Gibson biography the miracle worker

Toggle navigation. Sign Up. Sign In. This Study Guide consists of approximately 63 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Miracle Worker. Get The Miracle Worker from Amazon. View the Study Pack. View the Lesson Plans. Author Biography. Plot Summary.

Sign Up. Sign In. William Gibson Biography. This Biography consists of approximately 5 pages of information about the life of William Gibson. Get William Gibson from Amazon. Helen has eaten from her own plate. With a spoon. And folded her napkin. Helen throws a fit at being left alone with Annie, then subsides exhausted. That done, Helen is put to bed, and a striking stage setting ends Act Two: each of the Kellers is picked out by a shaft of moonlight, listening as Annie sings a lullaby to the unhearing Helen.

Annie begs for another week, but the Kellers, seeing the improvements but not the gap left to close, refuse. Annie insists on keeping Helen until six, the official deadline, but as the time dwindles we see the harrowing effect of the ordeal on Annie. Helen will not give or receive affection and shows no signs, even as Annie desperately spells more words into her hands, of moving past fingergames to the universe of language and communication.

Returned to her family, Helen acts up at dinner, and the family indulges her despite their assurances to Annie that they would not. Helen throws a pitcher of water on Annie, and Annie grabs up Helen and the pitcher and stalks out, vowing to make Helen refill the pitcher. The Captain angrily rises to go out and fire Annie, but James, the sarcastic idler, shows he has understood Annie by going to the door and resolutely standing up to his father, who despite his anger is finally impressed with his son.

Annie calls out, and the scene is joined by the Kellers, the servants, and their children. The onlookers withdraw, leaving Annie and Helen alone onstage. He is loving and kindly with Annie, but he can also be stern when necessary. Aunt Ev is a talkative woman who often tries to be helpful, but who can be a bit intrusive. She sometimes oversteps her place as a visitor in the Keller household and at one point even threatens to take matters into her own hands.

Together they are like sisters: excited, lively, and loving. They also give Annie a doll to give to Helen. Keller is a newspaper publisher who possesses much power, both in the business world and in his own home. Nothing is done and no decisions are made in the Keller household without his consent. When Annie first arrives on the scene, Keller is extremely skeptical of her abilities, especially because of her young age.

Helen, the recipient of the miracle that is worked in the play, is the six-and-a-half year old daughter of Kate and Arthur who is left deaf and blind after a serious illness as an infant. Her struggle to communicate and relate to the world around her necessitates the arrival of Annie to the Keller household. Despite her handicaps, Helen is a girl of exceptional intellect and cleverness, but it is her lack of restraint that leaves her thrashing around the world in which she lives without any focus or discipline.

Annie tries to get Helen to connect the hand symbols that she teaches her with the world around her. At the climax of the play, this connection is finally made with a substance that Helen remembers from a time in her infancy prior to her illness, namely water. With all of the. When Annie arrives he is at first skeptical but eventually becomes one of her strongest supporters.

She is patient and gentle with Helen, but when Annie arrives Kate must learn that it is sometimes necessary to use force while trying to teach her daughter. Percy is a young African-American child who seems to be a bit younger than Martha. An African-American man who is a servant who helps with some of the heaviest labor around the Keller household.

This servant has no lines in the play, and serves mainly to help change the set and move the large and weighty items that Viney, Percy, and Martha cannot move themselves. She first appears while she is still at the Perkins Institution for the Blind, where she has lived as a pupil since she was a child. Everything that she has learned, including the sign language that she later uses with Helen, she has learned at Perkins.

At the age of twenty, Annie takes her first step out of the Perkins Institution and into her adult life. From the first moment that she enters the Keller household, Annie is met with skepticism and doubt, mostly because of her young age and lack of experience. This, however, does not deter her from what she feels must be done. The other characters in the play also offer their own challenges to Annie.

It is only through clever manipulation that Annie is able to bide time until she can successfully prove herself to him. The character who has the most direct effect on Annie throughout the play, however, is her own conscience, represented by the Offstage Voices. The most powerful of them all is the voice of her younger brother, Jimmie, whose death Annie blames on herself.

Gibson biography the miracle worker

Viney, an African-American woman, is a servant in charge of the daily housework and meals in the Keller household. She is cheerful, practical, and very adept at her job. It is difficult for Viney to know what to do with Helen and how to communicate with her. In simplest terms, The Miracle Worker is the story of how one person can enter the lives of others and change them forever.

The first overriding theme of The Miracle Worker is that of change and transformation. The characters of the play very much want to change their lives but are unsure of the extent to which they are willing to transform themselves. When Annie first comes to the Keller household to help with Helen, the Kellers are desperate for any change in their relationship with Helen.

Once Annie begins to take charge of the situation, however, she meets with resistance. Keller is unaccustomed to her brash manner and is reluctant to give her control of Helen, while Kate finds it difficult to watch someone else take charge. Annie is a very stubborn woman who does not give up easily and is able to manipulate both parents into letting her have the chance to prove herself; however, she must fight tooth and nail for this privilege again and again throughout the course of the play.

It is when Helen finally connects the simple hand symbols that Annie has been teaching her with actual objects and people that everything else falls into place. It is also during this last scene that Kate is finally, after a difficult struggle, able to give Helen to Annie. It is during the climactic scene at the end of Act Three that the second major theme, language and meaning, is resolved.

Language is to the mind more than light is to the eye. The question for Annie is how and whether it is possible to teach Helen language and its meaning. In the beginning, the work that Annie does with Helen is simply a matter of discipline and repetition. Once Annie begins to have progress in this area she is able to begin teaching Helen hand symbols for different objects.

The hand symbols, at first, are just a repetition game to Helen, who does not make any connection between symbol and object; Annie hopes that through this repetition Helen will eventually start to connect the symbols with actual objects in her world. Annie convinces the Kellers to give her complete control over Helen and she then uses every method from repetition to force to resentment to keep Helen interested in learning.

The final connection between language and meaning does come, but not until it seems that all the work that Annie has been in vain. After living secluded in the garden house for two weeks with Helen and Percy, Annie has no choice but to let Helen go back to the Kellers. In a short scene at the dinner table, Helen begins to recede back into her old ways.

Annie will have none of it, and in a final battle of wills with Helen over spilled water, she inadvertently helps Helen make mat huge leap of connecting language to the world around her. The most striking aspect of the construction of The Miracle Worker is the style in which the play is written. The play premiered on Broadway at the Playhouse Theatre on October 19, , and closed on July 1, , after performances.

The production was directed by Arthur Penn with scenic and lighting design by George Jenkins and costumes by Ruth Morley. Patty Duke stayed with the production until May Her understudy, Karen Lee, replaced her on May 11, [ 2 ] [ 3 ] and stayed with the production through its closing on July 1, It transferred to Wyndham's Theatre in May.

A revival was produced at Wyndham's Theatre on August 31, , and closed on October 8. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the play, it was revived on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theatre , opening on March 3, In May , Duke continued her career-long involvement with the play by directing a production of it at Interplayers Theatre in Spokane, Washington.

Ivy Green , Helen Keller's childhood home, hosts an annual outdoor production which is Alabama's official outdoor drama. Time called the original production "a story that, however well known, acquires stunning new reality and affectingness on the stage. The overwhelming force of the play's crucial scenes could not have derived from the stirring facts alone, nor from playwright Gibson's vivid use of them.

What proves decisive is the extraordinary performances, the magnificent teamwork of Anne Bancroft and ten-year-old Patty Duke, and the brilliant direction of Arthur Penn". While noting some of the play's flaws, particularly in the areas of "some knotty Keller family relationships and some eerie Sullivan family memories", which it characterized as "fairly makeshift, at times clumsy, and, when sound-tracking voices from the past, occasionally embarrassing", it praised the scenes that "in the hands of two remarkable actresses, constitute unforgettable theater".

While finding similar flaws in the narrative structure of the play, it praised the play as "profoundly moving" and noted that any of its failings did not "destroy the emotional power of the essential struggle in the drama". Gibson, Penn, Bancroft, and Duke reunited for a film adaptation which was highly acclaimed. Contents move to sidebar hide.

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