Disease as a metaphor

“Disease as a metaphor” (1978) is an essay Susan Sontag, in which she tries to demistify cancer, exposing myths and metaphors surrounding this disease. The topic of work is not physical pain as such, but the use of the disease as a figure of speech. Sontag claims that cancer is neither a curse nor punishment, it is just a disease (which can be cured) Ten years later, with an outbreak of new stigmatized disease, abundant mystification and punitive metaphors, there was a continuation to the “illness ...” - “AIDS and its metaphor” (1989) - an essay that expands the field of research before AIDS pandemic. This book presents both works in which Sontag shows that the disease is not a metaphor and that the most honest approach to illness, as well as the most healthy way to get sick is to try to completely abandon metaphorical thinking