During the late 19th century and early 20th century the myth of Helen Keller as saintly beacon of love become a common cultural currency. She was known as a miracle child who beat her physical afflictions with indomitable courage and prowess. Representations of her life and activities through contemporary newspaper, journal, magazines within the discourse of disability elevates her to an iconic status from flesh and blood human being. From an early childhood she became the centre of public attention and sympathy. She was called saint, idol, miracle child. The text “The Story of My Life” first appeared as a series of several instalments in the Ladies Home Journal in 1902. In 1903 it was published as a book. This text was also an attempt to rebuild that iconic identity .Identity is always a matter of representations and a continuous performance over those representations.
My paper will concern --
1. What are the representational strategies she undertook to rebuild her image of a saint or miracle child?
2. This myth of Helen Keller made her immensely popular public persona. So my next concern will be--
How far does the present text become a document of her public self?
At the very outset of the text we come to know that a dreadful disease snatched both her eyes and ears and plunged her whole being into utter darkness. Anne Sullivan came to rescue this semi-wild child. Throughout the text it is deliberately stressed that a deaf blind overcame her utmost difficulties in a beatific and electric manner. It was a conscious effort on her part to make reader realize the way she snipped her problems away, rather than the problems themselves. It was accentuated in details that how much moral fibre she had to show to communicat...
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... In the fag end of the text, she acknowledged her gratitude to them (perhaps to Standard oil magnate Henry Huttleson Rodgers and his wife Abbie) who paid for her college education. The text becomes also an instrument to deal with her public affairs.
So by using these representational strategies the text becomes a potential space where a culturally displaced girl makes her own iconic status and vehemently maintains that status to be well fitted in culture.
Works Cited
1. Crow, Liz. “Helen Keller: Rethinking the Problematic Icon” .Disability &
Vol. 15 . October. 2010
2. Keller, Helen. The Story of my Life. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co. 1903.
3. Klages, M. Interview transcript. The Real Helen Keller. Channel Four Television.1999.
She could not believe that she was going to pick up Helen Keller at the hotel. She was so excited that she started to dream about when she was a little girl and her father had given her the story of Helen Keller written by Annie Sullivan. When she arrived at the hotel, she got out of her car to greet Helen Keller and Polly Thomson. She took Helen's hand and placed her in the car with Mrs. Thomson. Then it came to her mind that they were going to be taking a very dangerous ride when they were to go up to the house. There were no sides to the car, so when she took very sharp turns, she was afraid that Helen might fall out of the car. So she warned them about the sharp and steep turns. When they got to this part of the journey, Helen started to sing, "This is fun!" and then she cried out, "Lovely!" When they reached the house, she helped the two women out of the car to greet Margot. She was invited to have lunch with Margot, Mrs. Thomson and Helen. They drove to the restaurant and went to sit down at their table. When Helen sat down, she felt around her area so she knew where her fork, spoon, knife, and plate were, and sat patiently.
One area where I have trouble understanding is in Chapter 71: “What difficulties do Deaf people have...
To them seeing a person just move their lips leaves them wondering what the person is doing. Margaret 's parents felt trapped in the hearing world where their only guide to life in the hearing world was Margaret since she was the only one who could link them to the hearing world. Margaret gives up her social life just to be with her parents; caring for them. Throughout her life, Margaret feels guilt, shame and despair because she has deaf parents who can 't seem to be able to become dependent in their society or provided her with brand new clothes like her rich friend 's parents. Instead her mother has to make her the prom dress while her friends go shopping for a brand new dress. Margaret 's mother, Janice is very conservative which prevents Margaret from getting a dress cheaper than her friends ' since she believes that the deaf don 't beg. Janice and Abel do want the hearing to pity or make them seem as disable people. When they go out, they hide their signs in order to prevent people from laughing at them and making them feel so different. They 're scared to sign in public because immediately people stare at them and make a face as if to say "what are they doing, crazy people", bringing down their self teem. To them trusting hearing people is not a choice since they had a terrible experience when buying a car from a hearing man
The contrast between how She sees herself and how the rest of the world sees Her can create extreme emotional strain; add on the fact that She hails from the early 1900s and it becomes evident that, though her mental construct is not necessarily prepared to understand the full breach against Her, She is still capable of some iota of realization. The discrimination encountered by a female during this time period is great and unceasing.
Helen Keller has had an influence on society by becoming a role model for the deaf and blind. When she was 19 months she came down with an illness called “scarlet fever”. As a result of the illness, Helen Keller became blind and deaf, leaving her not able to see and hear. Many people didn’t believe in Helen Keller being able to learn, but she ended up proving everyone wrong. Later on in her life with the help of her teacher Anne Sullivan, Helen learned to read, write and speak. Helen Keller once said “While they were saying it couldn’t be done, it was done” (Keller). Helen was born June 27, 1880 from a family of southern landowners with two older sisters in Tuscumbia Alabama. Kate and Arthur Keller found a young woman at the Perkins Institution to teach Helen how to communicate. A month later after Anne Sullivan’s arrival, she had already taught Helen at the age of six the word water and that words have a meaning. Once Helen learned to communicate with others by using ...
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” Helen Keller believed that in order to be successful and make a difference, problems must be confronted, tried, and solved. Keller’s words of wisdom go hand in hand with the American way of success today. Without argumentation, criticism, or suffering, the nation cannot progress and succeed. With people like Helen Keller in society, who are always ready to challenge popular beliefs, America can and will continue to progress.
Helen Keller, against all odds, became a mouthpiece for many causes in the early to mid-twentieth century. She advocated for causes such as building institutions for the blind, schools for the deaf, women’s suffrage and pacifism. When America was in the most desperate of times, her voice stood out. Helen Keller spoke at Carnegie Hall in New York raising her voice in protest of America’s decision to join the World War. The purpose of this paper will analyze the devices and methods Keller used in her speech to create a good ethos, pathos, and logos.
The Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca once said, “It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.” Not everyone is always on the front lines in the battle of good versus evil. Ranks are filled with select soldiers that will take on the fight. Regardless, those willing to take the rough road, the steep hills, and the bad days are the ones that are truly filling the trenches. Anyone can be great; one way to acheive greatness is by studying this characteristic in others.
The quote “embracing that which makes you different, is what makes you most powerful and strong” was said by Darren Criss. Criss stated this quote at an interview about A Very Potter Musical in 2009 about up and coming stars. He was talking about doing something different, a parody musical on a popular franchise. Criss belonged to a theatre group ,Team Starkid, which was very different from other theatre or comedy groups. The quote means that showing what makes people different and not giving up knowing they’re different is what makes them the most powerful and strong. The quote goes along with society today because individuals try to hard to please society instead of what is successful for them. Many people have lived according to this quote
Heroification is the process where details—both important and trivial—are left out or changed to fit the archetypical mold of the flawless, inhuman "heroes." This "degenerative process" makes "flesh-and-blood individuals into pious, perfect creatures without conflicts, pain, credibility, or human interest (Loewen 19)." For example, many people know of Helen Keller only as the blind, deaf girl who despite her handicaps learned to read, write, and to speak, but this is only the first twenty years of her life. Whatever happened to Keller for the next sixty-four years of her life? Keller was, in fact, a radical socialist in Massachusetts starting in the early 1900s, and was one of the most passionate and famous woman during that time rallying for the new communist nation. Keller's love for socialism did not stem from a vacuum but was rooted deep within her experiences as a disabled person, and she sympathized with other handicaps and learned that social class controls not only people's opportunity but also their disabilities. But during the heroification process, the schools and the mass media omitted Keller's lifelong goal and passion to bring about radical social change because we would rather teach our young to "remain uncontroversial and one-dimensional" than to have a room full of leftists (Loewen 35).
... middle of paper ... ... Sandra Cisneros took a risk and got remarkably far with her passion for mixing the cultures and the identities of women. Her voice is what emphasizes the article to show how the goal is to redistribute the language and culture, not criticizing the “New World”.
There is little wisdom, however, to be learned from the stories of superheroes. It is from observing the struggles, losses and compromises in both Keller and Sullivan's lives that we are likely to find parallels to the everyday experiences of ourselves and our friends. Dorothy Herrmann's recent biography of Keller, Helen Keller: A Life (Herrmann, 1998) creates a much more complete picture of the costs of Keller's celebrity and iconic status, and of the tensions present in her life-long relationship with the woman whom she always referred to as Teacher. In this paper, I will discuss two important themes from Helen Keller's life in terms of their implications for those of us who are also part of a community of people engaged in the enterprise of finding their voices in the world.
Helen Keller won many awards and had many accomplishments in her lifetime, even though she had the disability of being blind and deaf. Helen Keller achieved more in a day than the average American could achieve in a lifetime. There were many movies made about Keller, and she wrote fourteen books. She was a widespread lecturer, and a member of the Socialist Party, a leading figure in the Suffragist movement, a member of the American Foundation for the Blind, and a member of the the right of industrial workers to have unions. Keller also fundraised for various associations throughout her life. Helen Keller’s disabilities did not get in her way as she won many awards and she also had many accomplishments in her lifetime.
At a young age Helen Keller had an illness that made her blind and deaf. Because of this, Helen was shut off from the world and couldn’t speak or write. That soon changed when she got a teacher who worked with her day after day. As soon as she got old enough, she entered college, soon graduating with honors. She traveled the world, raising money and speaking about her illness. Helen Keller grew from a sensitive child into an intelligent young woman. Helen Keller became famous for her ability to prove that one could still achieve success through personal struggles.
There were so many things in her life that could have held her back from doing everything that she wanted. But she never let them get her down. Even as someone who couldn’t see or hear anything around her, she lived in this world with a grace that will live forever. Her beliefs were so strong and she changed the world forever. As Lister Hill said in Helen’s eulogy, "She will live on, one of the few, the immortal names not born to die. Her spirit will endure as long as man can read and stories can be told of the woman who showed the world there are no boundaries to courage and