Wit is a potent and emotional play that chronicles the last few months of Vivian’s life. With Vivian’s cancer as the main theme, Wit effectively shows the gradual change of Vivian’s attitude towards cancer and the inhuman treatments from doctors. Wit narrates a story of Vivian Bearing, an accomplished English literature professor who is diagnosed with metastatic ovarian cancer. However, in order to complete a research, her doctor, Harvey Kalekian gives Vivian eight months of experimental chemotherapy without clearly explaining the treatments and serious side effects. In addition, Kelekian’s fellow, Jason, as a former student of Dr. Bearing, shows no respect to Vivian. Jason does not consider Vivian as a patient or as his former professor, but a research object of cancer treatment. The play Wit introduces binaries between patients and doctors, students and professors, life and death. Among these different polarities, the comparison between life and death shows the greatest tension and implies the real meaning of death to readers. Death is kind of a rebirth of life. Edson efficiently describes the tension between death and life by making use of antithesis mostly.
At the beginning of the play, although Vivian knows she gets cancer, she does not become anxious and frustrated. On the contrary, she is calm and seems affirmative to defeat the cancer. She does not completely understand the complicated medical terms and treatments that Dr.Kelekian provides, but she still tries to use her knowledge to find lexical parallelism and doctor’s incorrect explanation of insidious. “Insidious means treacherous” (Edson 8). “Insidious. Hmm. Curious word choice. Cancer. Cancel” (Edson 8). Vivian does not want to admit her ignorance in medical, so she...
... middle of paper ...
...ath is a normal separation of life.
In summary, Vivian Bearing’s different perspectives of life and death in various periods convey the tension between life and death. Vivian’s confidence collapses step by step with the threat of death. She once became scared and just wanted to hide away from the world. However, finally, she accepts her death peacefully rather than frustrated and scared. People do not usually think about death until they get the last moment of their lives. In this play, “Wit” indicates that death is not a fearful thing, but a natural and serious thing. People shall not be afraid of death. Wit inspires audiences to consider the true meaning of life. With the clear organization and successful antithesis, Wit is a great play that not only demonstrates the interesting plots but also inspires us to ponder over the real connection between life and death.
One of the only truly inevitable things in life is death. While there are ways to prolong the time before death, there is no escaping it, as the main characters of “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” knew all too well. Both of these elderly women expected their deaths in some way, and while they may have been initially resistant, they eventually came to accept their fate. When comparing the characters of Granny Weatherall and the grandmother from “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, similar elements such as religion, death, and a less than ideal relationship with their family can be found.
Throughout Rajiv Joseph’s play, Gruesome Playground Injuries, the two characters, Doug and Kayleen, sporadically meet throughout the course of 30 years due to injuries ranging from getting “beaten up pretty badly” (Joseph 31) to going into a “coma” (Joseph 27). The play starts out with the two characters first meeting in the school nurse’s office with injuries of their own. This is the start of a relationship that is full of pain and healing throughout the years. Told in a very unique structure of five year increments, the play shows how injuries, a reoccurring image that may be self-inflicted or inflicted upon one, bring the pair together when either is in a dire situation.
In the story “The Death of the Moth,” Virginia Woolf illustrates the universal struggle between life and death. She portrays in passing the valiance of the struggle, of the fight of life against death, but she determines as well the futility of this struggle. Virginia Woolf’s purpose in writing was to depict the patheticness of life in the face of death. Woolf’s conclusion, “death is stronger than I am,” provides the focus of her argument. Throughout the piece, she has built up her case, lead to reader emotional states its concept of the power of death. The piece would begi...
...s a moment when she starts to see the true meaning but doesn’t want to accept it at first, which is evident from the groaning and “hiding.” However, at the end of the play and the end of her life, Vivian is ready to accept this truth that she herself is living out the same life as the speakers in Donne’s poems and begins “reaching for the light –“ (Edson 66).
Through persuading the audience to believe that death is a wonderful and relaxing thing, she takes on a very difficult task. A common thought of the end of life is that it is a ceasing of all things good.
McGlinn addresses the third dialectic taking hold of Blanche: illusion versus reality. McGlinn points out that, like all the women in Williams’s plays between 1940 and 1950, Blanche “refuses to accept the reality of her life and attempts to live under illusion.” [Tharpe, 513]. Although McGlinn is accurate in noting Blanche’s conflict between gentility and promiscuity, the result of which is “self-defeat instead of survival” [Tharpe, 513], she fails to see that Blanche lives in both illusion and reality simultaneously, and it is this dialectic that is the slow poison which destroys her. This death-instinct gives us the fourth and last dialectic in Blanche: her struggle between death and desire.”
The relationship between life and death is explored in Woolf’s piece, “The Death of a Moth.” Woolf’s own epiphany is presented in her piece; she invites her reader, through her stylistic devices, to experience the way in which she realized what the meaning of life and death meant to her. Woolf’s techniques allow her audience to further their own understanding of death and encourages them consider their own existence.
Margaret Edson explores an unpopular theme (redemption) using the changes in the character of the protagonist, Dr. Bearing. After her ovarian cancer diagnoses, she realizes that she lives an incomplete life with excess devotion to her career and academics and less regard for humanity. She faces heart breaking loneliness that makes her regret the fact that she listened to and followed her English professor’s advice that scholars are unsentimental. Margaret Edson’s “W; t”, therefore, has a thematic bias on the redemption of Dr. Bearing as she tries to emerge from her arrogant self and shed her unsociable character. Dr. Bearing interacts with two contrasting characters in the play that leads her to a state of self realization making her change for the best.
To conclude, the author portrays Blanche’s deteriorating mental state throughout the play and by the end it has disappeared, she is in such a mental state that doctors take her away. Even at this stage she is still completely un-aware of her surroundings and the state she is in herself.
In Margaret Edson's Wit, Vivian Bearing is a professor with deadly ovarian cancer whose life circles around knowledge and education. For many individuals, balance is fundamental component in life. Supporting equilibrium between idealism and truth is a incredible part of living stable and satisfied life. Vivian expresses that the fact of being idealistic within her being and her career is important, but you must acknowledge the reality of living as well. When she knows she have cancer Dr. Kelekian tells her to be tough. Flowing into a flashback, she tells the audience, "And I know for a fact that I am tough. A demanding professor. Uncompromising. Never one to turn from a challenge. That is why I chose, while a student of the great E. M. Ashford, to study John Donne," (6). Bearing equates her intellectual curiosity to emotional toughness, since the barely thing she feels relaxed wrapping her head around is challenging literary text. Vivian uses her high standards of education to motivate herself to be tough in her last hours of cancer, but with all her knowledge she seems imbalanced in her life. The Vivian idea of idealism and truth of existence is to be full contributing to knowledge of everything she does.
The movie Wit by Mike Nichols, showed the true horror of death by chemotherapy though the life of Dr. Vivian Bearing diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. The movie followed Vivian from the time she found out about her cancer to the moment that she passed, though this time Vivian also shared memories that related back to what was going on now in her life. During her stay in the hospital there were three people who impacted her stay the most; Doctor Kelekian who was her oncologist, Doctor Posner the Medical student involved in her case, and Nurse Monahan her primary care nurse. Let’s look at all three of Vivian care takers, along with Vivian herself, and a moment that really showed the true colors of the individual.
Death, to the surrounding people, can often be seen as a horrible and depressing time in one’s life, while the same result may occur in the person going through the time period. One must remember, though, that no matter how the person has lived throughout their life, everyone must die eventually, for it is the circle of life. The playwright, Everyman, notes of the importance of having devotion and loyalty in Jesus Christ, for that is the only way to Heaven. Also, the play and The Sandbox greatly illustrate how a person near death is feeling and his emotions, while also describing the sympathy of others around him and their experiences.
The speaker’s language towards the woman’s death in “The Last Night that she lived” portrays a yearning attitude that leads to disappointment; which reiterates human discontent with the imperfections of life. The description of woman’s death creates an image of tranquility that causes the speaker to aspire towards death. Her death compares to a reed floating in water without any struggle. The simile paradoxically juxtaposes nature and death because nature’s connotation living things, while death refers to dead things, but death becomes a part of nature. She consents to death, so she quietly dies while those around her refuse to accept her imminent death. The speaker’s description of death sounds like a peaceful experience, like going to sleep, but for eternity. These lines describe her tranquil death, “We waited while She passed—It was a narrow time—Too jostled were Our Souls to speak. At length the notice came. She mentioned, and forgot—Then lightly as a Reed Bent to the water, struggled scarce- Consented, and was dead-“ .Alliteration in “We waited”, emphasizes their impatience of the arrival of her death because of their curiosity about death. The woman’s suffering will be over soon. This is exhibited through the employment of dashes figuratively that form a narrow sentence to show the narrowing time remaining in her life, which creates suspense for the speaker, and also foreshadows that she dies quickly. The line also includes a pun because “notice” refers to the information of her death, and also announcement, which parallels to the soul’s inability to speak. “She mentioned, and forgot—“, refers to her attempt to announce her farewell to everyone, which connects to the previous line’s announcement. The dashes fig...
In the play “everyman” death is depicted as something that is terribly feared as no one seemed ready for it, death is perceived as something that takes one away from the pleasures of this world.
Throughout time, death has been viewed in a negative light. In general, it is an event to be mourned and is seen by some as the end to existence. People do not usually seek death as an answer to their problems. In various pieces of literature, however, suicide is contemplated by the characters as the only solution to the pain and grief that they experience.