Surrounding the major themes of change and transformation and language and meaning is basic integrity and emotional honesty. Audiences found the story of Annie's struggle to teach Helen language and her eventual success life affirming and uplifting. Learn all about how the characters in The Miracle Worker such as Annie and Helen contribute to the story and how they fit into the plot. The actors' intense energy and commitment to truth in the scenes of physical struggle between Annie and Helen were held as the most memorable moments of the play when it first opened on Broadway. Detailed analysis of Characters in William Gibson's The Miracle Worker. Helen Keller became a public speaker and author her first book, The Story of My. It follows the Keller family and their struggles with their daughter Helen, who is deaf, mute and dumb. The exchanges that take place in The Miracle Worker are all derived from factual events that Gibson has woven together to construct a fluid, emotionally real, depiction of the "miracle" Anne Sullivan was able to work: teaching Helen Keller language.Īudiences and critics alike were most drawn to The Miracle Worker's honest and emotionally vivid portrayal of the relationship between Annie (as she is called in the play) and Helen. Helen Keller meets Anne Sullivan, her teacher and miracle worker. This play, The Miracle Worker, is set in the 1880s. Although some of the reviews were mixed, the audience response was very favorable and during its run the first production of The Miracle Worker rarely failed to fill the 1,000 seat theatre.ĭrawing heavily from letters written by Anne Sullivan in 1887, as well as from Helen Keller's autobiography, William Gibson constructed a drama around the events that took place when Helen Keller and her teacher, Anne Sullivan, first met in the 1880s.
Depending on the study guide provider (SparkNotes, Shmoop, etc. William Gibson first wrote The Miracle Worker for Playhouse 90, a television anthology drama series that gave networks the opportunity to air something different from the traditional long-running serials, but more meaty than half-our sit-coms or gameshows. After it was warmly received by television audiences, it was rewritten for the stage and opened on Broadway in 1959 at the Playhouse Theatre. Among the summaries and analysis available for The Law of Divine Compensation On Work Money and Miracles, there is 2 Book Reviews. Initially written for television, The Miracle Worker by William Gibson first aired in 1957.