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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the date of the sonnet Vivian recites when she imagines she is teaching?

2. What did a lot of the students think of Vivian, according to Jason?

3. What level of fluids does Jason tell Vivian to push for each day?

4. How does Vivian say some would describe her in everything she has done?

5. What question is Vivian asked every year by a student?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is Vivian trying to think of when she reminisces about her interactions with students?

2. What is Salvation Anxiety?

3. What is the parallel between Vivian and Jason's careers?

4. Why does Vivian feel her recitation of Donne is “wrong” in her last coherent lines?

5. Why does Vivian think of herself as “just the specimen jar?”

6. Why is it significant that someone always asked Vivian why Donne made his sonnets so complicated?

7. Why does Jason simplify the explanation of Vivian's kidney function?

8. Why is Vivian unable to explain to the audience what she is going through before she receives morphine?

9. Why is Vivian given a morphine drip instead of patient-controlled analgesic?

10. What two options did Vivian have when a student's comment contained an insightful seed? What were the possible consequences of each?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Define characterization. Give at least one example of each type of characterization used in Wit to describe Vivian. Write a brief character biography of Vivian.

Essay Topic 2

Define theme. Identify one theme of the play. How does Edson express this theme throughout the play? What point is she trying to make through this theme?

Essay Topic 3

Explain the importance of John Donne to the play. What role does Donne play in the story? What is Vivian's relationship with Donne? What is the parallel between Donne's works and Vivian's experience with cancer?

(see the answer keys)

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