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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who wrote, "He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence" (45)?

2. What type of cancer did the character Watanabe have in Kurosawa's film Ikiru?

3. In The Magic Mountain, what disease is the expression of a secret love?

4. Where was Herbert Snow a surgeon?

5. In the Iliad, what God punished the Achaeans for the abduction of Chryses' daughter?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why was syphilis limited as a metaphor?

2. How did Kafka describe TB?

3. How does cancer take its controlling metaphors from the language of warfare?

4. What did Kant say about passion and cancer?

5. What two hypotheses does Sontag discuss regarding the expansion of illness?

6. In The Magic Mountain how did tuberculosis affect Hans Castorp?

7. In Chapter 5, what example does Sontag present of how cancer was viewed as a disease that caused a person to finally behave well?

8. How were the cancer-prone and the TB-prone persons described in Chapter 5?

9. What did Katherine Mansfield think made her sick, and how did John Middleton Murry critique her thoughts?

10. What correlation did doctors see between cancer and complaints?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

There was a divergence in the metaphorical descriptions of TB and cancer. How did the metaphorical descriptions of TB and cancer diverge? How and why did technology create the divergence?

Essay Topic 2

Metaphors used to describe cancer and tuberculosis changed over time. How did the metaphors used to describe cancer and tuberculosis change over time? What does etymology reveal about those changes?

Essay Topic 3

Culture and psychology were used to explain illness. How were culture and psychology used to explain illness? What did psychologizing disease seem to provide? What did it seem to undermine?

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