A student who is writing a summary about Helen Keller wants to cite information from page 16 of The Miracle Worker by William Gibson.

hi there!

one thousand and one nights, also called the arabian nights is a collection of middle eastern tales compiled in arabic during the islamic golden age, dated from the 8th to the 14th century. this collection was compiled of largely middle eastern and indian stories with an uncertain date and autorship whose tales such as aladdin, ali baba and sinbad the sailor -these ones were the most popular ones, the ones that have almost become part of western folklore.

as in much medieval european literature, the stories contained in this collection are set within a frame story. its scene is central asia, as known as "the islands or peninsulae of india and china", where king shahryar kills his wife after discovering her infidelities and as well as any other who betrayed him.   then, loathing all womankind, he marries and kills his new wife each day until no more candidates could have been found. his vizier had two daughters, scheherezade and dunyazad. the elder one -scheherezade- having devised a scheme to save herself and the others insisted that her father needed to give her in marriage to the king. each evening, she used to tell a story leaving it incomplete and promising to finish it the following night. the stories kept the king very interested, so eager to hear evey ending of each story, that he puts off her execution from day to day and finally he decided to give up with his plan. these stories are contained within the collection of 1001 nights, the bulk of the text is in prose, although verse is usually used for songs and riddles to express better the heightened emotion of them.

1.   in sonnet 18, the speaker wants to describe the beauty of his love, but can’t find the words to do so. the speaker says “then in mid-utterance the lay was lost” when he tries to think of the words to describe his love’s beauty.   through his defeat of finding words to describe his love, he shows his love for her.

2.   instead of describing how perfect his love is or comparing her to other beautiful things, he says she is average and there is nothing special about her.   at the last 2 lines of the poem, the volta changes the poem by saying that even though his love is average in beauty, his love for her is special and unique. so instead of praising her throughout the whole poem, he contrasts her average characteristics with his special love for her.

3.   the beloved asked the speaker to describe how he feels about her. she begins to describe what she feels but "drop the torch" and says that she can't do it because the words "hid in me out of reach." the the speaker says "nay, let the silence of my womanhood command my woman-love to thy belief" and that her silence will have to be the answer to his question.