Be Specific About About Books Wit
| Title | : | Wit |
| Author | : | Margaret Edson |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 85 pages |
| Published | : | March 29th 1999 by Faber & Faber (first published 1995) |
| Categories | : | Plays. Drama. Fiction. Theatre. Academic. School |
Margaret Edson
Paperback | Pages: 85 pages Rating: 4.21 | 12844 Users | 561 Reviews
Interpretation Toward Books Wit
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, and the Oppenheimer Award
Margaret Edson’s powerfully imagined Pulitzer Prize–winning play examines what makes life worth living through her exploration of one of existence’s unifying experiences—mortality—while she also probes the vital importance of human relationships.
What we as her audience take away from this remarkable drama is a keener sense that, while death is real and unavoidable, our lives are ours to cherish or throw away—a lesson that can be both uplifting and redemptive. As the playwright herself puts it, “The play is not about doctors or even about cancer. It’s about kindness, but it shows arrogance. It’s about compassion, but it shows insensitivity.”
In Wit, Edson delves into timeless questions with no final answers: How should we live our lives knowing that we will die? Is the way we live our lives and interact with others more important than what we achieve materially, professionally, or intellectually?
How does language figure into our lives? Can science and art help us conquer death, or our fear of it? What will seem most important to each of us about life as that life comes to an end?
The immediacy of the presentation, and the clarity and elegance of Edson’s writing, make this sophisticated, multilayered play accessible to almost any interested reader.
As the play begins, Vivian Bearing, a renowned professor of English who has spent years studying and teaching the intricate, difficult Holy Sonnets of the seventeenth-century poet John Donne, is diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. Confident of her ability to stay in control of events, she brings to her illness the same intensely rational and painstakingly methodical approach that has guided her stellar academic career.
But as her disease and its excruciatingly painful treatment inexorably progress, she begins to question the single-minded values and standards that have always directed her, finally coming to understand the aspects of life that make it truly worth living.
Margaret Edson’s powerfully imagined Pulitzer Prize–winning play examines what makes life worth living through her exploration of one of existence’s unifying experiences—mortality—while she also probes the vital importance of human relationships.
What we as her audience take away from this remarkable drama is a keener sense that, while death is real and unavoidable, our lives are ours to cherish or throw away—a lesson that can be both uplifting and redemptive. As the playwright herself puts it, “The play is not about doctors or even about cancer. It’s about kindness, but it shows arrogance. It’s about compassion, but it shows insensitivity.”
In Wit, Edson delves into timeless questions with no final answers: How should we live our lives knowing that we will die? Is the way we live our lives and interact with others more important than what we achieve materially, professionally, or intellectually?
How does language figure into our lives? Can science and art help us conquer death, or our fear of it? What will seem most important to each of us about life as that life comes to an end?
The immediacy of the presentation, and the clarity and elegance of Edson’s writing, make this sophisticated, multilayered play accessible to almost any interested reader.
As the play begins, Vivian Bearing, a renowned professor of English who has spent years studying and teaching the intricate, difficult Holy Sonnets of the seventeenth-century poet John Donne, is diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. Confident of her ability to stay in control of events, she brings to her illness the same intensely rational and painstakingly methodical approach that has guided her stellar academic career.
But as her disease and its excruciatingly painful treatment inexorably progress, she begins to question the single-minded values and standards that have always directed her, finally coming to understand the aspects of life that make it truly worth living.
Itemize Books In Favor Of Wit
| Original Title: | Wit : A Play |
| ISBN: | 0571198775 (ISBN13: 9780571198771) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1999) |
Rating About Books Wit
Ratings: 4.21 From 12844 Users | 561 ReviewsEvaluate About Books Wit
I was blown away by this play - it's incredibly short, but the emotional impact of it left me reeling for a very long time. It's the kind of play that's just as intellectual as it is emotional (and indeed, this is one of the key thematic discussions of the play).Wit is about an English professor, Dr. Vivian Bearing, who specializes in the obscure yet notoriously difficult subject of Donne's Holy Sonnets. The play chronicles her experiences as she struggles with the advanced stages of ovarianOkay, so we did Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike at my community theatre a month ago. One of my dearest friends played Cassandra, the crazy/awesome/psychic housekeeper, and halfway through the run the co-props designer brings up Wit. I'd never heard of it but he told me all about how it's basically carried by one actor, the lead woman, whose character is a cancer patient. There are other characters in and out, but she never leaves the stage (no intermission) and has probably 90% of the
A moving Pulitzer award-winning brilliant play by Margaret Edson (born 1961). A dying highly respected poetry professor specializing on John Donne works. The professor is diagnosed with stage 4 (there is no stage 5) ovarian cancer and she is expected to die in few days. The play chronicles her last few hours on earth. She is visited by her former professor who offers to read her a John Donne poem. She declines so her visitor pulls out a childrens book she just brought for her great-grandsons
I read this today at lunch because I forgot my Kindle at home. I knew the plot--I believe we watched the telefilm in my AP Lit course back when we covered John Donne--but it was still a sucker-punch of a play. Exquisitely written, achingly lonely and sad. The metaphors are so strong without feeling like they bash you over the head with it, which I really appreciated. In lesser hands, this could've been overly sentimental, or overly black-and-white, and perhaps in some ways it is; the characters
This is an astoundingly beautiful play. I literally loved everything about it--the characters, blocking, script, themes! I loved how central Donne's poetry is and the evaluation of hermeneutics and irony throughout the entire play. It's so multilayered with tiny nuances up for analysis! As someone who leans towards isolation and libraries over social interaction, I really identified with Vivian's voice, and she certainly gave me a lot to think about.
We are always scrambling for what gives our time meaning and how that relates with what gives our lives meaning. W;t captures all the scrambling. It exposes the truth that I feel in my gut--all this cleverness isn't taking clever people as far as they would like--and still we continue being clever.Vivian Bearing is a professor of English who teaches a the magnificently complex poetry of John Donne. She is diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer and tackles this challenge the same way she critical
It is definitely a great play. I was constantly thinking on Susan Sontag's Illness and its metaphor. This book is full of wisdom and thinking about life. Whether life is a coma or a semicolon, or it is a wit that's it. These are riddles for human kind, even linguists or literary scholars won't know the answer. It worths re-reading. And I'm thinking we are all the next.
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