Smith is a Ph.D. specializing in American literature and creative writing. In the following essay, Smith discusses how elements of humor, dramatic irony, and the conceits of metaphysical poetry lead to redemption in Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play.
Vivian Bearing is a witty yet (as she admits in her opening lines) "unwitting accomplice" in search of her own life. The paradox is that she has to die to find it. She doesn't have long to live. Her fifty-year-old body is making a courageous last stand against advanced ovarian cancer, but the heroics of her campaign against the double onslaught of drugs and disease is more than matched by the battle she wages on the metaphysical field.
The dramatic irony and poetic truth of Margaret Edson's play Wit builds around the sense that her heroine (hke Dorothy.....
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