Read this excerpt from a speech by Eleanor Roosevelt after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Which sentence best illustrates what Eleanor Roosevelt wants her audience to understand after listening to her speech?
I should like to say Just a word to the women in the country tonight. I have a boy at sea on a destroyer, for all I know he may be on his way to the
Pacific. Two of my children are in coast cities on the Pacific. Many of you all over the country have boys in the services who will now be called
upon to go into action. You have friends and families in what has suddenly become a danger zone. You cannot escape anxiety. You cannot
escape a clutch of fear at your heart and yet I hope that the certainty of what we have to meet will make you rise above these fears.
We must go about our daily business more determined than ever to do the ordinary things as well as we can and when we find a way to do
anything more in our communities to help others, to build morale, to give a feeling of security, we must do it. Whatever is asked of us I am sure
we can accomplish it. We are the free and unconquerable people of the United States of America.

femininity is conveyed through bernice's personality. she doesn't act how the other girls act and everyone thinks she is weird. she learns how to act in a way that was considered femininely appropriate at the time. she becomes so popular but her attempts to be liked end up backfiring when she is pressured into bobbing her hair. the author wrote that bernice cut off her cousin's hair in revenge for tricking her to cut her hair. this was the authors way of trying to change the way feminine is defined and the way women are expected to act.

sthe miracle worker  ▾search

home  >   study guides  >   the miracle worker

the miracle worker themeswilliam gibson

themes and meanings

(comprehensive guide to drama)

print  print  document  pdf  list  cite  link  link

there are two central themes in  the miracle worker: that the human spirit can triumph over even the most daunting of disabilities and that a dedicated teacher can transform the lives of those with whom he or she comes into contact. these inspirational themes have long been personified in the widely known true-life relationship between helen keller and annie sullivan, but  the miracle worker  also dramatizes collateral issues that extend beyond the particular case. underlying helen’s process of learning basic principles of what annie terms “obedience” (decorum, etiquette, and hygiene), there are more universal lessons of self-governance—the inculcation of self-restraint instead of willfulness, the development of self-discipline instead of self-indulgence. only when these lessons have been mastered can helen begin to acquire language—which, annie says, “is to the mind more than light is to the eye.”