After you have read at least 3 of the 5 chapters assigned from Susan Sontag's books—Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors—and have checked out the website for the Susan G. Komen "3 Day," comment below.
When clicking around on the Susan G. Komen 3 Day walk website, I ended up watching the video provided. The part of the video that intrigued me the most was at the end when the crowd of people held up their shoe. Curious, I started googling around to see if I could find the significance of it. At the end of the 60-mile journey there is a closing ceremony, where the shoes are lifted in the air. Lifting your shoe in the air is a symbol of honor to the survivors of breast cancer, to say, “I walked 60 miles for you.” I thought this was amazing. As the book by Susan Sontag illustrates, people with cancer often find themselves ostracized by friends, coworkers and even family at a time when they need them to most. The three-day walk is an occasion where all the negativity associated with cancer is shattered. On those three days, these women (and men) are honored as heroes. They are honored for enduring the chemotherapy and radiation. They are honored for never giving up and fighting cancer till they have won or for those who may not have won the battle but certainly tried. These survivors did not choose to be sick, cancer picked them, but they did not let it dictate their lives. It is a wonderful thing to honor these people, to recognize their struggle, bravery and most of all, their courage to persevere.
It was mind-blowing to see the effects of something as simple as a word can have on people. Karl Menninger noticed that just the word “cancer” is said to have killed his patients more quickly than their illness would have. I was shocked by the fact that doctors in France and Italy don’t tell a patient they have cancer, but just tell their families because they think the diagnosis will be intolerable to their patients. I understand the reasoning behind it, but I definitely would want to know if I had a life-threatening disease. I agree it would be depressing, but at least I would know what was wrong with me! I thought it was interesting to view disease as “nothing but a disguised manifestation of the power of love; and all disease is only love transformed.” I certainly have never thought of a disease as being “love transformed” because I don’t usually associate something that causes death as something stemming from love. I also have never thought of cancer as being “ a disease of insufficient passion, afflicting those who are sexually repressed, inhibited, unspontaneous, incapable of expressing anger.” I think it’s rather strange to label everyone who has cancer under this category because it is rather narrow for such a wide variety of people. I never even knew there was a category such as this associated with cancer. I thought it was an interesting and eye-opening perspective that military metaphors cause a stigma to be associated with a certain illness, and therefore we view the individual with the disease as guilty.
I agree with Lindsay when she speaks of how mind-blowing it was to know that some patients simply died faster when told they had cancer and heard that word. I could understand how someone would let themselves go and simply wait to die and get depressed form this disease. That is why so many people claim that to beat diseases such as cancer, will-power is definitely a factor, and I firmly believe that something inside the patient works harder to live. My cousin was diagnosed with Leukemia when she was 6 and is now 19 and cancer free for over 10 years. It was so sad to see the actual degeneration that the article talks about. I saw her get skinnier and lose her hair, and over time, she looked pretty bad. But eventually, the medicine and therapy worked and she is living a happy and healthy life! I Loved the susan G. Komen website, and I have participated in Relay for Life every year in my cousin's honor as well as some of my family members who have died form breast cancer. Cancer is definitely a scary thing and I agree that people can get shunned or treated differently when others find out they had cancer, and I think that is so sad because it is only a small part of who they are. They did not choose their sickness, like the article says, it does not exempt anyone, rich or poor, young or old. I think those who fight cancer are extremely brave simply because cancer can truly equal death.
In the reading assigned from Susan Sontag's books Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors I found what was said to be very interesting and different from the way I have seen people handle cancer. In chapter 1 the quote by John Donne from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, "We study health, and we deliberate upon our meats, and drink, and ayre, and exercises, and we hew and wee polish every stone, that goes to that building". I found this intriguing because I feel that people in this day think of health in these same terms. Looking at illnesses like TB and Caner as "implacable theft of life" is very true but I have seen people at first think that, then with support from their family and friends they find strength and more reason to fight their illness.
It was really interesting to read about how the common people, doctors, and writers thought about these diseases in the 18th to early 20th centuries. I was trying to remember the rhetorical strategy of keiros as I was reading but I would sometimes catch myself thinking in the context of how these diseases are viewed in the 21st century, which is in an obviously different way. I remember thinking how ridiculous it was to think that TB was a "disease of passion" but I also had to remind myself that at this time there was no knowledge of microorganisms. The comment that the author made comparing cardiac diseases with cancer was also interesting. There was nothing "shameful" or "obscene" about a heart attack like it was for cancer, but in our time heart disease is the number one killer in America and cancer is far below that. The metaphors tied to TB and to cancer were so completely different and would cause such different moral judgements that were normal at that time, but are completely unfair and wrong in the present. However, health being the basis of moral judgements still occurs in the present as we saw with the "Why Against Health" argument. I am happy to know that now in the 21st century, as much as cancer is still feared there are more efforts to spread awareness, to educate and inform, to promote preventive measures and to raise money for research. As seen in the Susan Sontag website for breast cancer, these cancer patients are no longer seen as they were in the centuries before, but are instead viewed as strong and inspirational fighters and heroes.
I agree with Nesa about the lack of technology and scientific knowledge that could have caused diseases like TB and cancer to be viewed and classified in a way that our generation finds so strange. Even Galen, the person who has contributed to medicine so greatly, believed that "melancholy women are more likely to get breast cancer that sanguine women" (53). It is amazing to know that although diseases were viewed so differently in the past, still so many cures were invented, and the works of great philosophers like Galen have become the cornerstone in medicine. I also found the last section of chapter 7, where it talks about death, interesting. It's stated that for those who live with no religious consolation and no sense of death, death can ultimately be considered a psychological phenomenon, and at the end, "there is the promise of a triumph over illness" (56).
When clicking around on the Susan G. Komen 3 Day walk website, I ended up watching the video provided. The part of the video that intrigued me the most was at the end when the crowd of people held up their shoe. Curious, I started googling around to see if I could find the significance of it. At the end of the 60-mile journey there is a closing ceremony, where the shoes are lifted in the air. Lifting your shoe in the air is a symbol of honor to the survivors of breast cancer, to say, “I walked 60 miles for you.” I thought this was amazing. As the book by Susan Sontag illustrates, people with cancer often find themselves ostracized by friends, coworkers and even family at a time when they need them to most. The three-day walk is an occasion where all the negativity associated with cancer is shattered. On those three days, these women (and men) are honored as heroes. They are honored for enduring the chemotherapy and radiation. They are honored for never giving up and fighting cancer till they have won or for those who may not have won the battle but certainly tried. These survivors did not choose to be sick, cancer picked them, but they did not let it dictate their lives. It is a wonderful thing to honor these people, to recognize their struggle, bravery and most of all, their courage to persevere.
ReplyDeleteIt was mind-blowing to see the effects of something as simple as a word can have on people. Karl Menninger noticed that just the word “cancer” is said to have killed his patients more quickly than their illness would have. I was shocked by the fact that doctors in France and Italy don’t tell a patient they have cancer, but just tell their families because they think the diagnosis will be intolerable to their patients. I understand the reasoning behind it, but I definitely would want to know if I had a life-threatening disease. I agree it would be depressing, but at least I would know what was wrong with me! I thought it was interesting to view disease as “nothing but a disguised manifestation of the power of love; and all disease is only love transformed.” I certainly have never thought of a disease as being “love transformed” because I don’t usually associate something that causes death as something stemming from love. I also have never thought of cancer as being “ a disease of insufficient passion, afflicting those who are sexually repressed, inhibited, unspontaneous, incapable of expressing anger.” I think it’s rather strange to label everyone who has cancer under this category because it is rather narrow for such a wide variety of people. I never even knew there was a category such as this associated with cancer. I thought it was an interesting and eye-opening perspective that military metaphors cause a stigma to be associated with a certain illness, and therefore we view the individual with the disease as guilty.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Lindsay when she speaks of how mind-blowing it was to know that some patients simply died faster when told they had cancer and heard that word. I could understand how someone would let themselves go and simply wait to die and get depressed form this disease. That is why so many people claim that to beat diseases such as cancer, will-power is definitely a factor, and I firmly believe that something inside the patient works harder to live. My cousin was diagnosed with Leukemia when she was 6 and is now 19 and cancer free for over 10 years. It was so sad to see the actual degeneration that the article talks about. I saw her get skinnier and lose her hair, and over time, she looked pretty bad. But eventually, the medicine and therapy worked and she is living a happy and healthy life! I Loved the susan G. Komen website, and I have participated in Relay for Life every year in my cousin's honor as well as some of my family members who have died form breast cancer. Cancer is definitely a scary thing and I agree that people can get shunned or treated differently when others find out they had cancer, and I think that is so sad because it is only a small part of who they are. They did not choose their sickness, like the article says, it does not exempt anyone, rich or poor, young or old. I think those who fight cancer are extremely brave simply because cancer can truly equal death.
ReplyDeleteIn the reading assigned from Susan Sontag's books Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors I found what was said to be very interesting and different from the way I have seen people handle cancer. In chapter 1 the quote by John Donne from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, "We study health, and we deliberate upon our meats, and drink, and ayre, and exercises, and we hew and wee polish every stone, that goes to that building". I found this intriguing because I feel that people in this day think of health in these same terms. Looking at illnesses like TB and Caner as "implacable theft of life" is very true but I have seen people at first think that, then with support from their family and friends they find strength and more reason to fight their illness.
ReplyDeleteIt was really interesting to read about how the common people, doctors, and writers thought about these diseases in the 18th to early 20th centuries. I was trying to remember the rhetorical strategy of keiros as I was reading but I would sometimes catch myself thinking in the context of how these diseases are viewed in the 21st century, which is in an obviously different way. I remember thinking how ridiculous it was to think that TB was a "disease of passion" but I also had to remind myself that at this time there was no knowledge of microorganisms. The comment that the author made comparing cardiac diseases with cancer was also interesting. There was nothing "shameful" or "obscene" about a heart attack like it was for cancer, but in our time heart disease is the number one killer in America and cancer is far below that. The metaphors tied to TB and to cancer were so completely different and would cause such different moral judgements that were normal at that time, but are completely unfair and wrong in the present. However, health being the basis of moral judgements still occurs in the present as we saw with the "Why Against Health" argument. I am happy to know that now in the 21st century, as much as cancer is still feared there are more efforts to spread awareness, to educate and inform, to promote preventive measures and to raise money for research. As seen in the Susan Sontag website for breast cancer, these cancer patients are no longer seen as they were in the centuries before, but are instead viewed as strong and inspirational fighters and heroes.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nesa about the lack of technology and scientific knowledge that could have caused diseases like TB and cancer to be viewed and classified in a way that our generation finds so strange. Even Galen, the person who has contributed to medicine so greatly, believed that "melancholy women are more likely to get breast cancer that sanguine women" (53). It is amazing to know that although diseases were viewed so differently in the past, still so many cures were invented, and the works of great philosophers like Galen have become the cornerstone in medicine.
ReplyDeleteI also found the last section of chapter 7, where it talks about death, interesting. It's stated that for those who live with no religious consolation and no sense of death, death can ultimately be considered a psychological phenomenon, and at the end, "there is the promise of a triumph over illness" (56).