63 pages • 2 hours read
Margaret EdsonWit
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1995A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Scenes 11-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Scene 11 Summary
The play flashes back to Vivian, once again in full form, standing in front of a classroom of students. She singles one out and asks him to identify the principal poetic device of one of Donne’s sonnets. Vivian is demanding, sarcastic, and a little insulting—she tells the student that the answer has “nothing to do with football” and insists he excuse himself from class because he is so unprepared (59). She pauses to defend her harshness to the audience, saying she was teaching the student a lesson, before turning back to the classroom. One of her students pipes up and says she thinks Donne’s poems are complicated because “he’s scared, so he hides […] behind this wit” (60).
Vivian turns to the audience and says that the student has found the kernel of a brilliant idea. Vivian now has two choices: she can take over the discussion or let the student continue. Vivian encourages the student to continue exploring her thought. The student tries to explain why she thinks Donne is running away from simple answers, but her logic eventually “self-destruct[s]” as Vivian predicts (61). Vivian gives her students little leeway, which the audience sees when she denies another student a paper extension due to his grandmother’s death. But now that Vivian is nearing the end of her life, she begins to feel conflicted about her behavior.
Scene 12 Summary
Vivian returns to her bed. She wants Susie to come visit her, so she creates a minor emergency by pinching one of her IV lines closed. An alarm goes off and Susie rushes in, apologizing for waking Vivian up. Vivian tells Susie she was already awake, and Susie asks Vivian what is bothering her (64). Vivian tells Susie she has been having doubts. Susie reassures Vivian that fighting cancer is tough, and when Vivian insists that she loves challenges, Susie reminds her that cancer treatment is different because it is outside Vivian’s control.
Vivian begins to cry, telling Susie that she used to feel so sure, but does not “feel sure of [herself] anymore” (66). Susie comforts her by bringing Vivian a Popsicle, and as Vivian eats it, Susie starts explaining the seriousness of Vivian’s condition to her. While the treatment has successfully made Vivian’s original tumors shrink, new tumors have begun popping up around her body. Susie asks Vivian to think about her “code status” and what she wants to happen if her heart stops. Vivian has two options: she can be revived, or she can choose to be “no code” or “DNR,” which stands for “do not resuscitate” (67). Susie says she wanted to talk to Vivian about her options before Jason and Kelekian did because they believe “anything’s okay, as long as life continues” (68). While Vivian says she understands the doctors’ need to “know more things,” she decides to go “no code” as long as Susie agrees to take care of her (68).
As Susie leaves the room, Vivian sits upright and rages and, in a surprising burst of energy, rages against her mortality. Vivian feels her “brain dulling” even as she discusses her life and death, and while Vivian loves complexity, she knows now is the time for simplicity and kindness (69). She admits that she hoped being smart would be enough to save her, but Vivian’s condition has now spiraled outside of everyone’s control. For the first time in the play, Vivian admits that she’s scared of what comes next.
Scene 13 Summary
Vivian drifts to sleep and reawakens in terrible pain. She tells the audience she wants to explain exactly how she feels, but she is running out of time. Instead, Vivian settles on being direct and says, “It hurts like hell. It really does” (70). Susie reenters the scene and comforts Vivian as she writhes in pain; she reassures Vivian that she has called Kelekian, so he can prescribe pain medicine. Kelekian and Jason enter Vivian’s room and ask if she is in pain despite her obvious distress. Vivian sits up and tells the audience that she “did not know there could be such pain on this earth” as Kelekian orders Vivian a morphine drip (71). As her medical team leaves the stage, Vivian apologizes to the audience because the end is coming “quickly, after taking so long” (72).
Scenes 11-13 Analysis
These scenes compare Vivian at the height of her impressive intellectual powers to Vivian of the present, who has begun to fade. As a professor, Vivian is exacting and almost cruel. She pushes her students to carefully analyze Donne’s poetry, though she admits that she finds them incapable of doing so. When her students struggle, she criticizes their efforts instead of supporting them, and when one student surprises Vivian with a “perspicacious remark,” Vivian offers little guidance (61). Instead, she asks the student to continue her explanation until the student inevitably “self-destruct[s]” in confusion (62). Vivian is a demanding professor, which earned her students’ respect but not their affection. In an ironic turn of events, Vivian now finds herself in her students’ position. Her body is the one “being taught” by Jason, and he offers her little comfort during her struggle (37). Vivian’s illness has given her more clarity about the value of kindness, and she emotionally struggles with how poorly she treated her students.
Additionally, her student’s observation that fear makes Donne hide behind his wit helps readers understand Vivian’s character, too. Vivian prides herself on her intelligence, which has brought her considerable success. By the time readers meet Vivian, she is a preeminent Donne scholar, has published her work in journals and books, and (as Jason puts it) is the “head of everything” (74). Vivian’s intelligence—her wit—is her armor, and she could always rely on it to help her navigate the world around her. But even Vivian’s incredible brain cannot solve the problem of her cancer, and as the disease progresses, it takes her wit from her. It is only then that Vivian can admit that she is scared, and she begins reaching out to those around her for emotional support as she faces her mortality.
Vivian’s wit is not the only thing cancer takes from her. The more ill Vivian becomes, the more she loses her autonomy, or her ability to make independent decisions. When Vivian enters treatment, she knowingly cedes much of her autonomy to her doctors, whom she trusts to take care of her. And yet, her doctors do not think of her as a whole person; rather, they think of her only in terms of her disease. Her doctors make decisions to treat her cancer without considering what is best for Vivian as a person, and as Vivian’s cancer progresses, Vivian becomes less able to advocate for herself. Thus, audiences watch helplessly as Vivian is stripped of her autonomy by her doctors and her cancer. Only Susie intervenes on Vivian’s behalf. In an act of extreme compassion, she helps Vivian make one last decision about her life: she gives Vivian the freedom to decide how she dies. Her DNR order lets Vivian regain a bit of freedom—and the humanity—cancer has stolen from her.
