Metaphor on Germs
The use of war and invasion metaphors to talk about germs and infectious diseases creates an environment that labels the disease as an outside invader therefore associating diseases negatively with people who come from the outside, most predominantly immigrants. Throughout different periods in American history immigrants to the United States have been stereotypically associated with germs and infectious diseases. This association shines a negative light on immigrants and what they bring to the United States. Further, as Susan Sontag discussed the metaphor of a war on disease “implements the way particularly dreaded diseases are envisaged as an alien “other” as enemies are in modern war; and the move from the demonization of the illness to the attribution of fault to the patient is an inevitable one, no matter if patients are thought of as victims. Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggest guilt” (Sontag 11). The use of...