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1. How does Sontag compare illness to a kingdom?

Sontag states that everyone holds dual citizenship in either the kingdom of the well or the kingdom of the sick. Everyone prefers to only use the passport for the kingdom of well. However, everyone must become a citizen of the kingdom of the sick.

2. What does Sontag want to debunk about illness as a metaphor in her book?

Sontag does not writing about physical illness itself, but how illness became a metaphor or figure of speech. She does not believe that illness is a metaphor, and she wants to debunk that idea. In her book, she wants to liberate illness from becoming a metaphor because regarding illness as a metaphor is not a truthful way of describing illness.

3. What does Sontag reveal about metaphor and tuberculosis (TB) and cancer?

Two diseases became trapped in metaphor: TB and cancer. When TB was thought to be an incurable disease, metaphor was used to describe it and put a distance between it and the patient. Once TB was curable, that tendency to use metaphor was ended. Then cancer came along. Because it seemed incurable, it was described by metaphor. Metaphor was used instead of the word for the diseases because they could not be understood. Then metaphor was abandoned for TB when it was curable.

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