In The Miracle Worker, what does Act 1 reveal about James when Annie is locked in her room?
The play, The Miracle Worker, is about Annie Sullivan's initial impact on the Keller family when she arrives as a young and naive teacher, expected to teach the wild Helen who is so out of control that the family admit having considered sending her to an asylum. James is Helen's older half brother and he has become very cynical because Helen receives all the attention and any attempt he makes to connect with his father is dismissed. James is tired of Helen's out-of-control behavior, commenting on how "it's always almost..." when Helen causes trouble which is smoothed over moments before it becomes completely unmanageable like the time when she almost "dug Martha's eyes out" (act 1, scene 3).
When Helen locks Annie in her room (towards the end of Act 1), James says very little. He answers Kate's question regarding Annie's whereabouts but does not tell anyone that Helen...
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has actually locked her in. He is criticized for not saying something sooner and his response is "everyone's been telling me not to says anything." There is a smug satisfaction in James's words, especially as he leaves the scene whistling. These lines reveal James's apparent lack of interest which masks his deep desire to impress his father and earn his respect. These lines also reveal that he is content to let others (particularly Annie) experience Helen's all-consuming behavior to the exclusion of everything else.
In The Miracle Worker, what are the similarities between James' and Annie's lives in Act 3's opening scene?
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 when his father leaves the table, he feels that he is not accepted and loved for who he is as Keller's son. Note how he asks Kate, "What does he want from me?" He doesn't understand what he needs to do to earn his father's approval, and feels more and more as if he has failed as a result.
In the same way, not Annie's own feelings of personal failure as she reads out what she writes so laboriously:
“I, feel, every, day, more, and, more, in—” (She pauses, and turns the pages of a dictionary open before her; her finger descends the words to a full stop. She elevates her eyebrows, then copies the word.) “—adequate.”
The way in which her lines and the lines of James are interspersed effectively juxtapose the feelings of the two characters. Just as James feels so inadequate, so too does Annie by the task that she faces and the difficulties that she has. It is clear from this section that the two characters have a lot more in common than they first might think.