Blindness In Susan Sontag's Illness As Metaphor

The moment you are infected with a disease, you are label by the many imaginations of society. These imagination are not only creative and limitless in culture, but they ultimately create a division between normal and abnormal. In the novel illness as Metaphor, the American author Susan Sontag critiques how speaking disease metaphorically has many consequences by leading to the stigmatization of a disease beyond its scientific condition. Sontag teaches us that stigmatization of disease causes society to become counterproductive by developing an unfair bias when talking about disease and those afflicted with the disease. In particular, the way society discuss blindness based on metaphors create negative stereotypes of blindness and people afflicted with blindness, which by extension makes society counterproductive in understanding

According to NIB study,which analyzed potential reasons why walloping 70 percents of blind people are not employed, they found that “hiring managers, most respondents (54 percent) felt there were few jobs at their company that blind employees could perform,...Forty-two percent of hiring managers believe blind employees need someone to assist them on the job;.. 34 percent said blind workers are more likely to have work-related accidents.’ These statistics shows us the the condition of being blind is associated with being incapable, clumsy, and unproductive in the workforce. Sontag teaches us when when we give meaning to a disease like blindness, we constructed it in a way that is punishing to those afflicted with the disease. The reality is blind people are capable individual who can carry out the job as well as a normal person in the workforce. This reality is often hidden from managers by negative stereotypes of the condition of being