summary of story of my life chapter 1-14
Answers
Chapter-1
Helen was born on 27th June, 1880 in Tuscumbia, a little town of northern Alabama in USA. Nineteen months after her birth, Helen fell ill which left her with visual and hearing disabilities.
Chapter 2
Helen could not communicate with anyone except her own sign language until she became seven years old. Helen’s disabilities often annoyed her and she lost her temper quite often. She would often kick her nurse Ella. Martha Washington, the coloured girl was her childhood companion. Together they had lots of fun doing mischief and pranks. Helen got herself in many precarious situations owing to her inability to see and hear. Helen felt jealous of her sister Mildred and even threw her once out of her cradle.
Chapter 3
Helen’s parents had an intense wish to educate their disabled daughter. Helen’s mother came to know about Laura Bridgeman who had similar disabilities as Helen and who had been successfully taught. Helen’s father took Helen to Baltimore to see an eye-specialist with the hope of getting Helen treated. She enjoyed the trip and behaved herself throughout the journey. Dr. Chisholm expressed his inability to treat Helen. However, he suggested the family to meet Dr. Graham Bell who could help them. The family met Alexander Graham Bell who recommended the Kellers hire a teacher to help their special daughter.
Chapter 4
Anne Sullivan, a young teacher with her own vision problems, arrived at the Keller home in early March of 1887.She started teaching Helen manual alphabet to which Helen did not respond encouragingly. Nothing clicked until a few weeks after her arrival when she tried to teach Helen the difference between “mug” and “water.”
Chapter 5
After Helen understood that things had names- and she could learn those names from her teacher’s finger-spelling- her vocabulary grew. Then, during the summer of 1887, she learned about the power of nature when a storm came upon her while she was outside…on her own.
Chapter 6
Once she recognized things and actions had names, Helen needed to comprehend abstract subjects. Trying to solve a problem, she felt her teacher’s hand on her forehead while Miss Sullivan emphatically spelled “THINK.” “In a flash,” Helen recognized that’s what she was doing- thinking.
Chapter 7
In her early days of learning, Helen worked outside with Anne. It seemed like play since she had not yet commenced formal lessons. Helen began to put words together in sentences, like “doll is on the bed.” The first book she actually read was “Reader for Beginners.”
Chapter 8
At the age of seven, Helen Keller experienced her first real Christmas. She gave, as well as received, presents. She was even invited to participate with the local school children on Christmas Eve. Excited about what was to come, she was the first to awake on Christmas morning.
Chapter 9
Helen visited the Perkins Institute for the Blind in May of 1888. For the first time in her life, she met the other children who used the manual alphabet. It was, she said, like coming home to her own country, she toured places around Boston and especially loved Plymouth Rock (because she could touch it).
Chapter 10
After his visit to Boston, Helen and her teacher took a Cape-Cod holiday during which the child first experienced the ocean. When a wave pulled her underwater, she was very frightened. Also puzzled, she asked Anne Sullivan: “Who put salt in the water?”
Chapter 11
Vacationing with her family in the mountains near Tuscumbia, Helen experienced the joys of childhood: riding a pony, hunting for permissions and exploring in the woods. Then… she, her sister Mildred and Miss Sullivan got lost! How would they find their way back?
Chapter 12
As a child of South, Helen had not experienced snow before the winter of 1889. While in the North, she played outside in the cold weather. Her favorite winter sport was tobogganing- which she was able to do with help.
Chapter 13
Even though she’d made great progress, Helen was frustrated because she could not speak. She’d read about a deaf-blind Norwegian girl, named Ragnhild Kaata, who had learned to do what Helen longed for. At the Horace Mann School for the Deaf, Sarah Fuller worked with her. Helen’s first spoken sentence was “It is warm.”
Chapter 14
When she was 11, Helen wrote a story she thought was her own, and “The Frost King” was published by the director of the Perkins Institute. She had not recalled someone had once read “The Frost Fairies” (by Margaret T. Canby) to her. Eight people interrogated Helen, about her plagiarized story. It was not an easy time for the child.
Helen Adam Keller was bom on June 27,1880. She was an American author, political activist and lecturer. Her father’s name was Arthur H. Keller. He was a captain, a former officer of the Confederate Army. Her mother was Kate Adams Keller. The Keller family originated from Switzerland. Helen contracted an illness when she was nineteen months old. It was an acute congestion of the stomach and brain which could have been scarlet fever or meningitis. She did not suffer long from this illness but it left her deaf and blind. Helen started communicating through signs with her family. In 1886, she was taken to Dr. J. Julian Chisolen who was an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist for advice who further sent them to Alexandar Graham Bell who was working with the deaf children at that time. Bell advised them to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind. On reaching there, the school’s director put Helen under the charge of their former student Anne Sullivan who herself was visually impaired.
Anne Sullivan began to teach Helen to communicate by spelling words into her hands which Helen quickly leamt. In 1894, they both moved to New York to attend Wright-Humason School for the Deaf and Horace Mann School for the Deaf. In 1900, Helen gained admission in Radcliffe College. At the age of 24, in 1904, she graduated from the same college and became the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts Degree. Anne Sullivan stayed as a companion for 20 long years with Helen but after marriage her health started failing and Polly Thompson was hired to keep house.
Polly was a young woman from Scotland who had no experience with deaf or blind people but she became a constant companion to Keller. Anne died in 1936 and Helen moved to Connecticut with Polly. Both travelled worldwide and raised funding for the blind. Polly suffered a stroke and died in 1960. After her death Winnie Corbally remained Keller’s companion for the rest of her life.
Keller became a world famous speaker and author. She is still remembered as an advocate for people with disabilities and numerous other causes. In 1915, she founded the HKI-Helen Keller Institutional organization which is devoted to research in vision, health and nutrition. Helen travelled to more than 39 countries and became a favourite of the Japanese. In 1912, she joined the IWW-Industrial Workers of the World.
Helen wrote several pieces of writing. The earliest was the Frost King (1891). She published her auto biography, The Story of My Life (1903), The World I Live In (1980), Out of the Dark (1913) and My Religion (1927). She wrote 12 published books. On September 14,1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom one of the highest civilian honours of the United States. She devoted much of her later life to raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind. Helen left this world on June 1,1968 at her home in Connecticut.
Her life has always been a source of inspiration to many. She became the subject of many movies and TV serials. She was listed in the Gallup’s Most Widely Admired People in 1999 and her statue was unveiled in 2009 at the United States Capital Building. Her life-story is unusual as well as inspiring.