How to Read Literature Like a Professor: Chapter 23 Summary & Analysis

Foster argues that there is “no better, no more lyrical, no more perfectly metaphorical illness than heart disease.” Once again, this is of course not true in real life, but it is certainly true of literature. Part of the reason for why heart disease is considered lyrically and symbolically powerful is because, since at least the Ancient Greek era, the heart has been considered the emotional centre of the human body. Endless writers invoke the heart in this context, and the heart is associated with romantic love everywhere from poetry to popular culture. As a result, heart disease symbolizes all kinds of suffering: loneliness, cruelty, cowardice, and so on.

Heart trouble doesn’t always have to be in the form of disease—in Nathanial Hawthorne’s “The Man of Adamant” (1837), a misanthropic man moves into a cave to escape society, and his heart eventually turns to stone. Meanwhile, the overly-emotional and romantic titular character of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim (1900) is killed by being shot in the heart.

Of course, heart disease isn’t the only illness featured in literature, and different illnesses tend to have their own particular group of associations. Strange as it may sound, some writers return to the same illnesses throughout different works of literature, such as James Joyce’s thematic obsession with paralysis.

Bear in mind that prior to the 20th century, disease was very mysterious. People did not have a clear understanding of what caused illness, how it would progress, or how it could be cured. Historical context is also relevant to which diseases are more commonly represented in literature. Tuberculosis (or “consumption”) seems to be everywhere in literature, but venereal diseases are almost nowhere to be found. This is partly because of taboos surrounding sexuality, but also because to qualify as a suitably literary illness, a condition should both be “picturesque” and emerge in a mysterious way. Finally, the disease must have strong symbolic potential; this is certainly true of tuberculosis, which causes sufferers to literally “waste away” in front of you.

Indeed, the potential of illness to carry symbolic meaning is arguably the most important reason for how and why illness will appear in a text. Although symbolic meaning is never fixed, illnesses do have particular associations that will be better suited to some narratives than others. The bubonic plague, for example, invokes themes such as all-encompassing tragedy and apocalyptic devastation. Meanwhile, hereditary conditions point to intergenerational tensions, unhappy families, and “parental misdeeds.”

Illnesses play different roles in different eras. Whereas tuberculosis cast a large shadow in Victorian times, the era from the 1980s to the present has been particularly affected by the sudden emergence of AIDS. According to Foster, “AIDS is the mother lode of symbol and metaphor,” and, accordingly, much literature has been produced about the disease. Because of the way the AIDS crisis played out, and the fact that minority groups such as gay men, trans women, and black people were disproportionately affected, the literature of AIDS is also inherently political.

Frequently, writers simply invent illnesses without clearly defining them, and use this as a way to kill off characters with little explanation. Of course, this has been more difficult to do in the era of modern medicine, when mysterious illnesses (mostly) no longer appear out of nowhere.