Name: Christine permatasari/ 5160511064
Source: http://www.riversidelocalschools.com/Downloads/the_miracle_worker%20pdf.pdf
The Miracle Worker
By William Gibson
The Miracle Worker recounts Helen
Keller’s discovery of language, through the teaching of Annie Sullivan, after
losing her sight and hearing in early childhood. It was produced as a
television play in 1957, was published in 1957, and was produced as a stage
play in 1960 and as a movie in 1962.
The story is set in the Keller family home
in Tuscumbia, Alabama. In the opening scene, the family learns that baby Helen
will survive a life-threatening fever. Her mother Kate, however, discovers the
terrible price of Helen’s survival when she realizes that the baby cannot see
or hear. When Helen is six, her father is inclined to institutionalize her, but
Kate wishes to search for better medical care. Alexander Graham Bell considers
Helen’s case but cannot help. Finally, the Keller’s contact the Perkins
Institute for the Blind in Boston; the director sends Annie to them.
When Annie first encounters Helen, the
child has never been disciplined. Isolated in silence and darkness, Helen
wanders the house and is prone to tantrums. Annie has herself been
institutionalized, so she sympathizes with the urgency Kate feels about Helen.
Annie is also blind, so she knows partly what Helen’s world is like. She knows
that the key to Helen’s transformation is language. Annie succeeds in teaching
Helen to finger-spell several words, realizing that her pupil understands this
activity only as a memorization game—Helen does not understand that the
sequences of letters have meaning. Meanwhile, Annie begins the task of teaching
Helen manners. Lacking words, Helen expresses her emotions through actions,
smashing objects when she is angry and striking people when frustrated. Annie
responds with patience and determination.
The Keller family must also be taught to
help Helen. Out of pity and guilt, they have allowed the child to rule the
household, as Annie observes. To avoid enraged outbursts, family members
indulge Helen’s misbehavior. With difficulty, Annie persuades the Keller’s to
give her two weeks of isolation with Helen in the garden house. During this
time, she makes progress only to see it erode upon returning to the main house;
family members are unwilling to enforce the new rules.
In a crucial encounter, Helen pours out a
pitcher of water in rage; Annie takes her forcibly to the pump to refill it and
out of habit finger-spells “water” as Helen feels liquid gush over her hand.
Suddenly, Helen understands that things have names, and that she can learn them
through this new game and communicate her inner world to others. In the closing
scene, Kate, Helen, and Annie go to the Perkins Institute. Helen is no longer
isolated.
ANALYSIS
A. Tittle
The Miracle Worker
B. Setting
a. Place
Keller’s family house (Tuscumbia, Alabama, USA)
b.
Time
During 1880’s
C. Type
of Play
History
The drama tells us
about the personal life of Helen Keller but focuses on Annie Sullivan as the
miracle worker. She help Helen to understand language and communication.
D. Characterization
a.
Annie Sullivan
Annie Sullivan, the teacher of the deaf and blind
child Helen Keller. She is Confident, smart teacher. She even hardly control
her temper, but able to tech Helen patiently and calm. She is an optimistic
person. All of her characters are mostly show when she handle Helen.
b.
Captain
Arthur Keller
Captain Arthur Keller, a retired Civil War officer who
edits a town newspaper in Tuscumbia, Alabama. He is a haughty man in his
mid-fifties, apparently accustomed during his military career to instant and
unquestioning obedience to his every whim. Underneath, he is a concerned and
loving father and husband. He is especially frustrated in his efforts to
dominate Annie Sullivan, Helen’s teacher, finding her persistence and inner
courage more than a match for his chauvinism.
c.
Kate
Keller
Kate Keller, the young second wife of Captain Keller
and mother of Helen. For more than five years, she has tried unsuccessfully to
cope with Helen’s random destructive movements and angry tantrums. Her actions
to face Helen show that she is a patient, gentle and persuasive person.
d.
Helen
Keller
Helen Keller, a child of seven who lost both sight and
hearing as a result of high fever during a babyhood illness. Locked inside the
dark cage of her body, she is unable to communicate her simplest wants and
needs to others except through violent tantrums and howls resembling those of a
hurt animal
e.
James
Keller
James Keller, Helen’s teenage half-brother. Living in
awe of his domineering father, James has grown resentful of his stepmother,
Kate, and of Helen, who demands so much attention and care that he feels
cheated out of the family love he desires. Through her influence, he begins to
grow toward asserting his own personhood. He always obey his father and become
a sarcastic person.
f.
Aunt
Eva
Aunt Eva, Captain Keller’s sister. As a kindly and
concerned aunt, Eva spoils Helen with small treats and supports Kate in her
efforts to get help for the child.
g.
Viney
Viney, the Keller family servant. Amid the turmoil of
a household that revolves around the whims and temper of a handicapped child,
Viney manages to keep a stable and good-humored manner. Her children, Martha
and Percy, are playmates for Helen. She is kind and well behave woman.
h.
Mr.
Anagnos
Mr. Anagnos, the headmaster of the Perkins Institute
for the Blind, the school where Annie was trained. It is Mr. Anagnos who
chooses Annie for the difficult assignment of teaching Helen.
E. Main
conflict
The main conflict
appeared at the beginning of the drama. After Keller family has their child
well from sick, they found out Hellen could not hear and see. This scene was
written in Act 1, in Scene 1
KATE. Look;
[She
makes a pass with her hand and in the crib, at the baby’s eyes.]
KELLER. What, Katie? She’s well,
she needs only time to–
KATE. She can’t see. Look at her eyes.
[She
takes the lamp from him, move it before the child face]
She
can’t see!
KELLER. [Hoarsely] Helen.
KATE. Or hear. When I screamed she didn’t
blink. Not an eyelash—
KELLER. Helen. Helen!
F. Resolution
Annie Sullivan
agreed to teach Helen. She is a hope that appeared in Keller family. The story
is stated in Act 1, scene 4.
ANAGNOS. Oh, we can all use some
pity
[Crisply]
So
you are no longer our pupil, we throw you into the world, a teacher, if the
child can be taught. No one expects you to work miracles, even for twenty-five
dollars a month. Now in this envelope a loan, for the rail road, which you will
repay me when you have a bank account. But in this box, a gift. With our love.
[Annie
opens the small box he extends, and sees garnet ring. She looks up, blinking,
and down]
I
think other friends are ready to say goodbye.
[He
move as though to open doors.]
ANNIE. Mr. Anagnos.
[Her
voice is trembling.]
Dear
Mr. Anagnos, I –
[But
she swallows over getting the ring on her finger, and cannot continue until she
finds a woebegone joke.]
Well,
what should I say, I’m an ignorant opinionated girl, and everything I am I owe
to you?
G. Climax
The climax in this
drama is when Helen realize that Annie teach her a language. Annie has been
attempting to teach Helen with her sense of touch. This is the moment when
miracle happened. This scene is captured in Act 3, scene 7
ANNIE. All right, pump.
[Helen touches her cheek, waits uncertainly.]
No,
she’s not here. Pump!
[She
forces Helen hand to work the handle, then let’s go. And Helen obeys. She pumps
till the water comes, then Annie puts the pitcher in her other hand and
tumbling half into and half around the pitcher douses Helen’s hand. Annie takes
over the handle to keep water coming, and does automatically what she has done
so many times before, spells into Helen’s free palm:]
Water,
W, a, t, e, r. water. It has a—name—
[And
now the miracle happens. Helen drops the pitcher on the slab under the spout, it
shatters. She stands transfixed, Annie freezes on the pump handle: there is a
change in the sundown light, and with it a change in Helen’s face, some light
coming into it we have never seen there, some struggle in the depth behind it:
and her lips tremble, trying to remember something the muscles around them once
knew, till at last it finds its way out. Painfully, a baby sound buried under
the debris of years of dumbness.]
HELEN. Wah. Wah.
[And
again, with great effort]
Wah.
Wah.
[Helen
plunges her hand into the dwindling water, spells into her own palm. Then she
gropes frantically, Annie reaches for her hand, and Hellen spells into Annie’s
hand.]
ANNIE. [Whispering] Yes.
[Helen
spells into it again]
Yes!
[Helen
grabs at the handle, pumps for more water, plunges her hand into its spurt and
grabs Annie’s to spell it again.
Yes!
Oh, my dear—
[She
falls to her knees to clasp Helen’s hand, but Helen pulls me free, stands
almost bewildered, then drops to the ground, pats it swiftly, hold up her palm,
imperious. Annie spells into it:]
Ground
[Helen
spells it back]
H. Plot
Setting and Organization
a.
Point
of View
Limited Narrator (External Subjective Narrator; the
3rd person point of view): the narrator is not a character in
the story but looks at things only through the eyes of a single character.
This type of narrative permits the narrator to quickly build a close bond
between the protagonist and the reader, without being confined by the
protagonist’s educational or language restrictions.
b.
Plot
A Dramatic or Progressive Plot:
This is a chronological structure which first establishes the setting and
conflict, then follows the rising action through to a climax (the peak of the
action and turning point), and concludes with a denouement (a wrapping up of
loose ends).
I. Moral
Value/Conclusion
Miracle is
something which breaks the limit. It is possible to happen but hardly achieved.
Anne Sullivan, an expert in her field, is confronted with something new, a girl
who, because of her lack of senses, has no connection to the outside world.
Think about it for a moment. If you could not see, hear, or talk, how would you
understand anything? There is no known way to solve the problem; it has never
been encountered before.
There
is one heartbreaking scene where Anne simply uses force, thinking that if she
sits Helen down at the dinner table enough times, she will bend to her will and
eat. It does not work, because it is not a human approach, and Helen does not
understand. Annie needs a cognitive solution where Helen makes a discovery.
Helen
still has the sense of touch, and when Annie is pumping water, and Helen
identifies the water, the emotion is so powerful. Helen went on to become a
genius, but this simple discovery was the key, not because it is profound, but
cognitive. Helen has finally connected a word she had been taught to say, with
a real phenomenon in the outside world, and that changed everything for her.
This also tells how important language is!
It is a beautiful
moment which may seem simple to us, but again, imagine having no way to
comprehend the world around you.
