Dissecting the Metaphors:

A Reaction to BBC’s The Rhetoric of Cancer

by Marc Lorlin Z. Navisa 2013-38337

In the documentary, Andrew Graystone, a cancer patient for three years, probes the language employed to approach cancer. He concludes that the language revolves on warfare metaphors.

Perhaps, the most common of the metaphors is the notion of battling cancer. So where did this spring from? The Book of Revelation chronicles the battle between good and evil; and we perceive an illness as something of an evil. Thus, sprouts the metaphor “to fight cancer”.

            I would have to agree with Graystone; the language we use to address cancer borders on the masculine and is militaristic. That we have to combat cancer and slay those little villains—the cancerous cells—are evidence to this. From my standpoint, this militaristic sort of reference has something to do with patriarchal origins—somehow inclined to the ways of men, i.e. applying force and sometimes violence. As Graystone said, he did not want to battle cancer, for it is like battling himself and making his body a battleground. We must treat the afflicted with compassion (a feministic opinion to offset our masculine metaphors), rather than making him/her feel sandwiched in a war between himself and cancer wherein he/she has no choice but to fight.

            Somehow, what irks me most is how we came to call those who lived “brave,” “survivors,” “victors,” etc. By all means, those whom we call “victors” deserve to be called such; but it makes it sound as if those who perished did not fight hard enough. At the peak of their “battle” with cancer, they chose to face death. And death despises acceptance.

            I cannot think of something braver than that. 

            Something is really amiss in our rhetoric.