From the picture in the front cover of the book "a cancer patient, we might think this is a story about cancer. But actually this play is not about doctors, cancers, how the patient is fighting for life all that, it's about the kindness and compassions by showing as well arrogance and insensitivity, it's about the importance of human relationships. How should we live our lives knowing that we will die? Is the way we live our lives and interact with others more important than what we achieve materially, professionally, or intellectually? What will seem most important to each of us about life as that life comes to an end? .
As the play begins, Vivian Bearing, a renowned professor of English who has spent years studying and teaching the intricate, difficult Holy Sonnets of the .
seventeenth-century poet John Donne, found out that she has advanced ovarian cancer. Confident of her ability to stay in control of events, she brings to her illness the same intensely rational and painstakingly methodical approach that has guided her stellar academic career. But as her disease and its excruciatingly painful treatment progress, she begins to question the single-minded values and standards that she always follows, finally coming to understand the aspects of life that make it truly worth living.
I think the character Professor Bearing has a pretty accomplished and successful life. She is confident in her area, she has a PHD degree, she is really well educated, she has all the respects from her students and other people. But in the other hand she is not that confident in dealing with relationships with other people. She thinks other people are not that important to her life, she does not necessarily need other people. We know that she is single; she doesn't have a family and kids at 48 years of age. She doesn't have many friends. When she was in college, she never go out or have a social life, she spent all her time in library.