Writing in the Age of AIDS

Writing in the Age of AIDS

Introduction

Susan Sontag's publication, "AIDS and Its Metaphors" is a thorough and detailed account capturing the essence of the well known disease. She starts off by comparing two diseases tuberculosis and cancer with death, like contracting either of these diseases leads to certain death. She does a commendable job of explaining how it feels to live with such diseases, and people's reaction to their illness. It is the same as believing that a doctor is the root of evil, that they were fine until the doctor pronounced them sick. Therefore, not knowing about their illness enables people to go on with their lives with the same continuous mind frame, and it is this reason only why cancer and TB patients were not informed about their conditions. As the author has said in her text, there is a strong "conviction" about people who are dying, as they should be “best spared the news that they are dying" (Sontag, 2001).

Discussion

Sontag's literature on cancer and tuberculosis may be related to include AIDS as well. In Gamson's article, the author claims that people are afraid of situations and conditions that they do not fully understand. Therefore, the protesters' against the ACT UP's demonstrations are afraid to confront the reality of AIDS as a killer disease, in the same way that people closest to the patients are afraid facing them as they do not understand these diseases. When there is not sufficient public awareness, people make uninformed decisions about the diseases, like many are afraid that they might catch the disease simply by knowing or meeting with someone who is suffering from it. Sontag clearly mentions how people manage to misunderstand or misinterpret subjects or topics which are beyond the scope of their understanding by applying sufficient sarcasm within her writing style. Due to such public scandal, people affected by these illnesses "tend to be particularly prim, if not outright guarded, about their disease" (Gamson, 2003). Gamson provides ample proof of the thought processes of the public in his article quiet effectively.

Sontag's quote, "The purpose of my book was to calm the imagination, not to incite it. Not to confer meaning which is the traditional purpose of literary endeavor, but to deprive something of meaning: to apply that quixotic, highly polemical strategy, “against interpretation” to the real world this time" (Sontag, 2001) is meant to inform her readers that the purpose of her book was to make redundant metaphors which are commonly used to describe cancer and such diseases and to clear the misconception that cancer does not always claim the lives of its victims, as is the common belief. Sontag strongly believed that these metaphors and myths are the real 'disease' which kills.

When studying figurative language, people come to realize the full meaning of metaphors which enables them to fully understand the text. A metaphor is something which connects two seemingly unrelated things based upon a strong comparison. For example, the words 'cancer is like a ...