3. Helen Adams Keller (June 27,1880 – June 1, 1968) was an
American author, political activist and lecturer. She was the first
deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. The prolific
author, Keller was well traveled and was outspoken in her
opposition to war. She campaigned for women’s suffrage, workers’
rights, and socialism, as well as many other progressive causes.
There was one great soul in Keller’s life who was the reason for
all her achievements in life, Anne Sullivan, Helen’s teacher.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
4.
5. Helen’s
apprehension
before writing
her
autobiography
Birth of
Helen
Helen suffers
an illness
that leaves
her deaf and
blind
Companionsh
ip with Martha
Washington
and Belle
Observing
herself as
different from
others
Helen’s initial
attempts to
communicate
Helen is saved
by the nurse
from getting
burnt
The need for
a better
means of
communicati
on
The train
journey to
Baltimore
6. Exploring the
possibilities
of Helen’s
education at
Baltimore
Beginning of
the journey of
knowledge
with Miss Ann
Sullivan
Learning
lessons in
the lap of
nature
The first
conception
of an
abstract idea
With the
acquisition of
words, Helen
turns more
inquisitive
Helen
learns that
nature is
not always
kind
The tedious
process of
learning for a
deaf and blind
child like Helen
Learning to
read
Learning in the
form of stories that
were based on the
gifts received by
Helen
7. Christmas
Eve
Helen’s new
pet: Tim:
The journey
to Boston in
May, 1888
Helen’s maiden
ocean voyage:
trip to
‘Plymouth’:
Helen’s first
history
lesson at
Bunker Hill
Helen recalls
the tragic end
of Nancy, her
doll
The vacation
at Brewster
with Mrs.
Hopkins
Helen’s first
encounter
with the sea
Spending a
leisurely
autumn at
the Fern
Quarry
8. CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
SLIDE -5
SLIDE –6
SLIDE –7
SLIDE –9
SLIDE –11
SLIDE –12
SLIDE –13
SLIDE –14
SLIDE – 15
SLIDE –16
SLIDE –17
SLIDE –18
SLIDE –19
SLIDE –22
9. Helen talks about her family and home in this chapter.
Helen was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama, to
Captain Arthur Henry Keller, a confederate army veteran and a
newspaper editor, and Kate Adams Keller.
Her father, Arthur H. Keller, had been a Confederate Captain
who was related to Robert E. Lee. Helen's mother, Kate Adams
Keller, was a well-read young woman from an intellectual family.
By all accounts, she was a normal child. But at 19 months,
Helen suffered an illness – scarlet fever or meningitis that left
her deaf and blind.
Although Helen learned basic household tasks and could
communicate some of her desires through a series of signs, she
did not learn language the way other children do.
CH 1
10. CH 2
For the next five years of her life, Helen lived in isolation. She
developed a limited sign language, which her mother Kate
understood.
Helen learned to do a few chores – for instance, she would fold and
put away her clothes – and she understood when her mother wanted
something from upstairs.
As Helen grew, so did her need to express herself. She began to have
tantrums that she was unable to prevent or control.
Because of her rages, Helen's household tended to let her have her
way whenever possible.
Her one playmate, Martha, the daughter of the Keller's cook,
understood Helen's signs, and generally allowed Helen to tyrannize
her. The two girls played in the kitchen, fed the hens and turkeys and
loved to hunt eggs outdoors.
11. CH 3
Helen’s mother came across Dickens' American Notes.
She read about Laura Bridgman ; a deaf and blind girl who had been educated.
She remembers that some Dr. Howe had discovered a way to teach the deaf and
blind but had died long ago. She is confused that how had the girl (Laura) been
taught.
Helen’s father gets to know about Dr. Chisholm . An eminent oculist in Baltimore
who had been successful in several cases like that of Helen’s.
In the summer of 1886, Helen's parents took her to Baltimore. She enjoyed
everything about the trip – the train, the new people and the change of routine.
They meet Dr. Chisholm only to find that he cannot do anything for their daughter.
Dr. Chisholm advises them to consult Dr. Alexander Graham Bell in Washington.
Acting on the advice they went to see Dr. Graham Bell.
Dr. Bell advises Mr. Keller to write to Mr. Anagnos (director of the Perkins Institution
) and ask him if he had a teacher competent to begin Helen’s education.
They follow the advice and a few weeks later receive a letter with the news that a
teacher had been found.
12. Helen remembers some of her childhood incidents.
One day she spilled water on her apron and spread it out to dry
before the fire. The apron did not dry as quickly so she drew it
nearer to the hearth. The apron immediately caught fire and in a
moment her clothes were blazing. Her nurse Viny came to her
rescue and Helen was saved.
She also found the use of key. One day she locked her mother in
the pantry for three hours until she was discovered.
She also remembers that when Anne Sullivan came to teach her
she locked her in a room and didn’t tell anyone where the key
was. At last her father got a ladder and Miss Sullivan was brought
out through the window.
One day when she discovered her sister Mildred sleeping in her
doll Nancy's cradle she got angry and overturned it. Had not
Helen’s mother caught the baby she would have been killed.
But afterwards Mildred and Helen grew to love each other.
13. CH - 4
• On 3 March, 1887 Anne Sullivan came to Helen’s house. In the
morning when she came , Anne gave Helen a doll. The little
blind children at Perkins Institution had sent it and it was
dressed by Laura Bridgman
• Helen began playing with it. After sometime Anne spelled into
Helen’s hand d-o-l-l.
• Helen got interested and began imitating the finger play.
• When Helen finally did it right she was overjoyed.
• She ran downstairs to her mother and imitated it.
• In the next few days she learnt to spell many words in this way.
These included pin, hat, cup, sit , stand, walk.
• One day while Helen was playing with her new doll, Anne put
another doll in her lap and tried to make her understand that
the word ‘doll ’ applied to both.
14. Earlier in the day, Helen had become frustrated when Sullivan
had tried to teach her the difference between "mug" and
"water.“
In a rage, Helen threw and broke a new doll.
To cool Helen's temper, and perhaps to give herself a break,
Sullivan took her pupil outdoors for a walk.
The two came upon someone getting water from the pump.
Just as she spelled everything else, Sullivan spelled "water"
into Helen's hand, and something clicked.
Helen suddenly understood that the spellings were names of
things.
The rest of that day was spent learning names for people close
to her and the names of things in her surroundings.
When they came back into the room, Helen tried to fix the doll
but was unable to.
This was the first time she felt sorrow and repentance.
15. CH 5
In the spring season Anne took Helen to the banks of Tennessee
river. They sat down and Helen got her first lessons about nature
there.
The rest of the summer, Helen built her vocabulary. The more it
grew, the more she felt like part of the world. Most of her lessons
that summer came from the nature.
She had a child's natural fascination with the miracles all around
her - how the rain and sun help plants grow, how animals get food.
Helen also learned to fear the power of nature. One day that
summer, she was in a tree, waiting for her teacher to return with
lunch, when a storm suddenly arose.
The tree started to swing and sway. She got scared and was calm
only once her teacher came to her rescue.
This taught her a lesson that nature creates danger for her children
and even in her gentle touches hides dangers only wanting her
children to overcome them.
It was a long time before she climbed a tree again. When she did, it
became one of her favorite pastimes.
16. CH 6
Her teacher decided that Helen needed to move from knowing
names of concrete things and actions, to knowing how to recognize
and communicate abstractions.
One morning she went strolling in the gardens and brought some
lovely violets for her teacher. Anne was so happy that she spelled I -
LOVE-HELEN on Helen’s hand.
Unable to understand , Helen asked her the meaning of love. Miss
Sullivan pointed towards her heart and told her that love is here . Still
she was not able to understand the meaning of love.
Her next big step came, again, as she was trying to solve a problem.
Helen was concentrating very hard, and Anne Sullivan tapped Helen's
forehead, emphatically spelling, "THINK!" Helen says she knew "in a
flash" that "think" was the name for what she was doing.
That was the first time of her perception of a feeling.
She worked for a long time, she says, before she could understand
the meaning of the word "love."
17. CH 7
The next important step in her education was learning t o read. As soon as
she could spell a few words , her teacher trained how to arrange words and
form short sentences.
Helen began learning to read, using slips of cardboard with words printed in
raised letters. At first, she would attach the correct words to objects and spell
out sentences about them, such as "doll is on bed," or "girl is in wardrobe."
She would play like this for hours.
First she learned through printed slips but then it became a printed book.
Thus by a little game she learned to read.
The first book Helen read from was "Reader for Beginners.“
Like any child learning to read, she started out just finding words she knew.
It was like a game of hide-and-seek, and each word she found thrilled her.
Helen did not have formal lessons yet, so all of her learning felt like play.
Most of her reading and studying happened outdoors, where Helen kept
learning more about the world around her.
She and her teacher often walked to Keller's Landing by the Tennessee
River.
18. CH 8
Nine months after Anne Sullivan came to Tuscumbia, Helen had her first real
Christmas celebration.
For the first time, she was a giver, as well as receiver, and she enjoyed the
anticipation.
On Christmas Eve, the Tuscumbia schoolchildren had their Christmas tree,
and Helen was invited to participate.
She was allowed to present the children their gifts. Helen also had gifts to
open under that tree, which only made her more excited for "real Christmas" to
come.
Helen hung her stocking and tried to stay awake to catch Santa Claus leaving
presents, but finally fell asleep.
She was the first to wake up Christmas morning and was astounded to find
presents everywhere.
Her favorite present came from Anne Sullivan - a canary named Little Tim.
Helen learned to care for him herself. Unfortunately, a big cat got him when
she left Tim's cage to get water for the bird.
19. CH 9
In May 1888, Helen visited the Perkins Institute in Boston. The trip was "as if
a beautiful fairy tale had come true.“
As soon as she arrived, Helen met other children who knew the manual
alphabet. She immediately had friends and felt she had come home to her
own country.
She felt great pain, though, when she realized that all of her new friends were
blind.
However, when she realized they were "happy and contented," her sorrow
passed.
They visited Bunker Hill where she had her first lesson in history. The also
went to Plymouth by water which was her first trip to the ocean and her first
voyage in the steamboat.
Helen also made friends with Mr. William Endicott and his daughter in
Boston. They even visited their homes at Beverly Farms where she played
with their dogs and the swiftest horse Nimrod.
She played in a beach for the first time there. Mr. Endicott told her about the
great ships that came sailing from Boston bound to Europe.
All these events left her with delightful memories.
20. CH 10
After visiting Boston, Helen and her teacher vacationed at Cape Cod with a
friend, Mrs. Hopkins.
The first time she was in the ocean, Helen was pulled under and badly
frightened. She asked Anne Sullivan, "Who put salt in the water?"
After that, she enjoyed being splashed by the waves from her seat on a large
rock.
For a few hours, she took possession of a horseshoe crab. She dragged it to
the Hopkins home from the beach, but it escaped the first night.
Helen at the age of seven
21. CH 11
• When fall arrived, Helen traveled with her family to Fern Quarry
for their vacation in the mountains outside Tuscumbia.
• There, Helen spent her days riding her pony, walking outdoors
or gathering persimmons with her little sister Mildred and their
cousins.
• One day, Helen, Mildred and Miss Sullivan got lost in the woods.
Mildred recognized a railroad trestle over a deep gorge, which
they decided to use to find their way home. As they were
crossing the trestle, a train approached. The three climbed
underneath, onto the cross braces, and held on to the swaying
trestles, terrified, while the train went overhead.
• With great difficulty they reached back home only to find that
the cottage was empty as everyone had gone to look for them.
22. CH 12
That winter, and almost every winter afterward, Helen spent in
the North.
When she was almost nine years old, Helen experienced snow
for the first time. She was very fascinated with the snow
covered fields , trees and frozen lakes .
One day a snowstorm came. Everyone rushed outside to feel
the tiny snowflakes.
The next day the whole landscape was covered with snow and
nothing could be distinguished from one another.
On the third day the sun rose. Helen put on her coat and went
out. Moving in the cold wind was new for her.
Her favorite sport was tobogganing. It brought her never
ending joy and she felt divine feeling the wind when
tobogganing.
23. Helen’s urge to speak
With the loss of the ability to hear, Helen’s speech had died
down. However, from a young age, she had an impulse to speak.
She tried to feel the noise that she made by keeping one hand
on her throat and the other on her lips, feeling their movements.
She produced sounds not to speak but for the exercise of her
vocal chords. There was a feeling of lack in Helen which needed
to be fulfilled. She was not satisfied with the means of
communication she used and desperately wanted to learn to
speak.
In 1890, Mrs. Lamson, one of the teachers at the Perkins
Institutions, told Helen about a deaf and blind girl, Ragnhild
Kaata who had been taught to speak. Helen resolved that she
will also learn to speak and Mrs. Lamson took her for advice and
assistance to Miss Sarah Fuller, the principal of Horace Mann
School.
CH 13
24. Speaking lessons from Miss Sarah Fuller
Miss Sarah Fuller was a “sweet-natured lady” who started
tutoring Helen on the 26th of March, 1890. Miss Fuller passed
Helen’s hand lightly over her face to make her feel her tongue
and lips when she made a sound. Within the first hour itself,
Helen learnt six elements of speech: M, P, A, S, T, I. “It is warm” is
the first complete sentence that Helen managed to utter. In
total, eleven lessons were given to her by Miss Fuller. The
syllables were broken but, nevertheless, human. She was eager
to share her happiness with her family and to see the joy on
their faces. Miss Fuller taught her the elements of the speech but
she was to continue practicing herself with Miss Sullivan’s help.
Helen learns to speak with Miss Sullivan’s assistance
25. Miss Sullivan dragged Helen’s attention to the “mispronounced
words”. Helen had to depend on the vibrations felt by her
fingers, the movement of the mouth and expressions of the face.
Discouragement wearied her efforts initially but as soon as she
thought of the joy of her family, she felt optimistic. Helen gave
up the manual alphabet method to develop her speech even
though Miss Sullivan and her friends continued to use it to
communicate with her.
The final moment of joy: Helen’s speech
Finally, the happiest moment arrived. Helen had developed
speech and was eager to return home. As she reached the
station and her family heard her speak, they were overjoyed. Her
mother was speechless with delight and hugged her tightly;
Mildred danced in joy clasped her hand and kissed her; and her
father expressed his pride and affection by a “big silence”.
26. CH-14
Helen’s first attempt to write a composition on her own
During her stay at the Fern Quarry, Miss Sullivan described to
her the beauty of the “late foliage” plants. This apparently
revived in Helen the memory of a story that had been read to
her in the past. The story had been unconsciously retained in her
mind but she thought that she was making up the story
herself. She eagerly jotted down her ideas before they would slip
away from her mind. The words and images smoothly flowed
from her mind and she felt the joy of composing a story. The
story was called “The Frost king”. She did not realize that the
words and images coming to her mind without effort were not
her own. For her, the boundary line between her own ideas and
those she gathered from the books were blurred because most
of the impressions came to her mind through the “medium of
others’ eyes or ears”.
27. “The Frost King” appreciated by family and friends
After completing the story, she read it to everyone at dinner.
Despite some pronunciation errors, she managed to impress
everyone with her story. However, someone did ask her if she
had read the story in a book. Helen did not have the faintest
recollection of the story been read to her and so she denied it
saying that it was her story and she had written it for Mr.
Anagnos. Mr. Anagnos was delighted with her story and
published it in one of the Perkins Institution reports.
Helen’s happiness gets crushed in Boston
During her short stay in Boston, Helen was astonished to
discover that her story “The Frost King” was similar to “The Frost
Fairies” written by Miss Margaret T. Canby. This story had
appeared in the book, “Birdie and His Friends”, which was
published even before Helen's birth. The fact that the language
of the two stories was alike confirmed that Miss Canby’s story
had been read to her and that hers was “a plagiarism”. Her joy
changed into grief.
28. Mr. Anagnos felt deceived. He believed that Helen and Miss
Sullivan had deliberately stolen the thoughts of a great writer to
win his appreciation.
Helen at the court of investigation
Helen was brought before a court of investigation where she
was examined and cross-examined by the teachers and officers
of the Perkins Institution. The investigators seemed to force
Helen to acknowledge that she remembered “The Frost Fairies”
being read to her. Helen felt heavy at her heart because of the
doubts and suspicions from her loved ones. She could respond
to them only in monosyllables. Her consciousness could not be
unburdened by the realization that she had only committed a
‘dreadful’ mistake. At last she was allowed to leave the room.
Her friends and family assured her that she was a brave girl and
that they were proud of her. That night, Helen wept pitiably,
suffering for her mistake.
The problem in the composition of “The Frost King”
acknowledged
29. Miss Sullivan had never heard “The Frost Fairies”, let alone read
it to Helen. So, with the assistance of Dr. Alexander Graham
Bell, she investigated the matter. At last, it was found out that
Miss Canby’s story had been narrated to Helen by Mrs. Sophia
Hopkins when she had spent a summer with her at Brewster.
Even though Helen did not recall hearing the story, it sustained
in her memory.
During this distressing time, Helen received a lot of messages of
love and sympathy from her loved ones. She also received a
kind note from Miss Canby herself, encouraging her to write
something of her own in future that might help others. This was
comforting to Helen but she was afraid of “playing with words”
again for a long time fearing that she would repeat her mistake
again. Miss Sullivan’s encouragement, however, helped her to
continue writing in future.
30. Helen’s early compositions
Helen recognized herself as a part of the process of learning by
“assimilation” and “imitation” to put ideas into words. Her early
compositions are mainly assimilation of the descriptions from various
forgotten sources. Helen gives an example of the composition she
wrote for Mr. Anagnos about the beauty of the Greek and Italian old
cities. Mr. Anagnos appreciated the ‘poetical essence’ in her ideas.
Helen was happy that even though the works resembled a “crazy
patchwork” comprising of her own thoughts and others’, they proved
her ability to express of her admiration for beautiful objects in clear
and “animated” language.
Effects of “The Frost King” incident in the later life of Helen
The good part of the tragic experience of “The Frost King” was that
Helen started thinking about the problems of composition.
After the publication of “The Story of My Life” in the “Ladies’ Home
Journal”, Mr. Anagnos, in a letter to Macy, stated his views supporting
Helen in the matter of the “Frost King”. He also stated that he had cast
his vote in favour of Helen in the court of investigation.
31.
32. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell first met
Helen when she was six years old and
her parents brought her to him for
advice on how to teach her. Dr. Bell
remained a friend to Helen Keller
and Anne Sullivan. “The Story of My
Life “is dedicated to him.
33. Helen’s father, Arthur
Keller had been a captain
in the Confederate army.
He was a hospitable man
who enjoyed bringing
guests home to see his
garden.
34. When Anne went to teach Helen Keller,
she was only twenty years old and a
recent graduate of the Perkins Institution
for the Blind. Throughout Helen’s life,
Sullivan was dedicated to supporting her
efforts in education and in social reform,
which was uninterrupted even after
Sullivan married Helen Keller’s editor,
John Albert Macy. Sullivan died in 1936.
35. Mildred was Helen’s younger sister . Their
relationship did not start on a good note owing to
jealousy on the part of helen . Helen was jealous that
her mother paid more attention to mildred .However
,with time , the two sisters developed a loving bond .
Even without a proper language for communication ,
the two sisters hearts felt for each other . They had
long walks together and often mildred would explain
the sceneries to helen . Later , Mildred joined the
cambridge school with helen and the two sisters
spent some memorable years there in new york
