Title: The Miracle Worker: A Play
Author: William Gibson
File Under: Plays, Foundational, Child Development, Read-Aloud (and perform!), Education, Special Needs, Homeschooling
Age Group: From adolescence to old age
A work of art can convey truths in a way that no textbook ever can. If that art is based on, as they say, “a true story,” it can be even more compelling. The insight we gain is irreplaceable.
Yet, I would say that in our day-to-day life, especially when it comes to child-raising, we increasingly base our principles on textbooks, not on art or experience or even common sense. Textbooks (and studies, and scientific literature based on studies, and posts shared on Facebook) carry an air of authority, but often we forget to ask about the ontology of the conclusions presented.
In other words, we accept the findings of the experts, but we don't inquire into their world view. What do they have in mind when they advise us on how to treat our children, difficult or otherwise? What do they know about what it means to be a human being — about human nature?
What are their goals? What is the picture they have in mind when they speak of “normal” or “appropriate” or “acceptable” or even just “possible” behavior?
What expectations do they have for the parents? What resources do they think that the parents have? Do they take into account their limitations?
Yes, my observation is that the experts view parents as very limited, but in a self-defeating way. They think that parents are hopelessly lacking in insight into their own children (which can often be true! But not fatally so!). But they utterly prescind from the question of virtue — of whether the parents have any, are seeking any, or even know that it matters.
When I was very young I read The Miracle Worker, saw the play, and watched the movie. And the story formed my attitudes about child-raising in general, although it's about the blind, deaf, and mute Helen Keller, whom Annie Sullivan, a difficult and strong-willed young woman, rescues from a terrible fate — a life of being treated as less than human.
As you read, try to forget what you know about the important figure Keller was to become, and consider the point of view of the other family members. She was truly spoiled, as a result of the combination of her willful temperament, which was to stand her in good stead when channeled, and her family's combined indulgence and dislike. She had seemingly overwhelming physical limitations. She was dirty (as mentioned in the play!). How hopeless it all seemed.
This short play presents in dramatic form much wisdom about the human condition, not least of which is that a person must have suffered in order to be of use to someone else who is suffering. Annie can help Helen because she has struggled with her own shortcomings — physical and moral — and the struggle has made her virtuous and wise, well beyond her years. Helen's family cannot help her because they don't struggle, not even against their helplessness, although they do pity and they do worry.
Literature, as so many before me have observed, offers us vicarious growth. (Thank goodness, as there is no way that any one person can undergo all the experiences necessary for acquiring all the virtues! Yet completely virtuous we must strive to be!)
So we ourselves undergo a moral transformation as we are offered in turn all the choices we can make, through the various characters in the play. As they do, we can feel paralyzed by our shortcomings and our uncertainty; we can merely pity; we can impatiently dismiss; we can have contempt.
We can do the worst thing of all, which is succumb to a kind of acedia: the apathy of not wishing to exert the energy necessary to turn to the good and change accordingly. Parents do often lose hope this way. We fail to act on what we know is good for our child.
The crux of the matter — as it is in the play — is reality.
Annie Sullivan must overcome the household's despair to connect Helen with reality, against huge odds. But pay close attention as you read: The greatest obstacles she faces are not Helen's physical handicaps. No, the obstacles are the other people, and that in their diverse weaknesses, no one has had the wisdom and courage to treat Helen as if they exist.
They have not given Helen any what we here at our house like to call reality feedback.
Don't fail to notice that among other things, they think she's too young!
Annie expresses this in terms of manners after her first encounter with Helen. Pay close attention to how manners connect with the very thing that restores Helen to her own humanity: finding meaning her connection with the world.
This lesson is one which every mother and father must internalize in order to do a good job raising children, because the whole task can be summed up as introducing the child, hopefully gradually and with firmness and affection, to the reality of the world outside them and the self-control to deal with it.
If we don't embrace this task — including with the “special needs” child — we often find that we have consigned them to facing the task alone, later, with abruptness and often entailing what seems like cruelty from others (as when Annie isolates Helen from the family and their false pity).
Indeed, a whole category of literature deals with this very situation: that having been cheated of the curriculum of self-control in the school of virtue that the healthy family offers, the child must endure a painful rehabilitation at a later point.
I'd say most of us fall into this category! Which is why reading or watching this play can be so cathartic for us. It was for me!
What the story teaches us is that each child is unique and incomparable, with a spirit all his own, however buried under whatever we might characterize as handicaps; and that the whole adventure requires our own moral growth.
So you can see why having children is so good for us, assuming that we don't settle for merely managing their behavior.
Which, alas, I fear is the tacit goal of many experts.
Had it not been for Annie and her virtue of fortitude, the world would have not received the gift of the extraordinary humanity of Helen Keller, with all her flaws and all her energy. And we would not have received the gift of a compelling lesson in overcoming our shortcomings for the sake of our children, because we would have no idea that this is the way to proceed.
So this is why I'm calling this book “foundational” — a book that you might spend time reading now, so that later you've internalized its message. Thus, this play is an excellent choice for your 6th to 8th grader who is a good reader but too young for the classics. What a study of human weaknesses and strengths!
Amy says
Over the last 8 years I have had the honor of meeting many parents with children with special needs. It is remarkable how similar our journeys can be. Great book.
Gina Switzer says
Thank you for the reminder about this beautiful and redemptive story that informed my views about parenting when I was young. As a young mother, I had flash moments of modeling Annie when my boys were wild. Now when the grand kids act like “wild” animals, I still have that strong memory of Helen going around the table begging for food and Annie’s seemingly harsh response. Virtuous actions are firm, not harsh, and lovingly keep us all on the proper course. Virtue provides the true reality check. I volunteer with ponies interacting with special needs children and adults, Your post connected the dots of my own interest in these things back to the influence of Annie and Helen’s special story shared through art. I’ll be reading it, watching it and sharing it! Thank you!
Leila says
Yes, Gina! Annie’s firmness had to be intense in proportion to the desperate need that Helen had for limits in her life — the neglect she had suffered required such a strong response.
If we, as parents, can overcome our weakness, we will find that we don’t need to resort to harshness, not usually. But giving into weakness, laziness, pity — only makes things worse later on.
Mrs. B. says
Great post, thank you!
I think that “experts” especially forget (or may not even known in the first place, depending on their convictions) that the sacrament of marriage gives special graces to the parents: we may be limited and confused, but we’re not helpless and hopeless. It’s that these days everything is reduced to a technique, to formulas, even raising children: so we end up using tricks, with the wobbly hope they’ll work, but we have very low confidence. I guess Auntie Leila would say we’ve lost the whole baggage of collective memory that made being mothers and fathers a far less mysterious enterprise.
And yes to the idea that having children is GOOD for us!! I’ve come to see this as a natural phase in our moral growth: children are like a mirror, and thanks to them parents become aware of so much more, both in the world and in themselves! It is shocking! I also think that very often, only having children of our own will make us understand our own parents and their struggles, finally ending the adolescent phase when we thought we knew everything better than them 🙂
Leila says
Mrs. B– yes — the “process” — ugh. Soul-killing.
Stephanie says
Oh yes yes yes yes yes! I loved seeing this play last year with my nine year old daughter. I sobbed during the water scene, oh I loved it so much. My first take away was how WORDS free us (I’m thinking Frederick Douglas, education frees us). But after reading this post, I do want to sit with this and read it as a mama. This Library Project is a gold mine! God bless you from Alaska…
Anel says
Thank you, Auntie Leila.
Yes.
I often muse that any child that is very different from one’s own personality, could be seen as “special needs” in the eyes of the parent. Because his needs are sometimes very misunderstood by even the most loving parent.
Thanks again for this perspective.
Leila says
Anel, that’s a great way of putting what I was trying to say about the “normal” child. Even children who don’t seem to present such dire challenges to the parents have an inner spirit that we must respect!
Respect means doing our job providing the means for self control. This allows the child to become who he is, rather than be at the mercy of his appetites…
Ann Turner says
This Spring I taught it to a group of 7th an 8th; they loved it, and I fell in love with it all over again. I think I had only seen the films before, not actually read the play. You speak here of the parenting lessons for us all, and they are surely plentiful in this story. The Lit major in me also revels in the love of language, the importance of the Word, which of course also speaks to the Catholic in me. Some of my students were moved to read The Story of My Life by Helen Keller, from which I read as an introduction to the play. This brief autobiography (she wrote another later in her life) covers her early years, and her education by Annie Sullivan. I am struck by the language, which is quite visual, and by the wonder at the beauty of the universe that she has so obviously grasped. What an amazing teacher Annie was. Their friendship is also quite beautifully rendered. What a play, what a life!
A note or two on the films: Did you know that Patty Duke actually knocked out Anne Bancroft’s tooth in her audition? Probably got her the part. That is the original movie, and it is wonderful. The one in which Patty Duke plays Annie is not quite as good, but in color, and not bad. The most recent one is horrible! The fight scenes like in slow motion, and definitely no teeth were threatened there. It also seems almost French to me, rather than American. Why is that?
Leila says
Ann, giving Helen the gift of language is what restores her humanity to her — she becomes rational and finds meaning!
It’s so beautiful.
It can only happen, though, by means of normal, “natural” — that is, according to the nature of a human being — development — something which Helen has been deprived of, because her family do not believe that something they can’t detect exists.
I had heard that about the tooth-knocking!! And I don’t really remember the movies very well, but I’m sure you are right — I’ll have to re-watch sometime. I must say, this is a very American story, n’est-ce pas???
Anne-Marie says
The importance of reality can’t be overstated. I’m not a Charlotte Mason homeschooler, so I don’t know the exact text, but she says somewhere that for education to work, a child needs many points of contact with reality. I have seen this over and over with my math tutoring students: part of why they can’t work with (say) fractions is that fractions to them are not part of reality. They’ve never halved a recipe, or measured wood for a bird feeder, so they think fractions are just funny numbers with lines in between. The rules for how to push these funny numbers around on a page appear capricious and arbitrary, because the children don’t see the real relations the rules express.
More broadly, our culture’s decay is based in large part on the (often unconscious) belief that we can shape the world to our desires, rather than being bound by the limits of reality.
Stephanie says
Anne-Marie, this is beautifully put, I want to find more points of reality for my homeschool! Good morsel for the fall, thank you!
Jamie says
This reminds me of Connie’s post over at Smockity Frocks about the hairless newborn kitten that they found. They got up several times a night to feed it special kitten formula from a dropper and nursed it back to health. This went on and on, and eventually grew up to be the meanest cat they had ever owned. They called it the Devil Cat because of how it would hiss and scratch, and just be an all around jerk. The vet told them that hand-raised kittens turn out bad because they don’t have a mama cat to teach them manners. And humans don’t know how to discipline a kitten. So the best kittens are those that have had some time with mother AND humans before leaving with their forever human family.