Summary

In Chapter 5, Sontag emphasizes tuberculosis’s cultural romanticization by comparing it to cholera. As in Chapter 4, she argues that tuberculosis was seen as romantic; in contrast, she claims that cholera was seen as degrading. In the novella “Death in Venice,” the protagonist Gustav von Aschenbach’s contraction of cholera represented the culmination of his moral and social degradation as a character: he became “just another cholera victim” rather than a unique individual (37). However, in "The Magic Mountain," the protagonist Hans Castorp was seen as more individual, special, and intelligent after his contraction of tuberculosis. This ‘individualization’ did come with negative implications as well as positive ones: although Hans was considered more special, he was also socially and physically isolated because he had to live in a sanitarium, removed from society. Sontag also notes that the clothes of tuberculosis victims were often burned after death...