The Miracle Worker Essay

The play The Miracle Worker is based on the story of Helen Keller. The Miracle Worker takes place in Tuscumbia, Alabama, in 1887 when Helen Keller was six years old. The main characters are the Tuohys, Kate and Captain Arthur, their daughter Annie Sullivan who comes from Boston to teach Helen how to communicate using sign language, and The Keller family, well mainly Helen Keller. The play The Miracle Worker is based on a true story of how Helen Keller became deaf and blind at an early age but Annie Sullivan came to help her communicate with the world.

The Miracle Worker is about a 6-year-old girl named Helen Keller who becomes deaf-blind after a feverish illness when she is just over one year old. The rest of her loving family are unable to cope with this condition, so they send young Helen away to the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston. There she meets Miss Sullivan, an Irishwoman who knows how to communicate with those who cannot see or hear the world around them.

The years that follow change not only their lives but also those of everyone they touch as Helen strives to live as normal a life as possible and Miss Sullivan helps her succeed, in The Miracle Worker. One day after school when she was six years old Annie Sullivan arrived at The Keller’s house and changed everything. The family was excited to greet the young girl from Boston who had agreed to help them communicate with Helen but were surprised by how different she actually was (she wore strange clothes that looked uncomfortable) from what they expected.

The first few days Annie worked on helping Helen understand that there are things outside of her little world, but it wasn’t until Kate Keller played a trick on her that finally made her understand the concept of water where before there was just ‘wuh-wuh’. After this breakthrough Annie began teaching Helen how to communicate with sign language. The lessons went well and soon Helen understood more than ever before, but there was one problem that they both couldn’t understand; why did her parents let this happen?

The few days leading up to the end of Annie’s stay The Keller’s took a trip to see Alice and Eddy (Helen and Annies younger siblings) and when they came back Kate fired Annie for some unknown reason. After fighting with her parents about this for some time, The Keller’s finally agreed to let Annie come back and continue working with Helen. The play The Miracle Worker ends happily when on April 5th, 1887 after years of work by both The Kellers and their teacher Annie Sullivan, Helen signs into The Kellers family’s living room ‘water, water, Annie… water’.

The play The Miracle Worker ends with The Keller family celebrating Helen’s success. The Miracle Worker is a play written by William Gibson which was first published in 1957. The play The Miracle Worker takes place over the course of seven years roughly between the years of 1880 and 1887; The main characters are The Keller family (Helen Keller, Captain Arthur, Kate Keller), Annie Sullivan (later Anne Sullivan Macy), Mrs. Emma Brook-Smith (the principal at Perkins School for the Blind), Alice and Eddy (Helen and Annies younger siblings) and many other minor characters (teachers at The Perkins School for the Blind).

The theme of this play includes The love The Keller’s have for Helen, The empathy The Sullivan’s feel for The Kellers and The hope they both share. The conflict is The Keller’s vs. The Sullivan’s because the two families are at odds with each other most of the time which causes problems that need to be solved by the end of the play. The climax occurs when Annie arrives in Tuscumbia to start teaching Helen how to communicate through sign language but it isn’t until later when Kate plays a trick on her that she finally understands what they want her to do so their relationship can begin properly.

The resolution happens at the very end of The Miracle Worker when after years of work by Annie Sullivan and The Keller family, Helen signs ‘water’ into Mrs. Emma Brook-Smith The principal at The Perkins School for The Blinds living room. The play The Miracle Worker is about The Keller’s learning how to communicate with Helen and The Sullivan’s learning about the world around them through Helen, how they learn this is what The Miracle Worker is all about.

The play The Miracle Worker was first published in January of 1959, written by William Gibson. The play takes place at Tuscumbia, Alabama during the year 1886. The experiences that Gibson writes about are real; Annie Sullivan did teach Helen Keller how to communicate for the first time. The Miracle Worker won seven Tony Awards when it was on Broadway in 1959. In the opening paragraphs of an essay/review/article your focus should be giving a brief background about what you’re writing about and why it’s important to today’s reader or their understanding of a topic they might have knowledge in already.

In this case we have historical context given through the definition of one word describing Helen Keller, information on The Miracle Worker being a play and The Miracle Workers winning seven Tony Awards and lastly that Gibson’s experiences and conversations about the play and his research into The Miracle Worker true story are real. The play starts with a call to action, “The place: Tuscumbia, Alabama… The time: 1887. The remainder of the play will be using the historical background information above so if you need to add or delete anything in these paragraphs it would likely be fine.

Keep this introduction short and informative, you only need two or three solid sentences once you get started. It should provide context for your paper but not take up much space at all. Even though we already know The Miracle Worker is about deaf and blind child Helen Keller and her tutor Annie Sullivan this initial paragraph is an introduction to The Miracle Worker for someone who has never read it or seen the play.

The play starts out with a “dear loved” little girl, locked in darkness and unable to hear or see them… The next sentence is about Annie Sullivan being employed by the Keller’s and that she’s a twenty-year-old woman. You could continue on describing aspects of The Miracle Worker such as what happened when Helen met Annie and where the story started and how it develops but we’re just going to keep it simple here by jumping straight into Gibson writing The Miracle Worker play without much extra background information at all.

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