1983 Miracle Yearbook

SENIOR SPEECH RECITAL Breaking the recent mold for speech recit- als, Marcia Miller ended upthe year with her narrative recital, "The Snow Goose." She performed the short story in narrative style, employing her dramatic technique to paint the story verbally for her audience rather than using mainly dialogue to explain the action. Tackling a difficult task of communicating the story through far less dialogue and there- fore less opportunity for characterization, Miss Miller nevertheless skillfully took her audience with her to the World War II shores of England, where the tale unfolded around two main characters, a deformed hermit named Philip and a little girl named Frith. The plotline almost reminiscent of the famed "Beauty and the Beast" tale of hatred because of ugliness, "The Snow Goose" showed the slow but steady growth of a friendship between the hermit, his lifestyle chosen because of townspeople's rejection of his deformity, and the little girl, who brought an injured snow goose to his cabin for doctoring.She was aware of his unfailing care for sick or injured birds and, resolutely shoving aside her fear of him, asked for his help with the shot bird. Through months of doctoring the bird and accompanying frequent visits from Frith, Philip and Frith developed an odd friend- ship based upon their common love of the goose. As the bird healed and grew older, it flew away from the shoreside cabin for long per- iods of time, during which Frith also stayed away. She left in a more final manner when Phil- ip, in true Beast-like fashion, declared his love for her. Unable to cope with loving such a pitiful creature, Frith put him out of her mind until he told her that he was leaving in arowboat to help rescue the trapped soldiers on Dover Beach who were suffering German attack. When she protested against his taking such a foolhardy risk, he replied that the trapped men reminded him of his menagerie of trapped or wounded birds he had once rescued, who accepted him for his kindness and did not look at his deformity. In a predictable yet touching ending, the hermit was killed after rescuing a great num- ber of the soldiers, and it was reported that ships nearby spotted a large white snow 288 goose circling over his rowboat before and after his death. Miss Miller also portrayed "Ermen- garde" her sophomore year in the pro- duction of "The Matchmaker." She plans to pursue a job with her degree.