The Miracle Worker: Act 2 Summary & Analysis

Act Two is all about the discipline that Annie tries to exercise over her young pupil. The challenge, as Annie makes plain here, will be to discipline Helen while still nurturing Helen’s potential for learning. In this way, Annie embodies a form of tough love that the Kellers—too willing to reward Helen even for bad behavior—simply don’t practice.

Annie remains incredibly patient with Helen, even turning Helen’s misbehavior into “teachable moments.” At the most basic level, Annie is trying to teach Helen the words that represent certain concepts (such as “good” and “bad”) in the hopes that, later on, Helen will grasp the concept that things have names and will then be able to understand, in retrospect, what the words mean.

Annie doesn’t seem to have a great deal of technical expertise. Instead, what she has is determination and common sense. She recognizes that teaching Helen words she doesn’t understand may seem like a big waste of time, but she also knows that doing so is her best chance of educating Helen in the long run.

As Annie spends more time around the Kellers, she begins to grasp why Helen doesn’t learn anything: Kate spoils her instead of using a reward system to train her to behave well. Annie’s point is that children have to learn how to obey their elders before they can learn anything else: therefore, no discipline equals no learning.

Every morning, it would seem, the Kellers go about their business, all the while missing opportunities to teach Helen how to behave. It’s a clever detail that Arthur and James argue about the Civil War, with James siding with the Northern general, perhaps foreshadowing the way he’ll later side with Annie, the “Yankee” intruder—but perhaps also simply demonstrating that he has a more progressive streak than his father.

This is a crucial scene. Annie starts to take control, not just over Helen but over the entire Keller family. She also offers a concise version of her education methods: it’s irresponsible to spoil children, because sooner or later they’re going to have to learn how to take care of themselves, and the sooner the better.

Naturally, Arthur doesn’t take kindly to Annie’s teaching methods: he’s too used to being the boss (and possibly too prejudiced against Yankees) to comply to easily with a woman from the north coming into his home and telling him how to raise his own daughter.

After just a couple minutes of fighting with Annie, Helen begins to understand the situation and shows some discipline. The reason for the shift, it seems, is that Annie’s isn’t afraid to fight back. In other words, a few moments of actual discipline probably teach Helen more about how to behave than years of being spoiled by her mother and father.

Annie knows that she can’t back down when Helen becomes aggressive: if she does, then Helen will get the idea that she can do whatever she wants around Annie. Therefore, Annie continues to push, and their struggle continues.

Annie’s hard work seems to pay off: after just a couple minutes of fighting, Helen learns the lesson that she has to use a spoon and eat off of a plate. But as it turns out, old habits die hard, and Helen isn’t going to give up so easily. This pattern repeats throughout the play: just when Annie thinks she has broken through and accomplished something significant with Helen, Helen reveals that she’s just as unruly as she has always been.

Ev emphasizes the Kellers’ status as an elite Southern family, related by blood to General Lee (the main general of the Confederacy during the Civil War). This emphasizes the point that the Kellers don’t like Annie in part because she’s a strong, confident Northerner.

After hours of work, Annie appears to have made some real progress. It’s surprising, though, that the stage directions characterize Kate’s reaction to this news as one of grief. Perhaps Kate realizes that, if it takes hours just to teach Helen something as simple as napkin-folding, it’ll take countless years to teach her to speak, showing that even this great victory is, ultimately, just a drop in the bucket. Or, perhaps feeling some small amount of relief and encouragement allows her to finally feel the grief she has repressed over her daughter’s difficult life.

The man speaking may be Dr. Howe, whose report Annie previously claimed to have studied closely. There is likely very limited scholarship at the time about the lives of deaf-blind people or how to treat them. Again, notice the rhetoric of imprisonment and awakening, suggesting that Annie’s role as teacher is to access the hidden reserves of intelligence and curiosity that are buried deep within Helen.

Annie remembers her traumatic experiences in the almshouse, where she and Jimmie lived as children. The male voice seems to be explaining to Annie that Jimmie is dying. This, the audience can assume, is the horror that Annie is trying to move past: having lost a brother, and then blaming herself for the tragedy.

Arthur continues to doubt Annie, but Kate has grown to trust her and seems to believe that she has the power to teach Helen something valuable. Notice that, the second time around, Kate treats the news of Helen folding her napkin optimistically: it may be a small victory in the grand scheme of things, but it’s still a victory, and bodes well for the future.

Annie and Arthur come head to head: Arthur can’t tolerate Annie’s aggressiveness and general lack of “Southern manners,” and Annie can’t work with Arthur and Kate’s indulgent style of child rearing. Yet, here more than ever, it’s clear that Helen is capable of learning how to communicate—she’s obviously smart, as evidenced by the fact that she spoke so early in life. The mention of water here also foreshadows Helen’s “rebirth” in Act Three.

Annie stands up to Arthur and explains that Helen’s only chance of learning language is to learn discipline first. Therefore, Annie believes that she must have total control of her pupil, without Arthur and Kate diluting her lessons with candy and other treats.

This is the most explicit explanation of Annie’s early life, clarifying what was only implied previously. Annie doesn’t believe that sympathy and pity have a place in a child’s development: rather, children need to learn how to be strong and capable. Annie is confident in her educational philosophy because she has actually lived it: she’s living proof that children are made stronger by not being coddled.

The plot of the rest of the play is now set in motion: Annie has two weeks to teach Helen how to communicate. As before, Arthur’s behavior here is amusingly blustery—he’s gruff but in the end he usually backs down.

Notice that James’s respect for Annie and Helen is growing slowly but surely. Even though he continues to take a pessimistic view of things, he seems impressed, in spite of himself, with Annie’s resilience. Resilience, this passage confirms, is the core of Annie’s determined approach to teaching. Annie keeps on trying the same approach with Helen, showing her the signs for words over and over again, hoping that something will stick.

As far as Helen is concerned, she’s far away from her parents and her home. In this way, she’s been tricked into thinking that she’s in Annie’s domain, and therefore obliged to do whatever Annie says.

Perhaps her crying is a sign that Helen is beginning to surrender to Annie. She no longer seems to have as much energy to fight. Instead, she’s frustrated and maybe even willing to begin to cooperate with Annie. Her crying also suggests that she’s intelligent and aware enough to understand what goes on around her to some extent—for example, that she has been taken from her home and family.

James resents his father for many reasons, but the most important would seem to be that Arthur has remarried—an action that James interprets as disrespectful to his mother. In real life, Arthur Keller remarried Kate a year after the death of his first wife.

With Kate’s encouragement, Arthur is learning to “ease up”—first by letting Annie take control over Helen, and second, perhaps, by being less aggressive and domineering with his son.

As before, Annie is utterly opposed to the concept of pity. She thinks that she must be hard on Helen in order to coax her out of her reluctance to cooperate and learn. The danger of this style of teaching, as the passage makes clear, is that the pupil (Helen) dislikes and even fears her teacher (Annie). In reality, Annie is hard on Helen because she respects Helen and wants her to succeed.

As Annie spends more time with Helen, she has to develop new techniques to keep her pupil interested in learning. Here, she appeals to Helen’s natural sense of jealousy: in order to get Helen interested in something, she offers that thing to someone else, making Helen feel left out. The technique works beautifully, and will potentially be useful for making Helen interested in learning.

Annie’s lullaby is a little sad—one can imagine her singing to a doll as a child, because she had no other family. This might further suggest that Annie is interested in taking care of others because nobody ever took care of her. And yet the lullaby is also inspirational, as suggested by the Kellers’ behavior. Annie’s loving devotion to Helen inspires the other Kellers to be bolder and more honest, as Gibson will show in Act Three.