Wit's Conclusion-lacking Analysis

With the time limit in class, I was barely able to finish my last body paragraph before we had to be done, so if you're looking for a conclusion, you won't find anything.


In Margaret Edson's Wit, the audience is shown the life and death of Professor Vivian Bearing, who is diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. Her gradual physical degeneration is recorded quite closely as she struggles to come to terms with her illness; however, it is not until the final scenes of the play that the audience begins to see the true meaning of the play. near the very end, Vivian's mentor, Professor Ashford, visits her in the hospital and reads to her, of all things, a simple children's book called The Runaway Bunny. In the story, a young bunny wants to run away, but whenever he tries, his mother is always there to find him again. Professor Ashford makes an offhand comment on the story, saying "A little allegory of the soul. Wherever he hides, God shall find him." This comment's innocuousness hides the fact that it allows the audience to see that the play Wit is just that: an allegory for Vivian's soul.
When reading through the play with this in mind, the first question that arises is to the identity of the mother/God figure in the play. There are, in fact, several figures in Wit who each fulfill a role as the mother in Vivian's life allegory. The first, and arguably most obvious, choice would be Professor Ashford. She was Vivian's mentor, and so the role of mother she fulfills is the figure who helps Vivian realize her life's calling. Much like how, in The Runaway Bunny, the young bunny eventually realizes where his life truly lies, Vivian's interactions with Professor Ashford allow her to see the best path she can take for her future.
The second figure in this story of Vivian's soul his Susie, her nurse. In the children's book, the bunny wishes to run away and avoid his mother, and similarly, Vivian tries to distance herself from Susie and maintain a cold, intellectual, emotionally disconnected attitude toward the nurse; but again, like the bunny, in the end all she desires is the kindness that Susie offers her. Susie fulfills the mother's role by first giving Vivian something she wishes to avoid, then slowly coaxes the dying professor into accepting it. More evidence of this can be found through the use of music in the film adaptation of Wit. Through the first half of the play, there is very little background music, and what music is there is sudden and jarring, much like Vivian's first experiences in the hospital. However, once she begins to shed her intellectual and distant mindset, soft music begins to play as finally, Vivian accepts the kindness Susie wishes to give her.
The final figure is not so much a mother figure as it is a God figure, as Professor Ashford's comment compares the mother too. This figure is both the most sinister and most poignant: Vivian's cancer. While the terminal illness is by no means a merciful god or a herald of kindness, it fulfills the mother's role by bringing Vivian to acceptance of her life and fate. Vivian tries as hard as she can through the play to ignore her cancer, ignore everything that invades her little world of teaching Donne, in the end, she begins to understand that her cancer cannot be avoided, and through that self-realization, finds peace.


Like I said, there's no conclusion, and one thing I've found is that I'm really bad at conclusions, so I'd probably have to work on it before I actually wrote the thing.