summary of the story of my life
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The Story of My Life was written while Helen Keller, then in her early twenties, was a student at Radcliffe College. It is a moving story of the education of a child with the extreme handicap of being deaf and blind. The book begins with a rather vague description of young Helen’s earliest memories, before she became deaf and blind at the age of nineteen months, but most of it narrates her teaching by Anne Sullivan of the Perkins Institute for the Blind.
The Story of My Life is far from the cry for help that it might easily have been. The tone is one of joy. Keller emphasizes her early love of language. She recalls learning to speak before she lost her ability to see or hear and her desperate attempts to reawaken this ability. Throughout the book, there is a strong emphasis on her love of language, especially the written word, which was, after all, one of the few ways she had of relating to the outside world.
The major emphasis of A Story of My Life is on the work of Sullivan, whom Helen always in this book refers to as Teacher. As subsequent writings made clearer, Sullivan’s methods were far from orthodox at the time. She communicated with Helen mostly by use of the manual alphabet, although lip-reading with fingers was also attempted. At the time, oral communication was almost universally stressed among educators of deaf children.
When this book was written, Keller had already published a few articles and was doing well at Radcliffe (she was graduated with honors in 1904). Keller makes it clear that she cannot speak intelligibly, and stresses that she probably never will. In fact, when Keller became a social activist later in life, she made a number of attempts to improve her speech, although her double disability made this difficult. After her graduation, she was regularly accompanied by Sullivan on lecture tours. Sullivan acted as an interpreter as well as an additional speaker on educational methods.
The Story of My Life is a tale of triumph over difficulties that would be insurmountable to most children. Keller went on to become a noted author, speaker, and political activist, advocating human rights for people not only with physical disabilities but also with social problems. Many of her later works were largely autobiographical, but there was always an emphasis on the inherent power of the individual to journey through life with hope. The Story of My Life is the first chapter in such a journey.
Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, a little town of northern Alabama. The family on her father’s side descended from Casper Keller, a native of Switzerland, who had settled in Maryland. Her grandfather, Caspar Keller’s son, also acquired large tracts of land in Alabama and finally settled there.
Her grandmother Keller was the daughter of Alexander Moore and second cousin to Robert E Lee. Her father’s name was Arthur H. Keller and he was a captain in the Confederate Army and her mother was Kate Adams who was many years younger to her husband as she was his second wife.
Helen Keller lived in a small house which consisted of a large square room and a small one in which the servants slept. There was a custom in the South to build a small house near the homestead as an annex to be used on occasion and such a house was built by her father after the Civil War. After his marriage to Kate, Helen’s mother, he shifted to that house. The house was covered with vines, climbing roses and honeysuckles. There was a screen of yellow roses and Southern Smilax which hid the little porch. It was the favourite haunt of hummingbirds and bees.
The family lived in the Keller Homestead, also known as ‘Ivy Green’ because the house, the surrounding trees and fences were covered with ivy. Helen considered the house to be the paradise of her childhood.
Helen’s life began on a simple note. The very naming of the child, i.e., Helen was an emphatic one. Her father suggested the name of Mildred Campbell whom he regarded highly but her mother put an end to all discussions by saying that she would be called after her mother, Helen Everett. Helen was taken to the church for christening but on the way, her father lost the name.
He just remembered that it had to be after Helen’s grandmother so he gave her the name Helen Adams. In her childhood, Helen was an eager and self-asserting child. She imitated everyone and learnt walking as well as talking at an early age. But her happiness did not last long. One day in the month of February, she fell ill. The doctors termed it as an acute congestion of the stomach and brain.
They even thought that she would not live. It was a mysterious fever which left her suddenly and mysteriously. But it took her eye-sight along with it. With each passing day, her eyes turned dry and hot and became dimmer and she felt silence all around. It was a nightmare for her when she realised that she had lost both her eyes and ears. The whole world to her was dark and silent.