“She’ll live.”
The very first words spoken in the play are said as three figures loom over a crib. In this very opening moment, the audience is informed of a miracle. A very young child has survived against all odds; the doctor even says he didn’t expect her to survive. It is a moment for celebration and joy and, indeed, the Keller are revealed to be a loving family happy to have Helen. However, the play from this moment goes on to pose a question that is not always answered without heartbreak: is living—mere survival—really a cause for joy? Is just being alive really the same thing living? For the Kellers, the answer is no, but their strategic plan is not to give up hope, but to move beyond hope.
“…words can be her eyes, to everything in the world outside her, and inside too, what is she without words? With them she can think, have ideas, be reached, there’s not a thought or fact in the world that can’t be hers.”
A theme running throughout the play is that there are more to “see” than with the eyes and this quote pursues the idea that language can give Helen the vision she lacks as a result of blindness. Language is knowledge and knowledge is power. The key to reaching Helen, teaching Helen and giving Helen a future beyond merely being “alive” for Annie is breaking down the barrier between not being able to see something and still recognizing what it is. This will be the centerpiece of the play’s climax when she breaks through and Helen reveals the ability to “see” water as the thing which is “w-a-t-e-r.”
“God must owe me a resurrection.”
Although Helen Keller went on to become one of the admired people in the world, this is really the story of Annie Sullivan. It is her past which informs the story and drives the emotional intensity of her character. Her past is one of being orphaned with her brother and watching him die which has led to an adult life wracked with guilt over the promise she had made to take care of him. His death ended her capacity to love, the result being that while hard and tough, she is also persistent, single-minded and afraid of no one. It is this aspect of her personality which brings about the miracle she works in the Keller household, but twice in the play she shows her vulnerability with this quote which context presupposes occurs as a result of Helen coming into her life.
(And now the miracle happens.)
“Wah. Wah.”
The stage directions of playwright put it simply and explicitly, without the least ambiguity. This is the miracle of the title. Well, the second miracle. One syllable, repeated. Gibberish, as it means nothing on its own, but a miracle as it is the first indication that Annie has broken through to make connection between language and things. “Wah. Wah.” is water which Helen knows how to spell correctly, but cannot properly say. Therein lies the difference between language and gibberish, between sounds that have been agreed upon collectively to mean something and sounds that mean nothing. This is the essence of language and language is the essence of communication. Once communication has been established, understanding is possible.
