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The Miracle Worker Short Story Symbolism

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Films are often able to incorporate recurring ideas and images in effective ways that still stay true to their original literature themes. Multiple different elements of film analysis are utilized by the director to integrate those ideas, or motifs, into the film. Motifs help provide significance to components throughout the story via symbolism, which has the ability to give seemingly irrelevant objects a deeper, more important meaning. William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker follows the story of the young, deaf and blind Helen Keller’s learning experience with her teacher Annie Sullivan. For the duration the story, Annie’s smoked glasses appear over and over again, and are one of the many recurring components that hold a considerable significance. …show more content…

The main film element used to showcase the glasses is cinematography, which includes camera angles, distance, and movement. The motif is seen being worn or taken off by Anne Sullivan, and their significance is addressed in multiple scenes as well. In one incident, Annie is talking to James, Helen’s older brother, after having a nightmare. Since it is nighttime, she is not wearing her smoked glasses. James compliments her and she immediately puts them back on, and insults him. He then makes a comment that she wouldn’t say that if she didn 't have her glasses on. The use of cinematography shows her face close to the camera without her glasses, but then backs away when she puts the glasses back on. This is an example of the movie directly addressing the significance of this particular motif. Annie felt revealed without her glasses on, and put them back on as a way of hiding herself and her personality from being seen. After the tragic death of her brother years back, Annie is still devastated and is afraid to love or get too close to anyone again. Her glasses are a way of concealing herself from the Kellers in hopes of avoiding getting hurt again. As James started being more friendly to her, Anne hid herself once again behind her glasses, and shut him out of the

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