Characterization : Vivian

(Edson 12)

Vivian: I have cancer, insidious cancer, with pernicious side effects-no treatment has pernicious

side effect.’

Vivian doesn’t know how to treat the real world issues well. After she is being informed having

stage four metastatic ovarian cancer, she treats her cancer as an academic matter. She lists her

academic credentials and encourages herself of stating she is an expert on John Donne who talks

about life and death in great detail in his Holy Sonnets. She assumes herself is consequently an

expert on life and death too. She uses ‘tough’ and ‘uncompromising’ to describe herself to show

that she is mentally and physically strong enough to face her cancer and receive the

chemotherapy. She doesn’t understand that a stage 4 cancer is not easily treated and being tough

and uncompromising actually can’t help much in her case.

(Edson 14-15)

This conversation reveals that Vivian focuses too much on academic but neglect to enjoy her life

as a human .This exchange takes place in a flashback to Vivian’s university days as a student of

E. M. Ashford, a famous scholar of John Donne. They are discussing a paper Vivian has written

on a Donne sonnet, and E. M. has told Vivian to rewrite the paper, as the version of the poem

Vivian used made the lines she was analysing in an over melodramatic way. E. M. wants Vivian

to see the line about death and life as not just an abstraction or “metaphysical conceit” of “wit,”

but as “truth.” She wants Vivian to feel and consider the truth of Donne’s point in her own life,
not just an essay. As he says ‘Don’t go back to the library. Go out. Enjoy yourself with your

friends.’ Vivian is having a stage 4 cancer and will die very soon. E.M. Ashford wants her to

treasure her last moment of her life more than writing paper again in the library so he encourages

her to find her friends to enjoy her life.