63 pages • 2 hours read
Margaret EdsonWit
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1995A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Pursuit of Knowledge
In many ways, Wit is a play about knowledge: who has it, how to gain it, and its personal costs. Edson explores the pros and cons of a life devoted to the pursuit of knowledge through both Vivian and Jason.
Vivian has been fascinated by knowledge and language since she was a child. She believes language is the key to answering life’s toughest questions, and Vivian has devoted herself to studying both as they appear in seventeenth-century poetry. Vivian has reaped the rewards of her single-minded dedication, too. Not only has she published multiple books and articles, she tells the audience that “no one is quite as good” at analyzing Donne as she is (20). The audience soon realizes Vivian is not bragging, either. Her lecture and the flashback to her time in the classroom prove her assertions. Even Jason vouches for her when he tells Susie that Vivian “was a great scholar” (74). But Vivian’s success has come with sacrifices, and her commitment to research has left her with no intimate relationships. She has no visitors during her stay in the hospital, and she tells Susie there is no one she can call to stay with her. Her intake interview reveals she has no living family, either. Her life has revolved around her work, and while Vivian never says she regrets her choices, she now has little outside support to help her through her treatment.
Just like Vivian, Jason also dedicates himself to the pursuit of knowledge. As an undergraduate, he took Vivian’s course to prove to himself he could “get an A in the […] hardest courses on campus” (21). Jason brings the same tenacity to his medical fellowship, too. The audience sees this during Grand Rounds, where Dr. Kelekian asks his medical students questions about Vivian’s case. Jason chimes in with the right answer every time, even if that means shooting down his fellow students. But his knowledge does nothing for his bedside manner; he has little consideration for his patients. Later, he insults clinicians—the doctors who handle patient care—by calling them “troglodytes,” and he tells Vivian he cannot wait to move on to pure research (57). Throughout the play, Jason shows no regard for Vivian’s emotional well-being. In fact, his biggest concern is what her case can contribute to his own cancer research.
By the end of the play, Edson offers no clear opinion on whether the pursuit of knowledge is a good or a bad thing. Rather, she suggests that it can be both. Knowledge in and of itself is good: Vivian has made significant contributions to her field and Jason’s cancer research could save lives. But Edson has concerns about the ramifications of a total dedication to research. For Vivian, the consequences are isolation—she has no one to support her during her treatment. But for Jason, the fallout is more severe. Throughout Wit, the audience sees how his lack of compassion affects Vivian by chipping away at her humanity and autonomy one piece at a time, culminating in his refusal to follow her DNR request. While Edson sees the benefits of the pursuit of knowledge, she also warns that a total commitment to knowledge comes with real repercussions.
Death and the Process of Dying
From the play’s opening scene, Edson makes it clear that Wit is a play about dying, which Vivian makes clear in her opening lines. She tells the audience that she has “less than two hours” before she passes away, which is also the run-time of the play’s performance (7). Edson is true to her word—Witfocuses on the process and reality of dying, which Edson constantly reinforces through the play’s structure. By not dividing the play into traditional acts, Edson forces the audience to continually march alongside Vivian toward her death. Additionally, Edson refuses to focus on Vivian’s life. While readers see glimpses of Vivian’s childhood and career, those moments are brief in comparison to the scenes focusing on her treatment and illness. In that way, the audience experiences a little of what it means to be terminally ill: death becomes a constant companion, and even memory provides little respite from the inevitability of mortality.
Edson’s exploration of dying and death culminates in Vivian’s climactic death scene at the play’s conclusion. Readers hoping for a miraculous, happy ending are disappointed as Vivian passes away in the midst of medical chaos. Jason wants to revive Vivian despite her “do not resuscitate” request, while Susie struggles to intervene to preserve Vivian’s last wishes. In the play’s final moments, even dying becomes a paradox. Jason thinks of Vivian’s death as a failure, which readers see during his initial refusal of the DNR order. “I’VE MADE A MISTAKE,” he yells after Susie intervenes; it is unclear whether Jason realizes that reviving Vivian was a mistake or if he regrets his cold, distant treatment of her (84). And yet, Vivian’s death offers hope to Vivian. She rises from her hospital bed and strips off all the accouterments of cancer: her cap, her bracelet, and even her gown. No longer ill and finally free, Vivian moves “naked and beautiful” toward “the light” (85). The climax ofWitbecomes a paradox worthy of Donne himself as Edson demonstrates both the tragedy and freedom of mortality.
Autonomy and Humanity
In literature, the term “autonomy” is often used to refer to a character’s ability to govern herself; in other words, an autonomous character is independent and can make choices for herself. Wit uses Vivian’s cancer diagnosis to focus on the relationship between autonomy and illness. Before her diagnosis, Vivian is a completely autonomous individual. Not only does she make decisions for herself, she dominates her field. While she might not be liked, she is definitely respected. But as soon as she becomes a cancer patient, she cedes much of her decision-making ability to her doctors. They schedule her tests and her treatment regimen, and Vivian can do little more than follow along. Eventually Vivian tries to assert herself, and she tells Susie that she wants “no more tests. We’ve covered that” (51). Susie overrules her wishes, though, and Vivian finds herself in the hands of another disinterested medical technician. Her loss of autonomy culminates with her eventual inability to speak for herself. The morphine helps with Vivian’s pain, but it also renders her unconscious. She can only hope that her final wishes will be followed.
Vivian loses more than just her autonomy over the course of the play, though. She also loses her humanity as doctors begin treating her like a specimen instead of a person. This is most clear during the Grand Rounds scene, where the doctors poke and prod at Vivian without her permission. She lies on her bed, her gown pulled up to show her abdomen, as doctors clinically discuss her case. No one asks her questions about her own experience, and at the end of the session, Dr. Kelekian has to remind Jason to thank Vivian for “her cooperation” (40). Vivian also realizes that the doctors think about her like a case. She tells the audience that Kelekian and Jason are more interested in the “celebrity status” they will gain after writing about her ovaries (53).
The end of Wit restores a bit of Vivian’s autonomy—and consequently, her humanity. Susie lets Vivian make one final choice for her life, and she decides that she does not want to be revived when her heart stops. Viewers realize that a person’s freedom hinges on her ability to choose, and that illness strips a person of many of her choices. The moments in the play where Vivian is treated most humanely are those where she can make a decision for herself, no matter how big or small the decision might be. Thus, Edson argues that a person’s autonomy is also an essential part of her humanity.
Wit
Wit might be about illness and death, but it is also a witty play. In its opening scene, Vivian tells the audience that it can expect a play concerned with language and meaning. She begins by unpacking the ridiculousness of asking a cancer patient how she is feeling, then compares the play to major pieces of literature. She warns the audience to be on the lookout for literary techniques such as irony and humor, even though she herself is an “unwitting” accomplice in the production (6). While Vivian might be most interested in Donne’s wit, Edson employs quite a bit of wit herself in order to reveal truth to her audiences.
Though wit is present throughout the play, it features most prominently in the scene where Jason talks about the nature of cancer. He explains that, unlike normal cells, which replicate until they “eventually conk out,” cancer cells just “keep replicating forever.” He tells Vivian that researchers call this phenomenon “immortality in culture” (56). Edson introduces a linguistic paradox that helps the audience understand the irony of Vivian’s condition. Her cancer is killing her, but the cancer itself is biologically immortal. This moment of wit helps the audience confront death through a paradox of life.
