Wit Chapter Summary & Analysis - Detailed Summary & Analysis Summary

Summary

As the play opens, Vivian Bearing walks onto the stage. She is wearing two hospital gowns, a hospital identification bracelet and a baseball cap, as she tows an IV pole behind her. She begins by warmly greeting the audience, feigning familiarity, asking several random strangers how they are doing today. She tells the audience that ironically she gets this question more often now, "How are you feeling today?"

Vivian, who is a fifty-year old woman with stage four ovarian cancer, has been asked this question during every degrading painful aspect that comes with her disease. She never quite knows how to answer the simple question so she merely replies, "Fine." As a professor of poetry, with a specialization in the holy sonnets of John Donne, Vivian is concerned with the ironic significance of the casual question. She wishes that she could fully exploit this opportunity and deliver a magnificent lecture...
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