Change In The Miracle Worker

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All people have experienced change at some point in their life. When it takes place it is often both welcomed and dreaded. There is almost always some kind of negativity or nostalgia that is present, whether it is expressed or not, even when the change brings only foreseeable good. The reason why there is sometimes a bittersweet feeling about change can be discovered when one searches deep into its details. In The Miracle Worker, William Gibson wrote the stage directions “... Helen spells a word to her. Kate comprehends it, their first act of verbal communication, and she can hardly utter the word aloud, in wonder, gratitude, and deprivation; it is a moment in which she simultaneously finds and loses a child” (Pg. 118). Kate Keller faced an incredible change when Helen’s miracle of understanding the meaning behind words took place. Kate realized, when Helen first communicated with words, that she is not only happy about this, but opposingly feels deprived. In many ways in that moment Kate both found and lost a child. Kate gained a child the moment Helen first truly communicated with her using words that had an understood meaning. Before this, Kate felt as if her child were miles from her, separated by Helen’s blindness and deafness. “There are of course all kinds of separation, Katie has lived with one kind for five years. And another is disappointment. In a child” (Pg. 92). One way that Kate found a child is from the satisfaction of dispersing disappointment in her