The Story of My Life Helen Keller

The Story of My Life

by

Helen Keller

2006

The Story of My Life

by Helen Keller Helen Keller 's autobiography , The Story of My Life , is a personal account of a young woman 's triumphant struggle with her own darkness and silence . Darkness because she was blind , silence because she was deaf and dumb . Triumphant because she conquered her disabilities and has since become a universal icon

Helen Adams Keller was born in Tuscumbia , Alabama . From her childhood illness she was left deaf , dumb , and blind but

eventually learned to read , write , and speak with the able assistance of her teacher and friend , Anne Sullivan . She graduated with honors from Radcliffe College in Massachusetts in 1904

The road that Helen has traveled was anything but sunny and rosy . Her book is a recollection the first twenty-two years of her life . She wrote about her childhood remembering as best she can what little light her first nineteen months had gifted her , her illness that left her blind and deaf for life , meeting the most influential person in her life , Miss Annie Mansfield Sullivan , her friendship with telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell , visiting the poet John Greenleaf Whittier , her correspondence with different famous personalities like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Mrs . Grover Cleveland , the incident of the accusation of plagiarism , how her academic experiences shaped her

Young Helen 's volcanic temper was a result of her frustrations as someone who is not like the rest of the people in her surroundings . Her absence of concepts further confused her . In Chapter Four there was a moment when she became impatient when Miss Sullivan tried again and again to teach her to spell the word doll . Here , she purposely broke her doll and wrote , I was keenly delighted when I felt the fragments of the broken doll at my feet . Neither sorrow nor regret followed my passionate outburst . I have not loved the doll (1980 ,

. 22 . She could not have understood what love was in that incident . She could not have grasped what the concept of a significant thing then . Only when she eventually connected things to their words through the significant life-giving word , water , was she able to break free from her dark world That living word awakened my soul , gave it light , hope , joy , set it free (Keller , 1980 ,

.23

Reverberating in the pages of the book is the admiration Helen had of her teacher , Miss Sullivan , as if paying homage to her lifelong-to-be mentor . She regarded her with awe for opening the gates to her possibilities : When she came , everything about me breathed of love and joy and was full of meaning .It was my teacher 's genius , her quick sympathy , her loving tact which made the first years of my education so beautiful (Chapter 7 ,

. 39

Like a newborn truly discovering the world for the first time , Helen 's first discovery of snow in New England had not gone unnoticed , I recall my surprise on discovering that...