1. Vivian is an educated and intellectual professor. She is very perceptive of her surroundings and questions things she does not understand. Her classes are very rigorous but she is dedicated to teaching and wants to see her students succeed. I would probably want her as my teacher because I know that although she is hard I would learn a lot.
2. Although the beginning does not directly state what the doctors think about her stage four cancer you can detect and undercurrent of sorrow towards Vivian. The doctors want do not seem to think that stage four can be cured but the have hope. Vivian can tell that the chemo she will be undergoing will not help her. She knows that she will probably die soon, but she wants to be tough.
4. Irony is a technique where words convey the opposite meaning of the literal meaning. The poems by Donne through out the play are examples of irony. He writes about people being afraid of Salvation when Salvation is supposed to free you of all your sins. An example of irony in my life is
3. The scene shows her fifth birthday. Normally you would expect a five year old to get toys and have fun, but instead she got books that were given to her to increase her learning. Her father wants her to be smart, it is clearly seen when he tells her to say the word over and over- he then tells her what it means. By doing this as a child, Vivian has always wanted to learn more and continue expanding her knowledge.
5. After being in the hospital Vivian realizes that language is not a defense against anything that she is going through. Her use of vocabulary will never help her fight the cancer; the only thing that can save her is chemotherapy. Vivian is being straightforward but sarcastic at the same time. She does not literally mean that words will save her, but since it’s the only thing that she truly knows then vocabulary is her only defense.
6. As a professor she has had power over all of her students and herself-until now. When she says, “Once I did the teaching, now I am taught” she realizes that she does not know herself anymore. She once taught students about themselves and who they were as researches; now she is being taught about herself. By loosing power over herself, she now questions herself.
7. Vivian is isolated because her cancer treatments imperiled her health. Since the Chemo killed many cells in her body that prevent infection she is more susceptible to illness and therefore has to be keep by herself. She is also isolated mentally. She keeps a distance between herself and the people around her because she is afraid of kindness.
8. Donne’s poetry talks about salvation and those that are too afraid to realize that God will forgive for their sins. As a cancer patient she realizes that unlike those people in Donne’s poems, she should not be afraid of death. Instead like her attitude towards the study of Donne she takes the cancer straight on. She wants to kind out all she can about the thing that causes her illness. When confronting her own death she happily goes towards the light.
10. No I do not think that Dr. Ashford is trying to say that scholars can not be sincere; I believe that she is saying that there are certain ways to go about being sincere but Vivian did not so so. Vivian began with being sincere, but the professor wanted her to be more scholarly- make a contribution to knowledge. While describing the sonnet to Vivian Dr. Ashford shows that the use of commas through out the sonnet differentiates between sentimentality and emotion. She tries to tell Vivian that researchers show the truth and that they do not put their emotions into it; they show the literature’s emotion. This shows that Vivian will take emotion out of her life and be tough, which is seen when she is diagnosed with cancer. At the time the difference between her and her mentor are that she cares about emotion while the professor cares about the truth. No Dr. Ashford seems to be more human then Vivian does. This is seen when she comes to visit Vivian in the hospital and reads her a book.
11. Both Jason and Vivian are both very thorough and as her doctor would say, they both have an ”excellent command of detail”. Vivian definitely recognizes her similarities with Jason when Dr. Kelekian says that Jason pays close attention to detail. She responds by thinking, “I taught him you know…”. From talking to Jason she reassesses her life. She wonders why exactly she chose Donne instead of Shakespeare, just like why Jason chose cancer instead of heart transplants. Vivian taught Jason how to be thorough and realize that when ”it comes down to it; research is just trying to quantify the complications of the puzzle”.
12. She is also uncomfortable when she is being wheeled around by the technicians in the hospital. She is uncomfortable because she has no idea where she is going or what exactly the next step of her chemo will do to her-she has to relearn. Being “uncomfortable with kindness” stems from her relationship with Dr. Ashford and her research on Donne. With Dr. Ashford she was taught to not let emotion get in the way of her success.
13. Jason respects Vivian because her believed her to the best teacher he has ever had. She pushed him and made him think more then any other teacher he had. In the being conversation with Vivian, he seems to be sincere, answering her questions while telling the truth. At the end of the play when Vivian is dead we see another side to him. Instead of being sincere we see that the only thing he cares about is research. Instead of letting her die like she wants he tries to resuscitate her because she is “research”.
15. If she was to finish her first sentence I think she would use the word regret. Regret, because the student asked for an extension on her paper and she said no. She remembers that at one time she was the student- full of emotion and kindness. She also remembers that her teacher, Dr. Ashford, gave her an extension on a paper that she completely messed up.
16. Susie has pity for Vivian and only wants to help her in a motherly way. Susie pities Vivian because she has not had any visitors and seems to be all alone in the world, struggling with an illness that she will not survive. I think Susie although not as smart as the doctors or Vivian in an intellectual way, is smart in her “work ethic way”. She knows what she has to do and she gets it done without any problems.
17. Susie’s approach to Vivian is much different then the doctors approach to Vivian. Instead of “beating around the bush” she tells Vivian what will really happen to her; she will die. In a way Susie is innocent. She in innocent in way that she does not look at things and have to know about them, i.e., she never has to research anything. Vivian began by viewing Susie as annoyance because she had kindness, but as the play progressed she began to like Susie because of her kindness.
19. The ethics behind this are both right and wrong. They are right because the results will go toward the endearment of the scientific community; it will allow doctors to fix the formula so that one day they can really cure cancer. The ethics are wrong because they have to use an actually person who would rather not die. No it does not make it excusable but that is the way the world works. No, because she new all along that she would possible die from having stage four ovarian cancers. Therefore she acts tough and does not let it bother her.
21. By discussing the play, the author allows Vivian to stand back and look at her death at a different perspective. Donne’s “mercy” is the forgiveness that God gives us when we are sorry for our sins. Vivian could use the word towards the doctors- forgiving them for using her as research. This is seen through out the play when she never gets angry about the treatment not working.
23. Yes, I think that this is a fair assessment of Donne’s work. The student has looked at the poem thoroughly and thought about it and what he comes up with is a fair assessment. After all there is no right answer to literature, only the author knows what he is saying. Vivian like the characters in Donne’s work hides behind her wit and intelligence-she is uncomfortable by kindness. Vivian is afraid of being normal; she wants people to take her for an intellectual. Her running away separates her from others so that she can never connect on a personal level with them.
24. The play in called “Wit” because she hides behind her wit. She also deals with Donne that used wit through out his poems. For me when I think of wit, I think of someone that is funny and comes up with crude remarks very fast. If this play were to be called something else I believe it would be called Comma, because in the poetry the commas emphasize emotion and emotion is a major component of this play.
25. “Salvation Anxiety” is about when a sinner who is remorseful of his actions realizes that, by God, he is “promised Salvation” but he is too afraid that he will not get saved. No I do not think that Vivian suffers from Salvation Anxiety because in the end she makes peace and goes toward the light. Yes Vivian suffers from an overweening intellect. This is seen when she has to continuously go back and learn everything that she does not know and analyzing poetry. Dramatics is manifested when she has to continuously go over recite and analyze poetry and their meanings over and over again.
26. The play views the body and soul as two different things. She initially believes that her body is one with her soul but after the doctors make her research she begins to think differently. She soon finds that her body is research and that her soul is for herself personally. This is seen during the seen when she dies; her body is still on “earth” as research and her soul exits her body and goes to Heaven.
28. It relates to research because it is a way to “quantify the complications of the puzzle.” Therefore scientists are trying to determine how illnesses happen and how to cure them. At the same time the scientists realize that even though they may save somebody, that person may die by something else the next day. The same can be said for an academic community as for a scientific community. They both have to analyze what is going on around them so they can solve the problem.
29. She reverts back to the punctuation because it shows emotion and explains the poem. Vivian does this because she realizes that emotion and kindness are good attributes in life and to not block them out. She says “I’m sorry” because she no longer knows how to analyze the poem with an emotional point of view. She has hidden emotion for so long that once she has it she does not know how to use it.
30. She is talking about Vivian and her relationship with emotion and hiding behind her wit and intelligence for so long. Like the bunny running away from his loving mother, Vivian tries to run away from salvation. That no matter how far away she runs from death or God, he will always find her. Dr. Ashford said this because he knew that Vivian was dead that she was finally at rest. Dr. Ashford believes that the anxiety in the book is important to show Vivian so that it will put her at ease about being saved by God. It’s ironic that the person that told Vivian to no care about emotion is reading her a book full of emotion.
