Reading Response - Essay Example

REVIEW OF THE PLAY WIT The play by Margaret Edson is an intriguing story that tries to uncover the lie behind fossil truths. When a truth is so old it seizes to be a truth and changes to a lie (Ibsen 1849). The truth especially is disastrous if the whole of the society sees it as true. In the play ‘Wit’ the protagonist, Vivian bearing is used as a tool of exposing the old fossil lie that intellectualism triumphs over kindness. Vivian Bearing is first shown as a hard, unemotional woman who craves for intellectual distinction.

She occasionally reads the complex sonnets of John Donne and tries to get their deep meaning. She expects everyone to be intellectually blessed and does not tolerate anything less than intellectual distinction. She threatens her class that one who is not fit to perform the work prescribed should leave the university. She is also very unkind and dare I say callous. She does not show pity for the student who loses her grandmother and instead offers a cold shoulder by not extending deadlines for the student.

She however is hit by the shock of her life when she is told that she has ovarian cancer. This cancer, known to kill 90% of the people infected with it shakes proud Vivian to her core. In search for knowledge she agrees to be given an excessively overdose of chemotherapy. She studies about the cancer and she is then used as an experimental specimen (all this for knowledge). The quest for knowledge exceeds her love for life and this has detrimental results. Living with the ovarian cancer shows her the failures of her life.

The complexities and search for knowledge she concludes must not triumph over humanity. At her deathbed she is asked if she wants to listen to a Holy poem by John Donne but instead she refuses and is happy when a child story is read to her. This shows that at last she learns that simplicity is the order of being kind and lovingThe play therefore, portrays the picture that kindness and love will always triumph over intellectualism. The play wishes to correct the compact majority that see intellectual abilities a worthier virtue than kindness.

The contemporary society today has the view that intelligence is everything. However, the play shows us that even though Vivian had the mind of a Greek god, she did not find the happiness that she craved for without love and kindness. The play also puts up a lesson that nobody is special and that also the intellectually endowed can bend on their knees and crave for kindness. Her transformation to a kinder woman and a loving one is gradual. She accepts her situation and from this realization she is able to forge ahead in her life.

The play therefore, manages successfully to expose the lie, which has for centuries been cropping up. It has helped ease the pressure on the society and managed to show them that the intellectually blessed without kindness are nothing. The play is a true reflection of the society, and as Margaret Edson said in an interview with CNN all she did when writing the play was to listen to daily conversations. The coldness of the medical profession is also put into place. The Doctors, for example, Justin, are emotionally detached to their patients.

This brings about a conflict in which the doctors completely misunderstand the emotional needs of the patients. Traumatic experiences and experience of death in their hands makes the doctors see the world in different dimensions. However, this should not be the case because we see a nurse calling a patient sweetheart (Vivian is called sweetheart by a nurse, something that she could not think of years ago). This rightly concludes that kindness triumphs over intellectualism. BIBLIOGRAPHYIbsen. K (1849) AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.

Belmont: Norway