Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag
Published 1978 · 192 pages · 21,386 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism, Health & Medicine, Nonfiction, Philosophy
How hard is Illness as Metaphor to read?
Illness as Metaphor scores 50 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 42 out of 100
- Intellectual vocabulary. Medical and literary references.
- Sentence structure: 40 out of 100
- Abstraction: 50 out of 100
- Analysis of how metaphors shape cultural understanding.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Dense argument compressed into a short essay.
- Narrative indirection: 12 out of 100
- Thematic argument, not narrative.
- Symbolic density: 28 out of 100
- The essay is about how symbolism distorts reality.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- Critical distance from the metaphors she dismantles.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- Clear thesis stated and defended.
- Structural complexity: 22 out of 100
- Short, focused essay with parallel structure.
How Illness as Metaphor is regarded
Illness as Metaphor holds a literary regard score of 68 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.