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.
Scenes 8-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Scene 8 Summary
Vivian disconnects herself from her IV lines as the set changes into a classroom. She is now in her element as she lectures about Donne and his poetry to the audience. She begins by defining wit, which is the use of language and wordplay to investigate the “larger aspects of the human experience: life, death, and God” (48). She also explains that Donne—often considered one of the best wits in English literature—is known for writing “metaphysical poetry” that wrestles with life’s unsolvable problems
Vivian then recites Donne’s “Holy Sonnet Five,” a poem that deals with the nature of God and man’s original sin. The speaker of the poem struggles to understand how evil things are not damned in the eyes of God, but he is because of man’s original sin. Thus, instead of asking God to remember him in His mercy, the speaker asks God to forget him—which Vivian explains is counter to most religious convention. Vivian explains that “the speaker does not need to hide from God’s judgment, only to accept God’s forgiveness,” but the poem ends before the speaker can do so (50). Like most of Donne’s poems, the goal is not to resolve the issue (in this case, damnation) but to explore a complex question that has no definitive answer.
Vivian’s lecture is interrupted by Susie. She tells Vivian the doctors have ordered yet another test. Vivian refuses to go and forcefully tells Susie, “No more tests. We’ve covered that” (52). Susie insists Vivian go despite her outburst, and Vivian finds herself once again spelling her name for an anonymous, disinterested medical technician.
Scene 9 Summary
Stuck in a wheelchair, Vivian quotes another Donne poem about being unable to outrun death, which sets the tone for the rest of the scene. Vivian says that the poem, which she has always enjoyed, now feels too real. She realizes that she is very sick—mortally sick, actually—even though she has done the impossible: she has endured eight treatments of Hexamethophosphacil and Vinplatin at “the full dose” (53).
Vivian knows this is extraordinary, and she remarks that she continues to distinguish herself even “in illness” (53). Kelekian and Jason are delighted by her success, though Vivian suspects it has more to do with the fame they will get once they publish an article about her case. Vivian stops to correct herself; she says that the article will not actually be about her but about her tumors and her ovaries.
Scene 10 Summary
Now that the tests are done, Vivian returns to her bed even more ill than before. Jason enters her room to check her kidney function and finds that they are working well. Vivian asks how they will know if her kidneys stop working, and Jason explains that lots of fluid will go “in, [but] not much out” (54). He says this is the simple explanation, which he tells Vivian he learned to do in the “colossal waste of time” that was his bedside manner class (55).
Vivian asks Jason why he chose to study cancer rather than another type of medicine, like open-heart surgery. Jason becomes passionate as he explains how cancer is “awesome”—unlike regular cells that can only divide a finite number of times before they die, cancer cells can multiply infinitely. This is called “immortality in culture,” and the best minds in science still have no idea why cancer cells behave so differently (56). He tells Vivian he wants to go into cancer research after he finishes his mandatory fellowship.
Vivian starts to ask Jason if he will miss her, but she catches herself and instead asks whether he misses any of his patients who pass away. Jason says that he tells his patients he will, even if he will not. He encourages Vivian to “keep pushing the fluids” as he leaves, and Vivian realizes she and Jason are quite alike. She says that “the young doctor, like the senior scholar, prefers research to humanity,” even though Vivian now wishes Jason would also provide “the touch of human kindness she now seeks” (58-59).
Scenes 8-10 Analysis
Scene 8 introduces the play’s namesake: wit. While modern audiences might be more familiar with wit as ‘wittiness’ or ‘quick-witted humor,’ the literary definition of wit is more complex. While wit can certainly be funny, as Donne’s poems often are, literary wit has more to do with applying logic, language, and intelligence to a complex problem. As Vivian explains, Donne uses wit as a tool with which to challenge people’s assumed answers to life’s big questions. By making unusual linguistic comparisons that force readers to pay attention, he makes readers think more deeply about these complicated issues. Ultimately, wit becomes Donne’s way to question people’s accepted—but not proven—understanding of philosophical and metaphysical problems, such as the nature of God.
Like Donne, Edson uses Vivian’s wit to tackle the complicated issues of passion, healthcare, and death. The play poses a number of thematic, philosophical questions,such as whether medicine can be both rigorously scientific and humane and, unsurprisingly, offers no clear answers. Like Donne before her, Edson uses language to investigate each thematic problem from multiple perspectives, and she leaves audiences to find answers on their own.
Scene 10 provides an excellent example of Edson’s own use of wit. By this point, Vivian is clearly dying of cancer. She has completed the most aggressive, experimental treatment available, but her body continues to fail her. Her situation is ironic: while Vivian might be dying, Jason explains that her cancer cells are immortal. The paradox of cancer—i.e. the fact that their immortality is what will ultimately kill Vivian—is an irony worthy of Donne himself. By putting the ideas of mortality and immortality in orbit around one another, Edson makes audiences consider what it means to live, and to die.
These scenes also ask audiences to compare another seemingly dissimilar pair: Vivian and Jason. Both are motivated by the pursuit of knowledge and success, which becomes evident as Jason explains his passion for cancer research to Vivian. He says that even though the “smartest guys in the world, with the best labs […] don’t know what to make of” cancer, he has “a couple of ideas” that he is “kicking around” (57). He cannot wait to finish his mandatory fellowship so that he can move out of patient care and into research, which he later says is just the attempt to “quantify the complications of the puzzle” (77). In other words, cancer is to Jason what Donne is to Vivian. Cancer is much like one of Donne’s metaphysical questions; it is a complex scientific puzzle, and in attempting to solve it, researchers end up with more questions than answers. Both Jason and Vivian love the challenge of impossible problems, and both want to test their mettle against them.
