregnancy. “ In this case the unknown subject is cancer. During the time period when this metaphor emerged, which dates back to the late 17^th and 18^th century, where Cancer was almost a complete mystery. All people knew was that it was a disease that came and killed. The only “scientific” knowledge that was collected was based on people’s symptoms which is where the metaphors of this time period stemmed from. On the opposing end, demonic and pregnancy are the comparative words that readers will be able to identify and understand. Going through each word, demonic can be described as an adjective with a negative connotation. Things that come to mind when thinking of demonic are a supernatural nature such as possession and an invisible force, antagonistic, uncontrollable, deficiency of will, and moral equivalencies such as: the devil, evil, and hell which correspond to a “bad” person. As for pregnancy, we can think of a living creature inside a womb, a swollen belly, a woman, sickness that includes: swollen feet, nausea, and stomach pains, and even go as far as thinking of a parasite that sucks the life out of you from the inside out. Combining these two concepts, one would derive that cancer is an uncontrollable parasitic creature that possess you, feeds on you from the inside out, and manifested from the evils that was performed by the victim throughout their life. In Sontag’s article there is an excerpt from Alice James’ journal which reads,” …this unholy granite substance in my breast…but this lump is alive, a fetus with its own will.” Of course, this representation of Cancer is incorrect as Cancer is actually defined as an organic disease in which abnormal cells divide uncontrollably and destroys body tissues. In addition, it is not caused by sinning but by genetic and environmental factors that are natural occurrences. However, despite the metaphor being so misleading, people did not have access to the information to make them think otherwise, therefore, these kinds of metaphor had a huge impact on society and their perception of the unknowns like cancer. In the case of the cancer metaphor previously mentioned, people treated those with cancer as though they had no hope of survival. Doctors wouldn’t even try to offer treatment as it was just assumed that there was no cure. Cancer also became a taboo thing to discuss and it was thought that those who developed cancer had sinned and were not people of any morals and therefore the sickness was either kept secret or people who simply ignore those with the disease. On the opposing side of the disease, these incorrect comparisons also caused a significant impact on those who had the disease. These people often lived in solitude and became depressed as they waited to die, as they were falsely under the impression that they would never be cured of the “demonic parasite” inside of them. These metaphors are what led to many misconceptions in the past and continue to today in regard to diseases that we have limited information about. These metaphors however, had a huge influence on societies idea of these diseases, how those with the disease were treated, and how health professionals went about treating the disease. In particular, a metaphor that played just as large a role on society’s perception was a metaphor about AIDS/HIV.

In the 1980s, the immergence of HIV/AIDS in gay men sparked a metaphor that would have a lasting effect on society and particularly on the LGBTQ community for years to come after. Here we have a similar circumstance to the emergence of Cancer. Both diseases appeared suddenly out of nowhere and both diseases were causing definite death among those that developed/caught the disease. The metaphor that arose for HIV/AIDS was that it was gay cancer. From this metaphor we can deduce that HIV/AIDS was perceived as a disease that will kill you from the inside out, a disease without much hope for survival, and a disease that only affects the gay community which adds a whole other dimension to how society viewed the disease. Due to the time period when this metaphor emerged, being gay was looked at as being taboo, immoral, and dirty. Most people who practiced their sexuality at the time either kept it secret or were outcasted by society. All these traits that followed the homosexual term was applied to AIDS/HIV. Therefore, those who developed the disease were automatically thought to be a gay male and you were not, you did not have AIDS/HIV at the time. If you did not fit into what they believed to be the norm, they assumed you had a different disease and you were turned away. These two examples of metaphors turning illnesses into something unrealistic and driving society away as a result illuminates the reality of what metaphors can do to the image of an illness and the perception of that illness from society thereafter. The two exhibit the same results on society despite the slight variations the illnesses have in terms of the effects of the actual diseases directly, not the effects of their metaphors.

In conclusion, Sontag’s metaphor about cancer extended the metaphor about AIDS/HIV because it was able to show how a disease with a different background, culture, and overall effect on society, went along the same lines of being misinterpreted and perceived in an incorrect light, which hindered the extent of work that health professionals could provide for the patient and how society saw the patient with the illness. With both the cancer and the AIDS/HIV metaphors, people with the disease were left isolated and without support while society did their best to shun them and trap them in their disease, as in both cases, the metaphors cause the diseases to look like they were caused by flaws in one’s character, the act of committing sins, and/or going against societal norms. In reality, both diseases are usually developed by chance, as AIDS/HIV was something people weren’t being conscious of in the beginning and cancer is something that may just be caused by a random miscoding in one’s DNA. Both of these metaphors can be used to teach others that metaphors can only be helpful if they indicate the correct facts, and the only way to know if something is completely factual is to continue researching the topic and asking questions. Both of the metaphors of these diseases cause research to cease and left many open-ended questions to be answered by yet another metaphor that is more than likely to also be incorrect. The incorrect metaphor of both these diseases dissipated when the real facts were presented and actual metaphors with correct comparisons could replace the old incorrect ones. Metaphors in medicine can be used to reflect how gullible people can be as a result of being unable to understand something. It is very clear, that misinterpretation that occur with metaphors, just as they did with cancer and AIDS/HIV, are a result of humans being unable to allow themselves to not know something. IT shows that we would rather put a filler in the place of the actual knowledge while we search for answers instead of being content with productive research taking place and waiting for viable results that cannot be refuted or misunderstood. All in all, I hope that I can conduct research that will eliminate some of the lingering metaphors that are still present in medicine today. It is my belief that someone should not only be informed of what is happening to their body a hundred percent of the time but should also have the correct facts feeding their opinions, and if they have to wait to understand, it’s better to know there is researching being down than creating false comparisons that lead you to your own misery and demise. Metaphors are power tools in literature, and when applied to the medical field, it is the responsibility of healthcare providers to pick and choose which metaphors are actually informative and which are there as fillers in order to protect our patients.

 

Personal Agenda for this essay:

• Add outside sources to prove points made
• Revise third paragraph
• Add a more distinct section of direct comparison
• Works Cited Page