Helen Keller is well known and admired all around the world. Losing her sight and hearing from a harsh illness, nobody predicted the powerful impact she had on mankind. Keller is mostly known for her miracle in 1887 when her tutor, Anne Sullivan, pumped water onto Keller’s seven-year-old hands. That moment was the beginning of overcoming her disabilities and inspiring the world in a different way. However, this triumphant moment seems to be the only event that is important in Keller’s life, or else that is how general history perceives it. Many popular works on Helen Keller, such as: The Miracle Worker, focus primarily on the sentimental aspect of her life and ignore her interest in socialism and criticism of capitalism. Most people view Keller as a symbol of hope for people with disabilities, while this is true, it is also true that Keller was an extreme advocate for the Socialist Party in America. Her radicalism and dissatisfaction with the American political structure caused the government to mask the majority of her political life from society’s knowledge in an attempt to avoid political unrest and revealing governmental flaws.
Helen Keller’s achievements and worldly involvements began primarily with Alexander Grand Bell. Keller’s parents were distraught in their daughter’s condition and could find no way of helping her. When Bell learned of Keller’s disabilities he referred her to the Boston’s Perkins School for the Blind where Keller met her future tutor and friend, Anne Sullivan. Bell did not support the teaching of American Sign Language because he believed oral speech was the most important tool in society. He believed the Perkins School was the best way for Keller to excel in education mostly because the school had ac...
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...he ability to express opinion, and, in general, discriminated against. Helen Keller dealt with similar injustices, not only because she was a woman but because of her disabilities. People argued that Keller’s political position was invalid mostly because of her disabilities. In her early years of being a socialist, Keller discussed her encounters with such people: “the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. Let [The Brooklyn Eagle] attack my ideas and oppose the aims and arguments of Socialism, for it is not good argument to remind me and others that I cannot see and hear.” For a popular American newspaper to make a claim like this in hopes of dissuading Keller, a highly respected citizen, from promoting socialism shows how desperate the country was to remain more powerful than the Soviets.
Alice Cogswell was born in 1805 in Hartford, Connecticut. When Alice was only 2 she contracted “spotted fever”, a form of meningitis, which resulted in the loss of her hearing and speech. When she was 9, Alice Cogswell met Thomas Gallaudet, her neighbor. Gallaudet had recently graduated and was hoping to pursue law or ministry, but he quickly grew fond of his young neighbor and began teaching her how to read and spell to the best of his abilities. During the early 1800s in the U.S., it was extremely difficult for deaf people to receive the resources and education they needed. There was no regular form of sign language in America, and deaf educators were extremely scarce. Before
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.
“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.
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.
Fondly referred to as the "angel of the battlefield" (The Encyclopedia Britannica Online), Clara Barton served as one of the greatest humanitarians this country has ever known. Persistent beyond belief, Clara employed her remarkable interpersonal skills to teach unruly school children, to collect supplies to send to the battlefront, and to struggle to form the American Red Cross. An equal rights advocate, her most memorable successes consisted of improvements in education, foreign aid, and blacks' and women's rights. This American heroine, whose efforts and bravery have become legendary, worked diligently to reach her ideal: "creating the vigilant social conscience which alone can safeguard individual liberty from the assaults of its enemies and make a nation great in its own eyes, as well as in the estimation of a critical world" (Joyce 1959, p.96).
In an Article titled The Radical Dissent of Helen Keller published July 12 of 2012 Peter Dreier walks through his own views on the life, and the greatness of the conspicuous Helen Keller. He shows this in her early life, when she lets her voice be heard, and
If I could ask Helen Keller one question, it would be how did she do it? She faced all the odds and lived a successful life despite the fact that she was blind and deaf. She inspired people to stand up for what they believe in and to stand up for themselves. She had a plan for America and it was to create a revolution and end the war.
Activists women of the 20th century engaged in various crusades in order to emancipate women and change the conventional stereotyping society that continued to compartmentalized people according to their gender. Eleanor Roosevelt was one of those feminists who advanced the political and social freedom of women. Amidst the ongoing racial discrimination against certain groups of people, the Jews in particular, Roosevelt courageously opened the eyes of the people about the worldwide prejudices that were hindering the exercise of freedom of people (Cook “Reading 4” 535). Through her writings, she became very vocal about human rights abuses. In one of her articles, she rebuked the “kind of anticommunist hysteria that had resulted in fascist triumph and appeasement throughout so much of Europe” (Cook “Reading 4” 535). When virtually the entire America hated the Jews, some even called them “dogs”, Eleanor Roosevelt called for worldwide educational campaign to address the prejudi...
Heroification is a degenerative process that makes people into heroes regardless of any type of character flaw they may possess. It appears that Mr. Loewen?s greatest concern about heroification does not revolve around who gets chosen for the history books but what actually happens to them after they do. He cites two examples of people that had led colored lives but in our textbooks show them as people we should strive to become like. These two people are Helen Keller and President Woodrow Wilson. (Lies?19) Mr. Loewen feels that heroification has distorted the lives of Keller and Wilson and that we can no longer think straight about them. He does not just think this of these two but many other people throughout history. When it comes to Keller we think of someone who, throughout her entire life has struggled to overcome her disabilities. I feel that no one would dispute this but in reality Miss Keller was a radical Socialist for most of her life. This in itself is not so bad but her condemnation of the country into which she was born to and lived in could be considered treasonous. (Lies?20) President W...
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).
At the age of 18, Miss Barton became a schoolteacher. She taught at numerous different schools around Massachusetts. Clara noticed in one particular town that many of the students did not attend school that greatly distressed her. She wanted all children to have the same educational opportunity that she had when she was growing up. Eventually, Barton started her own school. It was free. However, she did not stay there for a long period of time. Clara only taught for a matter of ten years, teaching had exhausted Barton and she longed for a change in her life. She left the teaching field to move onto another field. Barton moved to Washington DC and she became a clerk in the US Patent Office.
Have you ever considered being blind, and deaf for your whole life? Sounds pretty inconceivable right? As for Helen Keller this was just an everyday battle that she had to face. During a very unexpected time when Helen was little, Helen and her family had to undergo some serious changes. Helen and her family adjusted to these new and undesirable changes in several different ways. Such as Helen having a private tutor, or Helen learning how to read and write. Helen Keller was an inspiration to the world inspiring many people around her by all of the great achievements despite all of her disabilities. Helen Adams Keller was a strong, powerful, individual that accomplished many great achievements during her hard,
Helen Keller was shut off from everything. When Helen Keller was young, her peers described her as a “wild and unruly child” (Whitman). Helen Keller would throw temper tantrums because she couldn’t understand her parents. As Helen grew older her tantrums became worse. Another thing Helen was could not do was, she couldn’t write or speak, so in turn she came up with her own signals. For example, when she wanted ice cream she would put h...
Keller begins by addressing that some in her audience consider her a mouthpiece for others’ beliefs. She states that she does not want “their pity” and would not change places with them. All she wants is “a fair field and no favor” (Zinn, 284). She is capable of getting information,
On March 3rd 1887 Keller’s life changed for the better, her mother Kate, heard about the Perkins school for the Blind and called Alexander Graham Bell and wrote to the head of the Perkins school for the Blind to ask for a teacher for Helen. This day was the day that Anne Sullivan arrived and became a large part of Keller’s life. Anne expected Keller’s behavior, because the girl was both deaf and illiterate. Anne knew she had to find a way to make Keller understand the meaning of words and, after a month of spelling in sign language words into Keller’s hand everything clicked into place as Anne held Keller’s hand under a water pump and the cool water washed over there hands she spelled out ‘W-A-T-E-R’ into Keller’s hand. Keller realized what this meant and was so excited and wanted to know everything, she learned 30 words that day.