WIT BY MARGARET EDSON

Vivian’s Journey From Conceit to Humility
Death levels the playing field. No one can escape the finality of its mighty grip. We live life at
best without worry, at worst with the continual knowledge that death hovers out before us
with an inevitability that can haunt and cause trepidation, if we so allow.
Thesis:
As the story unfolds, the audience observes Vivian as she moves from living as an
isolated professor of 17th century poetry, full of wit and conceit, to one of compassion and
understanding, and perhaps even kindness.
Topic Sentence:
Edson’s play is not a linear story but rather one that moves back and forth in Vivian’s life
covering moments when she is very young and learning the use of language through her college
and professorial years.
Supporting Quote:
VIVIAN: …I liked that one best.
MR. BEARING: (Disinterested but tolerant, never distracted from his newspaper.)
Read another.
VIVIAN: …It is said that the effects of eating too much lettuce is sopor—sop—or
What is that word?
MR. BEARING:
Sound it out.
VIVIAN:
Sop— or— i —fic. Soporific. What does that mean.
Riggs – 2
MR. BEARING:
Soporific. Causing sleep…What makes you sleepy?
VIVIAN:
Aahh — nothing…What about you?
MR. BEARING:
What has a soporific effect on me? Let me think: boring conversations, I suppose, after
dinner.
VIVIAN:
Me too, boring conversations.
MR. BEARING:
Carry on.
Topic Sentence:
Ashford can see her prized student’s over-study, maybe even her lack of human interaction that
might enlighten Vivian, if she would just let go, relax, and refresh her mind. Vivian’s response
to Ashford’s suggestion?
Supporting Quote:
VIVIAN:
I, ah, went outside. The sun was very bright. I, ah, walked on the lawn, talking about
nothing, laughing. The insuperable barrier between one thing and another is … just a comma.
Simple human truth, uncompromising scholarly standards? They’re connected? I just could’nt…
I went back to the library.
Both of these scenes help to create the Vivian Bearing we see first in the play as she cannot
quite get her mind around the fact that she has ovarian cancer, stage four. It is from this point
on that Vivian’s awareness begins to change. She moves from this behavior of conceit into a
more human and vulnerable state as the treatments and the cancer take a toll on her body.
Topic Sentence:
Vivian sees John Donne’s metaphysical studies as abstract when she is forced to sit and wait for
a technician to finish his break in order to perform another test on her dying body.
Riggs – 3
Supporting Quote:
VIVIAN:
…I have always particularly liked that poem. In the abstract. Now I find the image of
“my minute’s last point” a little too, shall we say, pointed.
Topic Sentence:
Throughout the play the viewer comes to understand that even Dr. Kelekian and E.M. Ashford,
two “scholars” dealing in the abstraction of cancer and 17th Century poetry have been able to
straddle both worlds to live comfortably socially as well as professionally.
Supporting Quote:
VIVIAN.
(Quickly.) Now is not the time for verbal swordplay, for unlikely flights of imagination
and wildly shifting perspectives, for metaphysical conceit, for wit…now is the time for
simplicity. Now is the time for, dare I say it, kindness…The time for extreme measures has
come. I am in terrible pain. Susie says that I need to begin aggressive pain management if I am
going to stand it.
“It”: such a little word. In this case, I think “it” signifies “being alive.”
Topic Sentence:
Vivian’s life of conceit is finished when the word soporific reappears as morphine is sent
through Vivian’s IV tubes.
Supporting Quote:
VIVIAN:
…I trust this will have a soporific effect.
SUSIE:
Well, I don’t know about that, but is sure makes you sleepy.
The following directional text reveals a new side to Vivian, one that is caring and more human
than before. Instead of ridicule, there is laughter and love shared between caregiver and
patient.
Directional Text:
(This strikes Vivian as delightfully funny, She starts to giggle, then laughs out loud. Susie
doesn’t get it.)
SUSIE:
Riggs – 4
What?
VIVIAN:
Oh! It’s that — “Soporific” means “makes you sleepy.”
SUSIE:
It does?
VIVIAN:
Yes. (Another fit of laughter)
SUSIE: (Giggling.)
Well, that was pretty dumb —
VIVIAN:
No! No, no! It was funny.
SUSIE. (Starting to catch on.)
Yeah, I guess so. (Laughing.) In a dumb sort of way. (This set them both off laughing
again.) I never would have gotten it. I’m glad you explained it.
Vivian. (Simply)
I’m a teacher.
Topic Sentence:
Vivian’s journey from conceit to human awareness of love and compassion is found through the
pain of eight cycles of advanced chemotherapy that in turn causes Vivian great pain and
eventual death.
Supporting Death comes to us all, a brief pause at the end of one’s life, and then “comma”
death is no more. What is on the other side awaits every human being, and whether there is
conceit as to what is there becomes irrelevant in the end. In the end, there is no room for
conceit. There is only the human existence until it is no more. Each person on earth will face
death on their own. Each will take Vivian’s journey to where Death shall be no more.