Overcoming The Negative Social Stigma of Cancer

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Recommended: Effect of prejudice and discrimination in society

Audre Lorde and Susan Sontag’s personal experience with cancer is depicted in their books with great detail; both describe obstacles those facing terminal illnesses must endure. Terminal disease distributes anxiety and fear among those facing death and it also carries social stigmas. Social stigmas placed on individuals diagnosed with terminal diseases are negative connotations or perceptions bestowed upon the terminally ill for bearing characteristics for which they are deemed different than the expected social norms. Both books outline the fear and uncertainty the terminally ill face daily. Lorde’s and Sontag’s purpose was to liberate those with cancer from silence and mystery. They felt it was necessary to give cancer a different perspective. The purpose of this paper is to compare how Susan Sontag’s Illness as a Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, and Audrey Lorde’s The Caner Journals, denounce society from metaphoric thinking.

Susan Sontag (1978) states “one cannot think without metaphors” (p. 93), metaphors have been traced back to the French Revolution. So, why is society so eager to impose metaphoric thinking towards illness and health? Sontag states “metaphors imposed on illness are so much a vehicle for the insufficiencies of this culture” (p.87), which why society views AIDS as a “plague”, there is a stigma associated with having AIDS, mostly because society associates AIDS with homosexuality. Some feel AIDS is a punishment for those who chose not to conform with “Gods” rules. Truth is, society is undereducated about AIDS and the metaphors infer society’s ignorance about how AIDS is transmitted and its failure to get acquainted. AIDS is widely viewed today such as cancer was in the 1970’s. During Sontag’s experience...

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...0’s cancer mortality rates have dramatically decreased from 10% to over 80% for leukemia. Overall decline in mortality for cancer was nearly 54% from 1978 to 2008 (National Cancer Institute, 2011). Decrease in mortality rates are due to improvements in cancer treatments. Recent advances in treatments are due to aggressive cancer therapies and collaboration of findings from clinical trials. More than 80 percent of patients are expected to be long term cancer survivors (National Cancer Institute, 2011).

Works Cited

Lorde, A. (1980). The cancer journals: special edition. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books

National Cancer Institute (2011). Surveillance epidemiology and end results. Cancer statistics. Retrieved from http://seer.cancer.gov/faststats/selections.php?#output

Sontag, S. (1978). Illness as metaphor and aids and its metaphors. New York, NY: Anchor Books

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