Dillard vs. Gibson

McCarron English 11R
Miracle Worker connecting to Annie Dillard’s “Seeing”

The following quote reveals Gibson’s purpose for writing the screenplay:
I wanted to teach you-oh, everything the earth is full of, Helen, everything on it that’s ours for a wink and it’s gone, and what we are on it, the-light we bring to it and leave behind in-words, why, you can see five thousand years back in a light of words, everything we feel, think, know – and share, in words, so not a soul is in darkness, or done with, even in the grave. (104)

1. How do I insert the above quote into my essay?

2. How does the quote expose Gibson’s purpose?

3. What are the symbols Gibson uses in the quote and what do they stand for?

4. How does the sentence structure reveal Gibson’s purpose?

5. How does this relate to Dillard’s purpose in the excerpt, “Seeing” from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek?

ANNIE: Words stand for objects – “How, how, how can I tell you that this – means a word, and the word means this thing? (104)

Dillard – Before the operation a doctor would give a blind patient a cube and a sphere; the patient would tongue it or feel it and name it correctly. After the operation the doctor would show the same objects to the patient without letting him touch them; now he had no clue whatsoever what he was seeing. (25)

Dillard – “Form is condemned to an eternal danse macabre with meaning; I couldn’t unpeach the peaches,” (29) danse macabre – dance of death

Dillard – I’m told I reached for the moon; many babies do. But the color-patches of infancy swelled as meaning filled them; they arrayed themselves in solemn ranks down distance which unrolled and stretched before me like a plain. (29)

Director’s notes – a change in Helen’s face, some light coming into it we have never seen there, some struggle in the depths behind it…. (118)

ANNIE: Captain Keller’s concern for outward appearances rather than true self : Give them back their child and dog, both housebroken, everyone’s satisfied. But me, and you. (103)
Compare and contrast the ideas the above quotes are revealing.