Analysis of Wit
Wit is a play by Margaret Edson featuring Dr. Vivian Bearing the main character in the play. Vivian Bearing is a professor of English who studied and taught the sonnets of John Donne. Dr. Bearing is diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer at the age of 50. Dr. Bearing is in an experimental chemo treatment program where she has to take large doses of chemotherapy medication. During her hospital stay Dr. Bearing is taken to various tests where she is treated without any, warmth or compassion by the technicians performing these tests. Dr. Kelekian ,the oncologist in charge of the experimental chemotherapy treatment has Dr. Bearing as the main subject during “grand rounds”. Dr. Bearing is treated like a guinea pig by the students. During a flashback of her earlier life we found out Dr. Bearing had no time for family or friends, Dr. Bearing was more focused on achieving literate intelligence of John Donne sonnets. During these flashbacks it’s also noted that Dr. Bearing showed no compassion or kindness to the students. One student who grandmother died asked Professor Bearing for an extension of her paper, but Professor Bearing without offering any sympathy to the student refused to offer an extension for the paper. Bearing stated to the student “Do what you will but the paper is due when it is due”
Jason Posner a clinical fellow working with Dr. Kelekian was also a part of Professor Bearing medical team. Dr. Posner was also a former student of Professor Bearing but she does not remember him. Dr. Posner examines Professor Bearing. Dr. Posner sees The professor as a research project and seems to be annoyed when he has to get Susie the nurse to be at the bedside when he examines Professor Bearing, he states “got to have a girl here some crazy clinical rule”. Susie the nurse is the only person who shows kindness and sympathy to Professor Bearing, she asks Bearing if she would like her to call any one for her, she touches her to offer some comfort, she calls her sweetheart and she tries to advocate for her to persuade Dr. Posner to lower the dose of chemotherapy, he refuse to do so, because if the chemotherapy research is to be successful Professor Bearing have to receive the full doses of chemotherapy medication. Dr. Posner is very insensitive and lacks humanity when treating Professor Bearing.
During the final days of her life Professor Bearing realizes that the same compassion, kindness empathy and sympathy she lacked while teaching her students are the same qualities lacking in the hospital staff. She finally reaches out to Susie her nurse to receive that personal contact, and kindness that she avoided n in order to achieve her scholarly literacy achievements. In her final days she realizes that she should have treated her students with more respect, dignity, and kindness and that these qualities she lacked are more important than the success she achieves. Dr. Bearing should have shown more kindness to her colleagues and students.
Wit is described as intelligent humor . Professor Bearing and her medical team might be intelligent but there is nothing humorous about the care she received. This is an ironic and sad depiction of what might actually occur at some health facilities today.
SOCIOLOGY PAPER
America is the perfect representation of a cultural melting pot of the world. We are all sprinkled in ingredients to create a much-diversified food filled with multiple tastes and cultures. One of the biggest reasons that this is possible is through immigration. Immigration causes a family to move from their native lands to another place and that can put a strain on their culture’s customs and beliefs. To aide the family with this transition period, keepsakes and traditions are passed from generation to generation so that the youth don’t forget where they have come from. The attachment they feel to their family’s roots and the place they come from is extremely important for the continuation of heritage. Although these may become slightly modified over time to fit the place where the family lives, and some information may become lost, the seed is still planted deep within the family’s roots.
People from all over the world immigrate to America, their are many different reasons for leaving their birthplace, some fleeing from wars ,and persecution, and some because of poverty and wanting to make a better life for themselves and their children. New York is home to many people from different cultures and ethnicities. Our three respondents come from different countries that speak different languages, Spanish, Polish, and English.
Two of my respondents emigrated from the Caribbean and one from Europe. Our Polish respondent came to this country leaving most of her siblings in Poland and from our interview is not closely connected to her family back home. Our respondents from the Caribbean still spend some holidays together.
We noted from our interviews that the past is talked about frequently and mostly to the younger generation to warn and protect them from mishaps. We also noticed that religious holidays played a big part, and are celebrated in all three of our immigrant families and Thanksgiving is the only American holiday celebrated by all immigrant families. We noted that when immigrants come to the U.S they mostly focus on working first. None of our respondents attend college.
Also, throughout the centuries the definition of family and their structures have transgressed. A Family structure is based on the relationships and compositions that make up a family. From our interviews we can conclude that not everyone has the same family structure since we grow up in households with both parents, called a nuclear family as well as households with a single parent.
We can consider people feel attachments, and learn about their family roots and places they come from by listening to their parents/ grandparents talk about their past, way of living, and also by making dishes from traditional receipes , that their parents used to make when they were younger. This makes you feel attached and it makes you want to visit, research all about your ancestry. It is amazing how everybody has a different background and how they know all about it and that is because their families feel it is important for them to know and understand their “roots” and where they come from. People sometimes loose the sense of their origins by not talking about the past with their elders, and also by not going on traditional get-togethers where the family cooks, and talks about their experience and how things were in the past.
We believe people have different roots when living in a single parent family compared to living in a nuclear family, since you don’t have a strong communication with the other part of the family, you would not be able to go to get-togethers or ask your elders’ questions as you would have done with the parent/family you are living with. This can relate to a respondent in our group where the respondent didn’t have a strong bond with her father relatives since her grandparents died when she was six years old and didn’t get to spend that much time together.
Everyone in our families use keepsakes and traditions to help with the immigration from our native countries. Families may change, and locations may vary, but roots do not. Immigration is extremely important for experiencing different things while trying to make a life in a completely foreign place. It, therefore, may be difficult for families to keep their heritage and keepsakes, and customs make that easier. A family’s past is intertwined with their photos, journals, heirlooms, and culinary works and those make it easier for forthcoming generations to maintain that same sense of pride and identity throughout time. And although these may change slightly, they are still extremely strong attachment to the roots of the family and there is always a sense of ‘home.’
