The Miracle Worker
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50 free The Miracle Worker trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Miracle Worker turns a few weeks in 1887 into one of the most gripping dramas of the American stage. A young governess who has only just left school herself arrives at an Alabama homestead to teach a six-year-old who can neither see nor hear, and who has never been told no. What follows is a battle of wills, fought over breakfast tables and locked doors, that ends with a child discovering language. This quiz covers all of it: the characters and turning points of the script act by act, the celebrated dining room fight, the real people and letters behind the drama, the original Broadway production, and the screen versions of 1962, 1979 and 2000 with their casts and prizes. It is written for students revising the text, for teachers who want a ready check on each act, and for anyone who has just watched one of the films. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can learn as you go, play it straight through or print it for a class.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which American author coined the nickname for Anne Sullivan that later gave the play The Miracle Worker its title?
Mark Twain
Mark Twain admired both women and called Helen Keller a miracle and her instructor the miracle worker. He also helped arrange the funding for Keller's college education.
Q 02Which word, half-remembered from infancy, does Helen Keller finally understand at the climax of The Miracle Worker?
Water
Water rushing over one hand while Annie Sullivan spells into the other finally links the finger signs to the world. Helen then races around the yard demanding the name of everything she touches.
Q 03Which screen superstar did United Artists want as Annie Sullivan in the 1962 film The Miracle Worker?
Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor was the studio's choice, but the director insisted on the actress who had played the part on stage. The studio then saw the project as a risk and kept its budget tight.
Q 04Which actress played Helen Keller in the 1962 film The Miracle Worker, then Annie Sullivan in a 1979 TV remake?
Patty Duke
Patty Duke won an Oscar at 16 as Helen and an Emmy as Annie in the remake. She had first created the role of Helen on Broadway in 1959.
Q 05What did both stars wear under their costumes to film the nine-minute dining room fight in The Miracle Worker (1962)?
Protective padding
Protective padding spared both actresses serious bruises as they wrestled over table manners. The sequence needed three cameras and took five days to shoot.
Q 06Which famous inventor steered Helen Keller's parents to the Perkins school before the events of The Miracle Worker?
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell was working with deaf children when the Kellers consulted him in 1886. Helen Keller later dedicated her autobiography to him.
Q 07Which Broadway star repeated her stage role as Annie Sullivan in the 1962 film The Miracle Worker and won an Oscar?
Anne Bancroft
Anne Bancroft later became even more famous as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. She was appearing in another Broadway play on Oscar night and could not collect her statuette in person.
Q 08Which Little House on the Prairie star played Helen Keller in the 1979 television remake of The Miracle Worker?
Melissa Gilbert
Melissa Gilbert, television's Laura Ingalls, earned an Emmy nomination as Helen. Annie Sullivan was played by the actress who had won an Oscar as Helen in the 1962 film.
Q 09Which English novelist's account of deaf-blind Laura Bridgman inspired the real mother portrayed in The Miracle Worker?
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens met Laura Bridgman at the Perkins school in 1842 and praised her education in American Notes. Reading it decades later moved Helen Keller's mother to seek help for her own daughter.
Q 10Which ten-year-old broke the competitive Oscar age record set by The Miracle Worker's 16-year-old supporting actress?
Tatum O'Neal
Tatum O'Neal won Best Supporting Actress for Paper Moon in 1974, acting opposite her father Ryan. The Miracle Worker's Helen had held the record for eleven years.
Q 11Which mealtime habit of Helen Keller's sparks the famous breakfast fight with Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker?
Eating from others' plates
Eating from others' plates with her bare hands is a habit the family indulges to keep the peace. Annie Sullivan asks everyone else to leave the room and battles Helen alone until she sits and eats properly.
Q 12Which final feat of table manners does Annie Sullivan report after the dining room battle in The Miracle Worker?
Helen folded her napkin
Helen folded her napkin only after she had finally eaten with a spoon. The real Annie Sullivan described the same tussle in an 1887 letter, saying the napkin alone took another hour.
Q 13Which gift from the Perkins pupils supplies the first word Annie Sullivan spells to Helen in The Miracle Worker?
Q 21What relation to Helen is James Keller, the sarcastic young man who finally defies the Captain in The Miracle Worker?
Her half-brother
Her half-brother is the Captain's son from his first marriage and resents the attention Helen receives. Near the end he blocks the door so that his father cannot stop Annie Sullivan.
Q 22In which force had The Miracle Worker's Captain Keller, later an Alabama newspaper editor, earned his rank?
Confederate Army
The Confederate Army made Helen's father a captain during the Civil War, two decades before the play begins. At the breakfast table he is still refighting its battles with his son.
Q 23Which Civil War general does Captain Keller compare the stubborn Annie Sullivan to in The Miracle Worker?
A doll
A doll brought from the school gives the pair their first finger-spelled word, and Helen soon uses it to hit her new governess in the face. The real one had been dressed by Laura Bridgman.
Q 14Where on the Keller property does Annie Sullivan live alone with Helen for two weeks in The Miracle Worker?
The garden house
The garden house is close to home, but Helen is taken on a long drive first so that she believes she is far away. With no family to run to, she has to rely on Annie Sullivan for everything.
Q 15Where does Helen Keller secretly drop the key to Annie Sullivan's bedroom at the end of Act One of The Miracle Worker?
Down the well
Down the well it goes, after Helen has kept it hidden in her mouth. The real Helen Keller hid the key under a hallway wardrobe and did not produce it for months.
Q 16How is Annie Sullivan freed in The Miracle Worker after Helen Keller locks her inside an upstairs room?
A ladder is fetched
A ladder is fetched and set at her window, a humiliating rescue for the new governess. Helen Keller's memoir says her real father had to do the same, much to her delight.
Q 17Which accessory, a farewell present from blind schoolgirls, does Annie Sullivan wear throughout The Miracle Worker?
Smoked glasses
Smoked glasses shield eyes that a series of operations had only partly restored. Annie Sullivan had entered the Perkins school as a nearly blind girl herself.
Q 18Which younger brother, lost in a Massachusetts almshouse, haunts Annie Sullivan throughout The Miracle Worker?
Jimmie
Jimmie died of tuberculosis only months after the two children were sent to the state almshouse. Her guilt over him drives Annie Sullivan to fight so hard for Helen.
Q 19Which northern city, home of the Perkins school, does Annie Sullivan leave by train for Alabama in The Miracle Worker?
Boston
Boston is where the 20-year-old has spent her schooldays, and the post in Alabama is her first job. Captain Keller soon blames her blunt manner on her being a Yankee.
Q 20Which character in The Miracle Worker discovers, as the doctor leaves, that baby Helen can no longer see or hear?
Kate Keller
Kate Keller makes the discovery while her husband is seeing the doctor out. The scene then jumps forward more than five years, to a Helen who rules the household with her tantrums.
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant took Vicksburg after a siege of 47 days, a campaign the Captain argues over at breakfast. He does not mean the comparison as a compliment.
Q 24Which servant boy does Annie Sullivan teach to finger-spell in The Miracle Worker so that a jealous Helen joins in?
Percy
Percy gets a spelling lesson while Helen sulks out of reach, refusing to be touched. Her curiosity wins, and contact with Annie Sullivan is restored.
Q 25Which Alabama town, the real birthplace of Helen Keller, is the setting of the play The Miracle Worker?
Tuscumbia
Tuscumbia is the seat of Colbert County, near the Tennessee River in the Shoals area. Helen Keller's family home there has been a museum dedicated to her since 1954.
Q 26At which Keller homestead is The Miracle Worker performed outdoors each summer as Alabama's official outdoor drama?
Ivy Green
Ivy Green was built by Helen Keller's grandfather in 1820. The summer performances on its grounds have been running for more than thirty years.
Q 27In The Miracle Worker, which part of her own face does Helen Keller touch as her private sign for her mother?
Her cheek
Her cheek is one of the home-made gestures Helen relies on before she has language. By the age of seven the real Helen Keller had more than 60 such signs for her family.
Q 28Which stage device does The Miracle Worker use to reveal Annie Sullivan's painful memories of her almshouse childhood?
Offstage voices
Offstage voices let the audience hear what is going on inside her head while the action on stage continues. Some critics of the first production found the device clumsy, but the play was a popular hit anyway.
Q 29Which treat does Annie Sullivan dole out in The Miracle Worker as a reward each time Helen spells a word correctly?
Cake
Cake, handed over in small bits, was the real Annie Sullivan's reward too, as her 1887 letters record. The family, by contrast, used sweets simply to quiet Helen's tantrums.
Q 30Which American playwright, whose first Broadway hit was Two for the Seesaw, wrote The Miracle Worker?
William Gibson
William Gibson first tried the subject as a solo dance piece before writing it as a television play. He then chose the stage over a film offer because it gave him more artistic control.