'Illness as Metaphor' (1978) is an essay by Susan Sontag in which she attempts to demystify cancer by debunking the myths and metaphors surrounding the disease. The work's theme is not physical pain per se, but the use of illness as a figure of speech. Sontag argues that cancer is neither a curse nor a punishment; it is simply an illness (one that can be cured). Ten years later, with the outbreak of a new, stigmatized disease rife with mystification and punitive metaphors, a sequel to 'Illness...' appeared, 'AIDS and Its Metaphors' (1989), an essay that expands the scope of her study to the AIDS pandemic. This book presents both works, in which Sontag demonstrates that 'illness is not a metaphor and that the most honest approach to illness, as well as the most 'healthy' way of being ill, is to try to abandon metaphorical thinking altogether.'