The Miracle Worker Questions and Answers
by William Gibson

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• The Miracle Worker
  In the screen play, "The Miracle Worker", where does the story take place? in what county?
  William Gibson's play is based on the real life story of Helen Keller. The Miracle Worker is set in the 1880s and begins at the Keller home in Tuscumbia, Alabama. For more information on the...

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• The Miracle Worker
  In The Miracle Worker, what does Helen finally do to show the others that the doll needs eyes?  
  This episode is an early example of how even though Helen cannot communicate, she still possesses intelligence and problem-solving skills from a young age. When she notices that her doll lacks...

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• The Miracle Worker
  How has Kate Keller changed between scenes 1 and 2?
  Arthur (referred to as Captain) and Kate Keller are Helen's parents. When act 1 of The Miracle Worker begins, the audience learns that baby Helen has been ill with “acute congestion of the stomach...

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• The Miracle Worker
  On page 112 of The Miracle Worker, what is the deeper meaning of Annie saying she loves Helen?
  The moment of the play when Annie tells Helen she loves her is momentous for Annie for a number of reasons. When she speaks the words, "I, love, Helen. Forever and—ever" (112), she speaks the words...

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• The Miracle Worker
  Why won't Annie let Helen go with her parents when they arrive to pick her up in act 3 of The Miracle Worker?
  Helen's parents, Arthur and Kate, arrive on the last day of the agreed upon two weeks to pick her up from Annie, bringing a dog as a gift for their daughter. However, the two weeks have not quite...

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• The Miracle Worker
  Where does Helen put the key before she drops it down the well?
  Keys are an important symbol in the play. They represent Annie's opening up of Helen's mind through the power of education. But that only comes about after a lot of patience on Annie's part and...

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• The Miracle Worker
  What lines or scenes in act 1 are humorous?
  William Gibson’s play The Miracle Worker has several serious themes and moments. The play tells the story of how Annie Sullivan taught her young deaf and blind student, Helen Keller, to...

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• The Miracle Worker
  What are the classical conditioning examples in the movie The Miracle Worker?
  The pivotal point in the story when Sullivan finger-spells the word "water" as water from the pump runs over Keller's hand can be seen as a form of of classical conditioning. In classical...

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• The Miracle Worker
  Describe Helen at age six and a half.
  Helen initially appears in the play as a child in a cot. Her mother is screaming because it appears that she cannot see or hear. The light in the stage then dims. When it turns on again, six years...

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• The Miracle Worker
  What gift did Anne bring to Helen in The Miracle Worker?
  When Annie Sullivan arrives via train, Helen's half-brother James goes to pick her up. When she arrives at the Keller home, Captain Keller is certainly very doubtful that she will be able to manage...

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• The Miracle Worker
  What does Helen do to the baby?
  When Helen Keller was a baby, she had a terrible fever that left her deaf, blind, and mute. Until the arrival of Annie Sullivan, a recent graduate from the Perkins Institute for the Blind, Helen...

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• The Miracle Worker
  How did Helen Keller’s disabilities affect her before her teacher, Anne Sullivan, arrived?
  Helen's disabilities cut her off from the rest of the world. Her parents, though they love her, have no idea how to reach her since she cannot see nor hear. They resign themselves to the idea that...

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• The Miracle Worker
  What was Dr. Howe's role at the Perkins Institute?
  Dr. Howe, or Samuel Gridley Howe, to give him his full name, is the founder of the Perkins Institute, the first school for the blind anywhere in the United States. As the founder of the Institute,...

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• The Miracle Worker
  How does Helen's mother feel about Annie's letters and spelling in The Miracle Worker?
  After Annie Sullivan arrives at the Kellers’ home, she begins to teach Helen how to finger spell in the palm of her hand. The Keller family members have differing opinions about Helen’s...

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• The Miracle Worker
  What did Helen Keller do when she was hungry in The Miracle Worker?
  One of the first issues that Annie Sullivan tackles is the Keller family’s failure to socialize Helen into age-appropriate behaviors. Helen’s mother, Kate, tends to spoil her daughter although she...

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• The Miracle Worker
  What were the two things the blind students did that prove they like Annie?
  Annie's blind students at the Perkins Institute show how much they like her by giving her two going-away presents. Annie is about to take up the challenging position of teaching Helen Keller, and...

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• The Miracle Worker
  What did Helen do when she became an adult?
  Since The Miracle Worker only deals with a specific time of Helen Keller's childhood, we are left wondering what became of her when she grew up. It turns out that Helen would go on to become a...

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• The Miracle Worker
  Why does Helen hide the key?
  It's not long after Annie Sullivan's arrival at the Kellers' place, and Helen is still deeply suspicious of her new teacher. It seems extraordinary given the close bond they will come to develop...

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• The Miracle Worker
  Why does Annie refuse to give in to pitying Helen?
  The Miracle Worker, written by William Gibson, is a play that details the real-life relationship between six-year-old deaf and blind child Helen Keller and her twenty-year-old governess, Annie...

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• The Miracle Worker
  Analyze the following quote from Kate: "I expected—a desiccated spinster. You're very young. May I ask how old you are?"
  The above line comes from Kate Keller, Helen Keller's mother. She says it when Annie Sullivan arrives at the Keller residence to teach Helen the groundbreaking methods of sign language she learned...

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• The Miracle Worker
  Study Guide Project: The Miracle Worker by William Gibson (Summary, Chapter Summaries, Themes, Characters).
  Summary The Miracle Worker portrays the turning point in the childhood of the famous author and activist Helen Keller. As a baby, Helen suffered an illness that left her deaf, blind, and mute....

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• The Miracle Worker
  What does Annie accomplish in the breakfast room with Helen? What type of things does she accomplish?
  At breakfast Helen had been walking around and taking food off of other people's plates. Annie, after an exchange with the Captain, asks the family to leave so that she can try to teach Helen how...

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• The Miracle Worker
  In The Miracle Worker, how does Mrs. Keller react to her daughter Helen?  
  In the play, The Miracle Worker, Mrs. Keller doesn't really know what to do with her daughter, Helen. As a six year old girl left blind and deaf, Helen is a challenge for anyone as Helen does...

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• The Miracle Worker
  Describe Annie Sullivan. What kind of a young woman was she? Cite three examples from the play to support your views.
  Annie Sullivan is a 20-year-old woman from Massachusetts. Having experienced the loss of sight and receiving help at her school, she has empathy for Helen and the desire to help her. Annie is an...

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• The Miracle Worker
  How do Helen's parents, half-brother, and aunt treat her? Support your answer with details from the play.
  Kate Keller, Helen’s mother, is the only member of her family who has confidence in Helen's intellectual abilities. The others assume that, because of her disabilities, her intelligence is below...

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• The Miracle Worker
  What does Captain Keller assume about his position in society and his family? Is that challenged in the course of the play? How does he respond?
  For Annie Sullivan to succeed with Helen, she must challenge Captain Keller’s assumptions about his role. He is a conservative Southerner who behaves as an authoritarian figure in his home. He also...

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• The Miracle Worker
  In the most important day story from The Miracle Worker, how was the mystery of language revealed to Helen Keller?
  Although there is no section labeled clearly as "the most important day story," I will assume that you mean the last day when Helen truly does discover the mystery of language through the word...

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• The Miracle Worker
  In The Miracle Worker, Annie explains that the experience in the garden house will be a siege. What does she mean by this both literally and symbolically?
  Annie proposes to Helen's parents that she and Helen should live together alone in the garden house. This way, it is hoped, Helen will come to depend on Annie as her sole authority figure. She...

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• The Miracle Worker
  What is the relationship between James and Helen in The Miracle Worker?
  James and Helen Keller are half-siblings, James being the son of Captain Keller’s first wife, and Helen being the daughter of his second and much younger wife, Kate. In the beginning, James does...

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• The Miracle Worker
  What does James ask Kate to be for him in The Miracle Worker? Whats is Annie’s advice to James?
  In The Miracle Worker, James is Captain Keller’s son by his first wife; Kate is his stepmother. As James reaches adulthood, he is at loose ends. Captain Keller is rather tyrannical in his approach...

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• The Miracle Worker
  In The Miracle Worker, please explain what Keller, Aunt Ev and Kate are talking about when they speak of writing in Act One.
  Let us remember that as the play opens we are introduced to a family that has tried every possible contact to look for somebody who can help Helen with her condition and also assist them in...

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• The Miracle Worker
  In Act 1 of The Miracle Worker, what does Kate want to do that suggests she has hope?
  In 1881, after suffering what was called "brain fever"--possibly scarlet fever--when she was only nineteen months, Helen Keller was left blind and deaf. Her father, referred to as Captain Keller,...

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• The Miracle Worker
  In act 3, Annie says, "Don't smooth anything else out for me, don't interfere in any of the ways I treat her. I treat her like a seeing child because i ask her to see, I expect her to see. Don't undo what I do!"  Does Annie really expect Helen...
  Annie does expect Helen to see things; that is, she hopes that Helen will finally make the connection between the actual thing and the word spelled into her hand, and thus "see" the thing as having...

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• The Miracle Worker
  In The Miracle Worker, how is the breach between James and Keller further developed? What is the basis for their argument?
  Even from the beginning of The Miracle Worker, it is evident that there is animosity between James and his father, Captain Keller. James tries to resist his father's authority but as he says...

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• The Miracle Worker
  At the end of The Miracle Worker, Annie descibes herself to Helen as "teacher."  Based on experiences with Annie, how would Helen define "teacher"?"
  I think that Helen would define "teacher" as someone who understands the nature of change within life. Helen recognizes Annie as a teacher because Annie never quits in her desire to create the...

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• The Miracle Worker
  In the book "The Miracle Worker", what is the connection between the references to the Civil War and generals and the action of the play?
  The Civil War was not only the "War Between the States," it was in some states a war within the state as families were divided in their support of the North or the South. Such a war within the...

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• The Miracle Worker
  In The Miracle Worker, what memories come back to Annie as she works with Helen?
  Annie Sullivan comes to the Keller household from The Perkins' Institute for the Blind and is only partially sighted herself. In The Miracle Worker, the audience learns of the difference the...

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• The Miracle Worker
  In The Miracle Worker, what is the dramatic question (what decision must be made) in the first scene with Helen's parents, aunt, and stepbrother?
  The dramatic question in this first scene with the whole family is to convince Captain Keller to write to Dr. Chisholm from Baltimore in regards to Helen. Actually, it is Aunt Ev who asks the...

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• The Miracle Worker
  What agreement do the Kellers and Anne eventually make?   William Gibson's The Miracle Worker
  After futile attempts to teach Helen, Anne Sullivan realizes the impossibility of accomplishing anything in the presence of the indulgent parents, Kate and Captain Keller. So, Annie explains that...

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• The Miracle Worker
  In The Miracle Worker, how will Annie’s past affect the way she deals with Helen?
  The Miracle Worker is a play by William Gibson which gives a different perspective other than Helen's own, on life in the Keller household after Helen is left blind and deaf from an illness as a...

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• The Miracle Worker
  Before Annie Sullivan arrived in The Miracle Worker, what strategies were Helen Keller's family considering in dealing with Helen?
  To put it bluntly, the entire Keller family is at their wits end. Right before Annie Sullivan arrived, the family is finally considering the unthinkable: putting Helen in an asylum. James: You...

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• The Miracle Worker
  In Act II of The Miracle Worker, examine the implications of Annie's request.
  Annie's request is to work with Helen away from the family. It is a request that essentially defines the drama. Annie recognizes that the transformative lessons that she wishes to teach Helen...

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• The Miracle Worker
  In Act 1 of The Miracle Worker, why are the Kellers skeptical about the competence of of Helen's new teacher?
  Helen Keller's mother is skeptical upon meeting Anne Sullivan, because of her youth, but Annie puts her at ease when she reminds Helen's mother that she'll have plenty of energy to work with Helen,...

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• The Miracle Worker
  What was the doctor's diagnosis of the baby in The Miracle Worker?
  The doctor says that the baby will live, but she had what the doctor called acute congestion of the stomach and brain from a serious fever. At the beginning of the play, the doctor is examining...

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• The Miracle Worker
  What two phrases does Annie teach Helen by letting Helen feel Annies face? And how is Helen like the baby Mildred?
  The final scene at the pump is the most critical and the turning point that will forever change Helen's life. When Helen finally links the finger spelling of "water" to the actual water, she has...

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• The Miracle Worker
  What three things does Annie say are advantages to to her working with Helen?   The Miracle Worker by Willaim Gibson
  In Act One of William Gibson's play, The Miracle Worker, twenty-year-old Anne Sullivan completes her arduous train rides from the Perkins Institute for the Blind and arrives in Tuscumbia, Alabama,...

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• The Miracle Worker
  What are the Kellers considering to do with Helen in The Miracle Worker?
  The Kellers have tried taking Helen to specialists and don’t want to put her in an asylum, but she is getting out of control. When Helen is caught playing with scissors, Aunt Ev says” something...

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• The Miracle Worker
  What does Helen do to Annie moments after her arrival that causes commotion in the household in The Miracle Worker?
  Well, you're right that it doesn't take long for Helen and Annie to begin butting heads! In fact, their very first encounter is a negative one. Of course, it involves something very significant...

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• The Miracle Worker
  In the play The Miracle Worker how does Annie show hope?
  Helen Keller is famous as the little deaf and blind girl who went on to become a famous author and motivational speaker and lecturer. The play The Miracle Worker revolves around Annie Sullivan's...

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• The Miracle Worker
  In The Miracle Worker, the opening scene of Act 3 shows that James' and Annie's lives are somewhat similar. List these similarities.
  The opening of Act 3 reveals that both James and Annie have many similarities in terms of their character. The biggest similarity they share is their feeling of inadequacy. As James makes clear...

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