The Importance Of Power In Margaret Edson's Play Wit

The Search for One’s Prerogative to Power How would one go about proving oneself; proving he/she is worthy of respect and attention? Students listen to their teachers, interns listen to their supervisors, employees listen to their bosses. In our society today, there is an order; an order in which the members of this society regulate importance and classify superiority. In Margaret Edson’s play, Wit, the characters are not only trying to find their place in this societal order, but they are actively trying to fight their way to the top; to achieve the most knowledge and most power. Wit carefully exemplifies the importance of one’s knowledge and power in order to flourish over another character. In the opening scene of Wit, Vivian Bearing …show more content…
Kelekian makes a lasting impact on both Professor Bearing as well as the audience. Being the same age as Bearing, Kelekian too has made quite the name for himself as chief of oncology in the hospital. Education, being debatably the greatest source of power expressed in this play. In Kelekian and Bearing’s brief conversation covering the details of Bearings diagnosis, the audience gets a better idea of just how educated these two individuals really are. However, how do you compare a Doctor of Philosophy to a Doctor of Medicine? Linguistically, they are speaking of two different things. It makes a different kind of sense across disciplines. In this case, two well-known and well educated persons are in a battle to dominate; an idea well expressed through the overlapping thoughts of Bearing as Kelekian is speaking. Both individuals are attempting to prove oneself to the other. In her work, “Critical Essay on Wit,” Joyce Hart analyzes the hostility among characters in an effort to show the audience what not to do and how not to be, in a witty technique. One of Hart’s examples of this “meanness” is in the conversation between Kelekian and Bearing as mentioned above. Hart