Cancer and Its Metaphors
Throughout the past few weeks we have discussed various types of cancer during class including ovarian, colon, and lung cancer. In Susan Sontag’s “Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors”, cancer is described as being a shameful and evil disease. Sontag explains, "Thus, a surprisingly large number of people with cancer find themselves being shunned by relatives and friends and are the object of practices of decontamination by members of their household, as if cancer, like TB, were an infectious disease.” It is a disease that people do not want to associate themselves with especially since the strongest association it has is death. Sontag describes the link between cancer and painful feelings, including the harmful effects of having repressive emotions. Words such as “ill-omened”, “abominable”, and “repugnant” are brought to the senses when talking about cancer. What does Sontag say about cancer in relation to TB? What are the associations that she believes cancer has? Are they accurate?
After having read at least 2 of the poems in “Four Reincarnations” by Max Rivto, what do you think makes this collection of poems, poems about cancer? Keeping Sontag’s themes in mind, how does this collection engage with Sontag’s perspective of cancer or how do they push against it?
After our activity today, how well of a match was your poem with your profile and why?
As you illuminated in your post, Sontag makes cancer an infectious disease- it is something that is shunned, something that is not liked by the greater public, something that is contagious and avoidable (or hoped to be avoidable). I disagree. While, yes, majority of people I have come in contact with dislike cancer, I do not think my first association with cancer is death- and it certainly isn't a contagious/infectious disease in my mind. I think that especially after observing the effects of cancer to people around me, the fear of cancer is more powerful than the disease (at least in the early stages). Cancer does not equate death, but I do agree that it brings a great amount of pain and suffering to both the patient and those close to them. I did not originally see the poems as cancer poems but that is an interesting thing to dive in to. I think that the love undertones of the poems can be distributed to many different subjects- but also I am not exactly sure how they relate. I think after we dissect the poems so we can understand them a little better that we will be able to find the connections.
ReplyDeleteNow to a completely different topic. I think my poem was a PERFECT match. I actually had highlighted the last two lines, which JD had pointed me to. I think that I need to continue to analyze it but it is a good match!
After reading the poems in Max Ritvo's "Four Reincarnations", it is easy to say that it was a hard read. However after reviewing the text further a number of different things stood out to me about the role cancer plays in the novel. One of the best examples of how cancer relates to the poems has to do with titles of each of the poems. Titles such as The senses and Living it up displayed to me that there is deep underlining between the disease and the poems. Furthermore in the poem dawn of man, I again felt that cancer made itself present in the book when it states, "There was great pain- I groped to my feet where I felt wings behind me, trying to tilt me back." This quote gifts me a strong sense of how cancers acts affects the body.
ReplyDeleteI was talking to my mom about "consumption" the other day and she had no idea about the historically "fantastical" idealisms that reputed the disease at the time. I then jumped into the comparison that was detailed by Sontag and we shared a fascination with the fact that disease--no matter how dangerous and deadly-- can take on distinguishing characteristics. Through Sontag's description, one can see how much we root ourselves in a desire to control. In order to control something we don't understand we asses and categorize. Through categorizing, we loosely or intentionally attach associations that stick and define. I think its interesting and dangerous that while defining diseases by human characteristics lacks medical back-up-- those associations resonate with people much more. One of the poems that resonated with me was "The Senses." I feel that this one could be used to depict cancer because it captured someones conflict with happiness and peace. Being unable to control their own peace of mind proves to be difficult. My mind is like a dark glove that you mistake for a man in a blizzard." This line of the poems captures a battle of peaceful and chaotic thoughts trying to find some sort of salvation. I really enjoyed the poem that Jono gave me because nothing was obvious at first. As I continued to read and break down the poem, I was able to grasp a more nostalgic and sort of coming of age sentiment that was being expressed.
ReplyDeleteI think that Four Reincarnations is an incredible collection of poems. There is a constant feeling of morbidity and struggle in most of them, an aspect of disease that, I'm sure, overwhelms many victims. Many of the poems use symbols and metaphors to depict the diseases and their effects on the author. There is also a sense of humanism and it feels like the soulless body takes on a trait and gives it character. There is also a sense of journey in the poems, similar to Sontag's analysis of how disease takes over the body. It seems as though the process is a physical adventure throughout space. The poems are a good pairing to the Sontag, considering it is an example of how disease becomes more than just an ailment, it affects the victim in a deeper way.
ReplyDeleteTB, AIDS and cancer are all very different and very differently transferred if at all. TB is easily passed through the air, AIDS is transmitted only when certain precautions are not made, and cancer is not contagious at all. However, all three of these diseases that we have examined all have very similar negative associations. They are all associated with death, and regardless of the size of the support system created behind the disease, people will always think that the person infected is unclean. When someone is bedridden in a hospital it is nearly impossible to disassociate the metaphors attached with the disease from the person.
ReplyDeleteAs for Max Ritvo's poems, many of them a very abstract so they are pretty difficult for me to break apart and analyze on my own, but I did notice a lot of death symbols in many of the poems. For example, I noticed in at least one or two of the poems, the presence of ravens in the text. Obviously, cancer has many associations with death, so I think this is one connection between the poems and cancer.
I think that throughout the poems we can see a reoccurring theme of pain and struggle. I think that when comparing the associations between cancer and TB I notice that the fear of TB runs much deeper in those who carried the disease. This disease was one that was easy to racialize which in then reduced the amount of empathy for those affected. However , with cancer, it is found to affect all people and therefore I think peoples immediate reaction would not be the same as finding out someone has TB. The pain and struggle that cancer victims go through is recognized and is explored through symbols in the Ritvos poems.
ReplyDeletePart of what I think makes our collection of poems poems against cancer is how extremely personal they are. Max Ritvo deals with topics like sex, shame, love, and self through beautifully drawn out metaphors, similes, and narrative story lines that he incorporates into his poems. While they may be somewhat convoluted and indiscernible to the readers (although we will be unpacking them in the near future), we could all perceive the intended depth and profoundness of his writing. Just as cancer is a disease that affects the human body, debilitates the mind, and powerfully affects every individual as well as those around the individual, these poems come directly from the inner workings of Ritvo’s mind, describing his cancer journey and his relationship with the disease within his body as well as the people closest to him. I think the poems engage with Sontag’s cancer perspective in that they question the association many people make between cancer and death. While I can comprehend why people associate disease with contagiousness (because of the common cold, the flu, and all the illnesses out there that one can “catch” from interacting with others) and also why people equate cancer with death (because the statistics are so unfortunately high and drastic and show that a large percentage of patients diagnosed with cancer do die from it or from the radical treatment methods), I think there is a major issue in the way the public handles/approaches cancer in that they see the disease as contagious, and so, death as the contagion. Death is obviously NOT contagious, and one cannot and will not “catch” cancer and die from interaction with someone diagnosed with any form of it. I think it will take a huge shift in public perception, knowledge, and understanding of and about cancer to change this, but it is a change I believe is necessary, especially in our present-day society.
ReplyDeleteSo far in Max Rivto's "Four Reincarnations" I think that Rivto has taken an extremely emotional and descriptive approach to describing cancer. This approach fits poetry and all of the stereotypes of poetry. His words are tender to the eye and read very nicely. Simply the opinion of one with cancer or any disease gives a whole other view on an already troubling world. The poems evoke responses that testify and validate the genuine nature of disease. The Crow specifically touched me as its words and descriptions parallelled emotions shared by hundreds of people
ReplyDeleteIn "Four Reincarnations," Rivto uses an abundance of symbolism and pungent metaphor when describing cancer. Using the style of poetry allows Rivto to express these themes and ideas indirectly, with passion, and literary devices. Because Four Reincarnations is a collection of poems, it allows Rivto to describe various stages of cancer throughout the book, which is an interesting twist. I've found some of the poems to be informative, but most of them are sad and emotional. The most interesting thing about the poems is that I find myself learning life lessons through them.
ReplyDeleteI think that Cancer, at least in the modern day, is both a lot more mysterious yet better than some of the likes of TB. There are a few reasons for this. One, I think that due to the sheer number of Cancers, that cancer itself is a broad term in both the probablity of survival and the the specific associations that go with that cancer. On the big scale, cancer is a very scary disease, but I believe that some might prefer that over something like a mental illness. Because while cancer is dangerous, there is so much attention focused on it, both medical and modern news, that I believe it is favorable to mental illness where there is still alot of confusion and mal information.
ReplyDeleteThe poem suggested to me was a great pick, amazing job Turner!
I think Max Ritvo utilizes literary devices such as metaphor, elements of magical realism, and extremely vivid descriptive imagery to paint an image of what Cancer is. I picked up on like maybe 30-40 percent of those devices and a good amount of his poetry was shrouded in confusion for me. However, I think that what he is implying is that Cancer is a terrifying disease which causes large amounts of emotional tumult within a person when they first discover that they have the condition. However, they eventually come to a point where they have so many chemicals running through their bloodstream just to lengthen their life that they have reached a point of half death where they are biologically alive, but their souls are ready to accept the cold but welcoming embrace of death.
ReplyDeleteFor me, I think what makes the poems about cancer is the explicit references to the disease and the fact that all of Max Ritvo's literary career was haunted by the fact that he had cancer since he was 16. In addressing how his work interacts with Sontag, I think Ritvo's book defies the representations of cancer explained in the book. Rather than suppress his feelings, what Sontag argues is associated with cancer, Ritvo wrote very vulnerable poetry that pretty explicitly shows his feelings about both the world and cancer. The only way in which Ritvo feeds into Sontag's representations is in the poems in which he talks about his troubles expressing himself, but there's a sort of irony in using those works being used as examples because he is sharing to reader he has those troubles, thereby still making himself vulnerable.
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