Grief (novel)
During the course of the novel, the ideas of the stages of grief are introduced. The stages are denial, anger, depression, and acceptance. The narrator, as well as other characters in the story, slowly passes through these stages in trying to deal with death.
AIDS and Its Metaphors
Like syphilis, AIDS is perceived as having stages. The tertiary stage of syphilis was the most severe, as it is with AIDS, and both have a period of latency before the progression. However, syphilis did not run its full course in every case, and even cases that ended in death could be romanticized. For example, numerous artists suffered from syphilis, and it came to be an accepted view that its effects on the brain could actually inspire original thought. No such compensating factor exists for AIDS, and it was too early in the epidemic at the time of the writing of this book to determine definitively whether AIDS always progresses to death.