Illness as Metaphor - Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

This Study Guide consists of approximately 71 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Illness as Metaphor.

Illness as Metaphor - Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

This Study Guide consists of approximately 71 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Illness as Metaphor.
This section contains 2,032 words
(approx. 6 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Illness as Metaphor Study Guide

Summary

In Chapter 5, Sontag emphasizes tuberculosis’s cultural romanticization by comparing it to cholera. As in Chapter 4, she argues that tuberculosis was seen as romantic; in contrast, she claims that cholera was seen as degrading. In the novella “Death in Venice,” the protagonist Gustav von Aschenbach’s contraction of cholera represented the culmination of his moral and social degradation as a character: he became “just another cholera victim” rather than a unique individual (37). However, in "The Magic Mountain," the protagonist Hans Castorp was seen as more individual, special, and intelligent after his contraction of tuberculosis. This ‘individualization’ did come with negative implications as well as positive ones: although Hans was considered more special, he was also socially and physically isolated because he had to live in a sanitarium, removed from society. Sontag also notes that the clothes of tuberculosis victims were often burned after death...

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This section contains 2,032 words
(approx. 6 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Illness as Metaphor Study Guide
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