Margaret Edson’s Wit is a touching play that takes the reader through a woman’s critical journey from being diagnosed with stage-four metastatic ovarian cancer to gaining an understanding of life and its many intricacies. This woman is Dr. Vivian Bearing, and she tackles the incredible challenge of cancer with her unique relationship with words. Her wit and intimacy with words are what cause enormous upheaval in her life up until the very end. Words were the keystone of Bearing’s profession, but they turn on her during her experience with cancer. Then, this reversal gives her a true understanding of the poet John Donne, and finally the doctor can see the value of human beings and relationships. Through these events, Edson produces a resounding …show more content…
She will come to view his work in a totally different light as she nears her death. She starts off very confident at the beginning of her treatment when she says “I know all about life and death. I am, after all, a scholar of Donne’s Holy Sonnets, which explore mortality…” (Edson 12). Unfortunately, she has no way to fully grasp what he means about fear, death, and salvation until each of those issues become painfully pertinent to her situation. Such difficult concepts as those cannot be fully comprehended until one comes face to face with them. Death has come to now confront Dr. Bearing and challenge everything that she used to be so sure about. Her cancer leads her to consider Donne in a new light, and she attempts to find comfort in his sonnets that used to bring her so much enjoyment. Although she quotes him and praises him, Donne’s words become painfully accurate. It is possible that she now wishes that she did not know so much about his anxieties about death, salvation, and forgiveness. All of these are now ideas that Vivian is running out of time to understand. Words here become a source of fear and a hindrance as her final day draws near. When it does reach those final moments, her old professor Dr. E.M. Ashford comes to visit her in the hospital, and Ashford offers to recite some Donne to Bearing to calm her, but adamantly refuses. So, the elderly Ashford reads a children’s tale about bunnies, which is more comforting to Vivian than the words of the man who the both of them devoted their lives to praising and understanding. Confusion is what Donne represented to Bearing, but the bunny story provided simplicity and assurance. She no longer wanted to feel fear. The children’s story brought her home to simpler times. This simple interaction with Ashford is something that Vivian wishes she could have had more of before it was too
In Margaret Edson’s W;t, Vivian Bearing, a renowned professor of seventeenth-century poetry, struggles with her diagnosis of stage-four metastatic ovarian cancer. During Vivian’s time in the hospital, two of her main caretakers—Susie, her primary nurse, and Jason, the clinical fellow assigned to her—have vastly different goals for the procedure. The juxtaposition of Jason and Susie, whose values and approaches to life drastically differ, shows the progression of Vivian’s character from one who values knowledge above all else, like Jason, to one who realizes that kindness is the only essential part of life, like Susie.
First of all, the speaker starts her poem personifying death as a kind gentleman who comes to pick her up for her death journey. It is obvious if the reader looks at “He kindly stopped me” (2). This kind of personification makes the reader feel that death is something normal and dealing with it is just like people dealing with each other.... ... middle of paper ... ...
... seeing and feeling it’s renewed sense of spring due to all the work she has done, she was not renewed, there she lies died and reader’s find the child basking in her last act of domestication. “Look, Mommy is sleeping, said the boy. She’s tired from doing all out things again. He dawdled in a stream of the last sun for that day and watched his father roll tenderly back her eyelids, lay his ear softly to her breast, test the delicate bones of her wrist. The father put down his face into her fresh-washed hair” (Meyer 43). They both choose death for the life style that they could no longer endure. They both could not look forward to another day leading the life they did not desire and felt that they could not change. The duration of their lifestyles was so pain-staking long and routine they could only seek the option death for their ultimate change of lifestyle.
Death is a controversial and sensitive subject. When discussing death, several questions come to mind about what happens in our afterlife, such as: where do you go and what do you see? Emily Dickinson is a poet who explores her curiosity of death and the afterlife through her creative writing ability. She displays different views on death by writing two contrasting poems: one of a softer side and another of a more ridged and scary side. When looking at dissimilar observations of death it can be seen how private and special it is; it is also understood that death is inevitable so coping with it can be taken in different ways. Emily Dickinson’s poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died” show both parallel and opposing views on death.
William Penn, an English philosopher and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, once said that, “For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.” He is saying that death is not the end of our lives, but just another stage. In the poem “Holy Sonnet 10” by John Donne, the poet talks to death itself and gives his opinion on his view of death and others’ views: it is something that cannot control anything, can be replaced by other things, and is not the end of a person’s life. Through the use of his figurative language, Petrachan form, and tone and language, Mr. Donne expresses the message that death is not to be feared because one lives in heaven. John uses many examples of figurative language in his sonnet.
When Death stops for the speaker, he reins a horse-drawn carriage as they ride to her grave. This carriage symbolizes a hearse of which carries her coffin to her grave a day or two after her death. As they ride, they pass, “the School… / the Fields of Gazing Grain— / [and] the Setting Sun—” (lines 9-12). These three symbolize the speakers life, from childhood in the playgrounds, to labor in the fields, and finally to the setting sun of her life. When the speaker and Death arrive at the house, it is night.
Coping with her father's death is a struggle, yet Francie begins to live life again with the love of her family and by keeping herself preoccupied with other tasks.
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.
“Death, the end of life: the time when someone or something dies” (Merriam-Webster, 2014). The definition of death is quite simple, the end of life is inescapable. I chose to write about death and impermanence because it is something we all must inevitably face. People often deal with death in a number of different ways. Although it is something that we must eventually face, it can be hard to come to terms with because the idea can be hard to grasp. Some of us fear it, others are able to accept it, either way we all must eventually face it. In this essay I will look at two different literary works about death and impermanence and compare and contrast the different elements of the point of view, theme, setting, and symbolism. The comparison of these particular works will offer a deeper look into words written by the authors and the feelings that they experiencing at that particular time.
Jane presents one aspect of woman in The Waking collection (1953): Ross-Bryant views Jane as a young girl who is dead. The poem expresses concern with the coming of death. This poignant elegy is presen...
Emily Dickinson became legendary for her preoccupation with death. All her poems contain stanzas focusing on loss or loneliness, but the most striking ones talk particularly about death, specifically her own death and her own afterlife. Her fascination with the morose gives her poems a rare quality, and gives us insight into a mind we know very little about. What we do know is that Dickinson’s father left her a small amount of money when she was young. This allowed her to spend her time writing and lamenting, instead of seeking out a husband or a profession. Eventually, she limited her outside activities to going to church. In her early twenties, she began prayed and worshipped on her own. This final step to total seclusion clearly fueled her obsession with death, and with investigating the idea of an afterlife. In “Because I could not stop for Death”, Dickinson rides in a carriage with the personification of Death, showing the constant presence of death in her life. Because it has become so familiar, death is no longer a frightening presence, but a comforting companion. Despite this, Dickinson is still not above fear, showing that nothing is static and even the most resolute person is truly sure of anything. This point is further proven in “I heard a Fly buzz”, where a fly disrupts the last moment of Dickinson’s life. The fly is a symbol of death, and of uncertainty, because though it represents something certain—her impending death—it flies around unsure with a “stumbling buzz”. This again illustrates the changing nature of life, and even death. “This World is not Conclusion” is Dickinson’s swan song on the subject of afterlife. She confirms all her previous statements, but in a more r...
In her bedroom, Granny is literally confined to her deathbed, revealing to the reader that death is approaching. Granny speaks of a longer life from the place her life will end, emphasizing that death could come at any moment. As her mind starts deteriorating, she begins confusing the past with the present. At one time, she remembers having to dig hundreds of postholes after her husband’s death, and enlightens the reader with the fact that “digging post holes changes a woman;” (Porter 85). The change from a genteel lift to one of harsh labor representing another type of death. She worked hard for years, foreshadowing the time she will no longer need to work. Consequently, since she familiarized herself with hard work, accepting that her death is effortless is very difficult for Mrs. Weatherall. In the end, nighttime draws near, and Porter uses the time of day to symbolize mortality; the end of day is not only passing so is Granny’s life. Similar to the candle beside her bed, Granny draws her last breath to blow out light of her own life. Just as day has its end, so does every
The two poems, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”, by Dylan Thomas and, “Because I Could Not Wait for Death”, by Emily Dickinson, we find two distinct treatments on the same theme, death. Although they both represent death, they also represent it as something other than death. Death brings about a variety of different feelings, because no two people feel the same way or believe the same thing. The fact that our faith is unknown makes the notion of death a common topic, as writers can make sense of their own feelings and emotions and in the process hope to make readers make sense of theirs too. Both Dickinson and Thomas are two well known and revered poets for their eloquent capture of these emotions. The poems both explore death and the
Many mothers, regardless of age or situation, share sympathetic life ideals. They all share the common goal of raising their children wholesome; they want to create an environment of love, nurture, and support for their children as well. A mother’s effort to implant good values in her children is perpetual; they remain optimistic and hope that their children would eventually become prosperous. However, some women were not fit to be mothers. Thus, two different roles of a mother are portrayed in As I Lay Dying written by William Faulkner. Faulkner uses the literary technique of first person narrative with alternating perspectives. By doing so, Faulkner adds authenticity and the ability to relate (for some) to the two characters Addie Bundren and Cora Tull. The first person narrative acts as an important literary technique because it allows the reader to experience the opposing views of Addie and Cora; they are both mothers who act as foils to each other because of their diverse opinions and outlooks on motherhood, religion and life.
John Donne will not accept death as the finale, his religious conviction supports in the belief of eternal life proceeding death. Throughout the poem Donne’s main purpose was the personification of death, his use of figurative language gave death humanistic characteristics and made death vulnerable and unintimidating. The structure of three quatrains and a couplet for the poem allowed for easier understanding of the context because the layout and rhyme scheme helped the poem flow and also revealed the tones. The imagery of death described by Donne breaks down death’s pride and bravado, as well as shine an encouraging light past the process of dying, on to the hope of delivery to eternal life. Each element played a significant role in the interpretation of the paradox of the poem, that ultimately death is not the universal destroyer of life.