Analysis Of Watching Suffering From A Distance By Susan Sontag

The motivation behind “Watching Suffering from a Distance” by Susan Sontag, is to let everyone know that they should have knowledge of the evil that humanity commits. She is writing to inform the general public that they should not shy away from bad news. According to Sontag, those who are incessantly astonished that people can inflict harm on one another and haven’t accepted the idea that evil and corruption exists, have not reached adulthood. She says, “No one after a certain age has the right to this kind of innocence, of superficiality, to this degree of ignorance, or amnesia” (437). We regularly see advertisements requesting that we give money to help spare the starving youngsters in an underdeveloped nation. Yet more often than not we simply switch channels or decide to overlook this because we don’t want to believe this. Ignorance is not bliss.

The media has critical impact in Sontag 's article. She demonstrates her argument when she states, “Parked in front of the little screens-television, computer, palmtop- we can surf to images and brief reports of disasters throughout the world” (437). Individuals regularly decide to overlook pictures of others anguish. People decide to envision that others don 't suffer, and would rather keep on living in ignorance of other third-world nations.

Sontag wrote this

In this article, Straton is attempting to persuade the religious public that the change from teaching religion to teaching evolution in schools is wrong. He says “the issue is whether the taxpayers-the mothers and fathers of children- shall be made to support the false and materialistic religion, mainly evolution, in schools, while Christianity is ruled out, and thereby denied their children” (432). Straton does not believe that man is a “descendant of the slime and beasts of the jungle” (432), but as “a child of god”