Helen Keller had faced many hardships growing up. As a deaf-blind child, her life had many restrictions as to what she was able to do during her childhood. She wasn't always deaf-blind though. When Keller was 19 months old she had contracted an illness and after it had passed she was brought to the doctor. Keller said, "The beginning of my life was...much like every other little life," as she could see and hear, but the illness had left her deaf and blind. Not only was Keller deaf and blind, when Dr. Alexander Graham Bell recommended for her to have a tutor from Perkins Institution for the Blind, Keller and her teacher, Anne Sullivan, didn't get along very well. Sullivan did not like the way the young girl acted and said she was rude and had bad manners. Keller didn't always trust her …show more content…
She enjoyed learning and was very determined to learn many new things. When she was young, her parents hired Sullivan to help her learn to communicate. Sullivan started teaching her by spelling the manual alphabet into Keller's palm, but Keller didn't realize they spelt words that described objects around her. One day Sullivan brought Keller to a well, put Keller's hand in the water, and spelled w-a-t-e-r into her palm, and she realized that the letters spelled words. After she was taught by Sullivan, Keller was eager to learn more. She managed to learn the manual alphabet, how to read raised type and braille, and how to write sentences. All this was done in just six months, and Keller was still a young girl when she learned it. In 1899, she passed the entrance exam and was accepted into Radcliffe College. Shortly after, in 1904, Keller graduated cum laude. She was the first deaf-blind person to earn a college degree. Throughout her life, she faced many challenges, but she was able to overcome the huge challenge of learning as a young, deaf-blind
At first she was a little confused but then began to be more patient. The Character arc changes throughout the story in very slight ways. At first the narrator sounds playful and childish. However, getting towards the end of the story, the narrator becomes more patient and a little more mature.
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...
“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 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 ...
On March 3, 1887 Helen met "the Miracle Worker," Anne Mansfield Sullivan. Then, about a month later on April 5, Helen associated the water running over her hand with the letters w-a-t-e r that Anne was spelling into her hand. That day she learned thirty words and proved to be a very intelligent, fast learner from then on. She quickly learned the finger-tip alphabet and shortly thereafter, to write. Helen had mastered Braille and learned how to use a typewriter by the age of 10. When she was 16, she could speak well enough to attend preparatory school and college. In 1904 she graduated from Radcliffe College with Anne Sullivan by her side interpreting lectures and class discussion to her.
Keller used a variety of methods in her speech. The majority of her words used pathos. For example, Keller said “The future of America rests on the backs of 80,000,000 working men and women and their children. We are facing a grave crisis in our natural life. The few who profit from the labor of the masses want to organize the workers into an army which will protect the interests of the capitalists.” Here, she used pathos to elicit a scared or angry response fr...
Personal fulfillment has to do with achieving life’s goals which are important to an individual. The two authors, Helen Keller in The Story of my Life and Frederick Douglass’ in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave, share a similar goal to learn to read and write during a time in their life of extreme hardship. Both Keller and Douglass demonstrate the necessary attributes required to develop as individuals and progress in life. Their dedication and determination, their positive attitude and gratefulness along with their life experiences are what drove Douglass and Keller to achieve what no one could believe they were capable of due to their backgrounds.
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
Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama in 1880 as a perfectly normal and healthy child. But when she was a year and a half old, she suddenly became both blind and deaf due to what many speculate was scarlet fever or meningitis (“Helen…”, 2016). Because of this, two of her main senses were shut down at a stage in which communication and relationships is very important for children and their development. These losses, for obvious reasons, proved to be very detrimental to her ability to connect with people and her ability to express her emotions. She soon became what many would describe as wild and unruly, since she would often thrash, scream, and eat like an animal to get attention and go through the process of catharsis.
Keller also states that “perhaps [she] beheld a brighter prospect than [her] companions with two good eyes” (Keller 739). With this statement she is saying even with a disability you are able to view things differently, she has a positive outlook on life. Even though her friends with two good eyes can physically see, they cannot imagine, or dream like she can. Helen Keller has vision but no sight.
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...
On January 5, 1916 Helen Keller gave the speech Strike Against War, calling for working class people to use the power of the strike to end to America’s involvement in World War I. Keller makes many valid points about the way war affects the working class of America; however, I disagree with how easily she suggests that the working class can rise to action, especially one as drastic as strike. The way that war is used to exploit has not improved since the World War I era.
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 ...
Helens mom and dad noticed that she needed a little special help, so they decided it would be best to contact the Perkins Institute for the blind in Boston. The director told them about Anne Sullivan. She had also been blind, but the doctor saved her eyesight in surgery. Anne arrived on March 3, 1887 and she immediately began to work with Helen.
The next 6 years of Helen’s life were spend in tantrums, darkness and all around loneliness. “I got used to the silence and darkness that surrounded me and forgot it had ever been different, until she came- my teacher” (Keller 1902 Pg. 8). She had many fits, and refused any instruction. Her family was very poor, and could afford very little. The “teacher” as Helen called her; was Anne Sullivan who had contracted trachoma as a child and was as well legally blind. Annie was said to have saved Helen. Within 6 months of teaching from Sullivan Keller quickly advanced. She became well known to reading and writing in Braille, as well as writing in a manual alphabet.