Biography of Helen Keller

986 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The eassy of Helen Keller

Even though Helen Keller died at the age of 87, blind and deaf, she had been an educator. Helen loved and cared for education, and wanted other blind and/ or deaf people to have a chance at one too. Knowing what it was like to be blind and deaf she wanted to help others who were blind and deaf. Most people believe that Helen Keller was born blind and deaf, but she wasn’t. It altered Helen’s life at only 19 months! She had fallen ill, most likely scarlet fever, and never fully recovered, for she had lost almost all of her sight and could no longer hear. A little girl born able to see the beautiful world, yet got it taken from her. She was a hassle to keep up with after that. Since Helen could no longer hear what her parents were saying or see where they were doing or what they were motioning at, she did anything she wanted until she was grabbed. When Helen turned six, in 1886, her mother took her to a specialist doctor in Baltimore, Maryland, who then referred her to Alexander Graham Bell. Alexander gave Helen a teacher named Anne Sullivan. Later in august of 1896 Helen lost her father and 25 years later, Kate Keller, her mother, died from an anonymous illness.
As a child, Helen was difficult, since you couldn’t get her attention without grabbing her, and even then you couldn’t tell her anything. She later quoted, “Once I knew only darkness and stillness. My life was without past or future. But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living"(Khurana). Helen’s courage is unbelievable. It's overwhelming that even though she couldn’t hear, she couldn’t see, she moved, acted, and did her best to make her mark, to show the world that she...

... middle of paper ...

...Anne Macy. The Story of My Life, by Helen Keller: With Her Letters (1887-1901) and a Supplementary Account of Her Education, including Passages from the Reports and Letters of Her Teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1914. Print.
Khurana, Simran. "Helen Keller Quotes." About.com Quotations. About.com, n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.
Wellman, Victoria. "Helen Keller's Forbidden Love: New Book Inspired by the Author's Clandestine Engagement Tells of Thwarted Romance and Broken Hearts." Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 08 May 2012. Web. 07 Apr. 2014.
Sultan, Rosie. Helen Keller in Love. New York: Viking, 2012. Print.

Show More
Related

  • Helen Keller: A Medical Marvel or Evidence of the I-Function?

    970 Words  | 2 Pages

    For those who are not familiar with the story of Helen Keller or the play 'The Miracle Worker', it recalls the life of a girl born in 1880 who falls tragically ill at the young age of two years old, consequently losing her ability to hear, speak, and see. Helen's frustration grew along side with her age; the older she got the more it became apparent to her parents that she was living in more of an invisible box, than the real world. Her imparities trapped her in life that seemed unlivable. Unable to subject themselves to the torment which enveloped them; watching, hearing and feeling the angst which Helen projected by throwing plates and screaming was enough for them to regret being blessed with their own senses. The Kellers, in hopes of a solution, hired Anne Sullivan, an educated blind woman, experienced in the field of educating sensory disabilities arrived at the Alabama home of the Kellers in 1887. There she worked with Helen for only a little over a month attempting to teach her to spell and understand the meaning of words v. the feeling of objects before she guided Helen to the water pump and a miracle unfolded. Helen understood the juxtaposition of the touch of water and the actual word 'water' Anne spelled out on her hand . Helen suddenly began to formulate the word 'wa...

    Read More

  • Comparing Malcolm X And Helen Keller's A Word For Everything

    1228 Words  | 3 Pages

    “It would have been difficult to find a happier child than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of that eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time longed for a new day to come. I had now the key to all language, and I was eager to learn to use it” (Keller 146). The ability to actually comprehend words and associate those words to thoughts and feelings rejuvenated her. Keller was reborn that day, with a new ‘vision’ and a new direction. What started that day, culminated into Keller becoming the first deaf person to earn a bachelors degree. She learnt to speak and ‘hear’ by following the movements of people’s lips. Keller was extremely hardworking and she personified willpower and diligence by patiently untangling the taboos of society to prove her critics wrong.

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of Eleanor Ayer's Parallel Journeys

    834 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Picking up the pieces of their shattered lives was very, very difficult, but most survivors found a way to begin again.” Once again, Helen was faced with the struggle of living life day-to-day, trying not to continue feeling the pain of her past.

    Read More

  • College Admissions Essay: Half as Courageous

    558 Words  | 2 Pages

    Helen Keller was born on June 27th, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. She was a bright infant, interested in everything around her, and imitating adults at a very young age. In February of 1882, she was struck with an illness which left her deaf and blind. For several years, Helen had very little communication with the rest of the world, except for a few signs which she used with her family. When she was six, her parents wanted desperately to do something to help their strong-willed, half-wild, child. They were far from any deaf or blind schools, and doubted that anyone would come to the little town to educate their deaf and blind child. They heard of a doctor in Baltimore who had helped many seemingly hopeless cases of blindness, but when he examined Helen, there was nothing he could do for her. However, he referred them to Dr. Alexander Graham Bell who recommended Anne Sullivan to teach Helen.

    Read More

  • Helen Keller

    861 Words  | 2 Pages

    Helen Keller was born on June 27,1880 in Alabama to Arthur and Kate Keller. Helen Keller was an American author, lecturer and a political activist. At the age of nineteenth months Helen was diagnosed with an illness called "brain fever" leaving her to be deaf and blind for the rest of her life. Growing up Helen gave her parents problems. She was always breaking and running into things so her parents sent her to a school for the blind. In the fall of 1890 she enrolled at Radcliffe College and became the first blind and deaf person to attend a higher level learning institution. After graduating college Helen spent many years traveling the world helping people overseas who were blind. After a series of strokes she retired from traveling in 1961 and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom award. On June 1,1968 Helen died in her sleep.

    Read More

  • The Life and Literary Work of Kate Chopin

    739 Words  | 2 Pages

    Magill, Frank M. Great Lives From History, American Women Series II. Pasadena: Salena Press, 1995.

    Read More

  • How Helen Keller Helped to Improve the World of the Disabled

    722 Words  | 2 Pages

    Almost everyone can tell of how Helen Keller learned ways of communication through her aid and teacher, Annie Sullivan, but not many know of her later years, which I have found to be the most interesting. Another is the American Civil Liberties Union, which involves protecting every US citizens rights. Along with these organizations, Keller was a huge part of the woman’s suffrage mo...

    Read More

  • Helen Keller Rhetorical Analysis

    752 Words  | 2 Pages

    Overall, Helen Keller’s speech displays an argument that blind people are just as great as normal people and that people should care about blind people too. This speech also provides our world today with an important message. Everyone should take part in helping out other people and therefore help make the world a better and delightful place for

    Read More

  • How Did Helen Keller Change The World

    556 Words  | 2 Pages

    Helen Keller Miracle student Helen Keller's famous quote. “When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we don't see the one which has been opened for us”. Many people known Helen keller as an inspiration leader. Helen Keller changed the world by showing everyone that even the deaf and blind can learn.

    Read More

  • Why Is Helen Keller A Hero

    604 Words  | 2 Pages

    Helen was courageous, she later on wrote a book and an article for the Socialist Journal called (The Story of My Life) and (The Masses), in the book she is talking about her whole life and what she had to go through it all with no sense of hear and sight. Her troubles on learning and how everyone doubted her learning disabilities. She sure proved them wrong. While in the article she talks about World War 1. That no one should be segregated regardless of race, color, creed, or sex.

    Read More

  • Essay About Helen Keller

    593 Words  | 2 Pages

    Helen Keller was a true American hero, in my eyes. She was born June, 27 1880 in Tuscumbia Alabama. Helens father was in the confederate army, and so was her grandfather on her mother’s side. Coincidentally one of Helen's ancestors was the first to teach to the deaf in Zurich; Helen did refer back to this in one of her autobiography. Helen was born able to see and hear, but by 19 months she became very ill. This disease was described by doctors as an acute congestion of her stomach and brain. Some doctors guessed that this might be Scarlett fever or meningitis, but never completely knew. Helen could communicate with the cooks daughter with a couple of made up hand signs, and by age seven she could communicate with her family using sixty different signs. Helen Keller’s mother eventually took her to different physicians, which in the end leaded her to Perkins Institute for the Blind. This is where she met her new teacher and 49 yearlong companion Anne Sullivan. Sullivan’s teaching method was to spell the out on Helen's hand, her first word given to her was doll. This was very frustrati...

    Read More

  • Helen Keller Research Paper

    700 Words  | 2 Pages

    My Later Life 1929,Journal 1938,and Let Us Have Faith 1940. These books that she wrote inspired so many kids that suffered from hearing and seeing disability. Keller’s writing reveals her interest in the beauty of things taken for granted by those who can see and

    Read More

  • Helen Keller's Accomplishments

    837 Words  | 2 Pages

    Society was meant to believe in sentimental thoughts about people who were struggling with a disability, the disabled were unofficially barred from voicing their opinions. Keller disproved this stereotype with a sort of fortitude in criticizing aspects of society she disagreed with. She was advocate for woman’s rights, an advocate for the disabled, and an advocate for all the “unfortunate” residents of the public. She was a member of a sufficient number of organizations such as the American Foundation for the Blind or the International Relations Counselor of the American Foundation for Overseas Blind, all of which she dedicated herself towards the amelioration of. Overall, Keller was essentially the woman she desired to be, the one who stated: “I am only one, but I am still one.

    Read More

  • Once My Mother Film Analysis

    797 Words  | 2 Pages

    Helen’s early life was very much shaped by her loss and abandonment. The greatest loss Helen experienced was the death of her parents. As she was orphaned by the age of six, it left her with great grief, darkened childhood memories and bewilderment of where she truly belonged. She eventually found her position as a labourer in her uncle’s house. After working on her uncle’s farm for two years and being denied an opportunity for education, she faced the most significant abandonment in her life: being turned

    Read More

  • The Inspiring Legacy of Hellen Keller

    845 Words  | 2 Pages

    The beginning of her life began when she was first born on June 27, 1880, in a plantation known as Ivy Green located in Alabama. Keller was healthy and most found her attractive with curly, blond hair and pale blue eyes. (ww.nndb.com). Shortly after she began getting congested in the brain and stomach, Keller lost both her sight and her ability to hear. Doctors informed Kate Adams Keller, Helen Keller’s mother, she would not survive past the age of two years old. However, through hope and dedication, Kate Keller contacted a physician. He claimed he could be no help, and sent them to meet Alexander Graham Bell, who, in return, handed them off to Perkins Institute for the Blind. Director Michael Anagnos called a former student by the name of Anne Sullivan. Although Sullivan was also partially blind, she could still manage to help Helen Keller and Sullivan was brought home with her. After many months with no success, Sullivan led Keller to a water pump in the back yard. She ran the cold water over Keller’s hand as she made the hand signs spelling out w-a-t-e-r in Keller’s palm. Something invisible snapped inside Helen Keller and that is ...

    Read More

More about Biography of Helen Keller

Open Document