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- She wrote of her life in several books, including The Story of My Life (1903), Optimism (1903), The World I Live In (1908), Light in My Darkness and My Religion (1927), Helen Keller’s Journal (1938), and The Open Door (1957).
www.britannica.com › biography › Helen-Keller
Jul 24, 2024 · Helen Keller, a remarkable author and educator who overcame deafness and blindness, inspired the world with her resilience, advocacy for disability rights, and groundbreaking achievements.
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The Story of My Life, first published in book form in 1903 is Helen Keller's autobiography detailing her early life, particularly her experiences with Anne Sullivan. [1] Portions of it were adapted by William Gibson for a 1957 Playhouse 90 production, a 1959 Broadway play, a 1962 Hollywood feature film, and the Indian film Black.
- Helen Keller
- 1903
The task of writing an autobiography is a difficult one. When I try to classify my earliest impressions, I find that fact and fancy look alike across the years that link the past with the present. The woman paints the child's experiences in her own fantasy.
Aug 7, 2024 · At the beginning of The Story of My Life, Helen Keller acknowledges the difficulty of writing an autobiography because “fact and fancy now look alike across the years that link the past and...
- Introduction
- Author Biography
- Summary
- Key Figures
- Themes
- Style
- Historical Context
- Critical Overview
- Criticism
- Sources
Helen Keller overcame the seemingly insurmountable obstacles of deafness and blindness to become an influential lecturer and social activist. Keller has become, in American culture, an icon of perseverance, respected and honored by readers, historians, and activists. When she was a child, Keller received a letter from a writer that she quoted in he...
Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880. She suffered a serious illness at the age of nineteen months that left her blind and deaf. While Keller initially devised gestures and actions to make herself understood, she knew that she was not like other children. Still, she learned to perform household chores such as folding laundr...
Chapters 1–5
After providing brief descriptions of her home in Alabama and her family members, Keller explains how she became disabled—a fever she had when she was nineteen months old left her blind and deaf—and her first memories of being disabled, recounting her early attempts to communicate. Keller reviews her parents' efforts to find her medical treatment and educational assistance, as well as her early experiences with her first teacher, Anne Sullivan. Following the illness that left her blind and de...
Chapters 6–10
Keller chronicles her first several years of educational development, speaking of Sullivan's instructional methods, as well as her responses to Sullivan's demeanor and evolving techniques. Keller progressed from learning the alphabet to learning words, and then to learning texts by authors such as William Shakespeare. Keller notes that the more she learned, the more questions she had. She began to learn to read when Sullivan placed pieces of paper with raised letters on objects to name them....
Chapters 11–15
After returning home from their summer in Cape Cod, Sullivan and Keller joined the rest of the Keller family, who decided to spend the autumn months at their summer cottage, nearby Fern Quarry. While there, the Kellers entertained many visitors and Keller delighted in the wonderful smells of the food prepared for the guests. There was a train in Fern Quarry, and it ran on a long trestle that spanned a gorge. One day, while Keller, Sullivan, and Keller's sister, Mildred, were out walking, they...
Mr. Anagnos
Mr. Anagnos was the director of the Perkins Institution. He sent Anne Sullivan to the Kellers' home. He and Keller became friends, and he had her sit on his knee when she visited the Institution. When Keller wrote "The Frost King," she sent it to him for his birthday, but because Mr. Anagnos came to believe that she intentionally plagiarized it, the friendship was forever ruined.
Dr. Alexander Graham Bell
Dr. Alexander Graham Bell first met Keller when she was six years old and her parents brought her to him for advice on how to teach her. Dr. Bell suggested that they contact the Perkins Institution for the Blind, which they did. Dr. Bell remained a friend to Keller and Anne Sullivan and accompanied them on a trip to the World's Fair. As a child, Keller sensed Bell's tender disposition, as she notes in chapter three, "Child as I was, I at once felt the tenderness and sympathy which endeared Dr...
Bishop Brooks
One of the "many men of genius" Keller knew, Bishop Brooks knew Keller from her childhood. He spoke beautifully to her throughout her life of religion, God, and spiritual matters, and he emphasized no particular religion as much as the importance of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of humankind. Keller enjoyed his company because he always gave her something meaningful to ponder.
Perseverance
Perhaps the single greatest lesson readers take away from The Story of My Life is the value of perseverance. Without the ability to see or hear, Keller learned to function and interact within society in a meaningful way. Her drive to make a place for herself in the world started when she was very young. Even as a child, she found ways to help her mother around the house, rather than stay in a world that was dark, silent, and lonely. In fact, the terrible fits for which she is so well-known we...
Education and Knowledge
Keller firmly believed in the power of education, both formal and informal. She found that she was delighted in the process of learning and that there was great value in acquiring knowledge in a variety of areas. In chapter four, after she made the mental connection between water and the letters that spelled it, she She continues in chapter five, "the more I handled things and learned their names and uses, the more joyous and confident grew my sense of kinship with the rest of the world." Thi...
Topics for Further Study
1. If you had to choose between losing your sight or your hearing, which one would you choose? Take into account your present interests, future interests, ability to communicate, and society's perceptions of people with these challenges. Compose an essay in which you explain your decision. Add a paragraph explaining what, if any, effect this exercise has on you. 2. Find a partner and learn the first five letters of the manual alphabet. Then put on a blindfold and earplugs of some kind and hav...
Formal Tone
Although Keller occasionally lapses into emotional passages, her writing style is generally formal. It is reminiscent of the lofty language of Greek writers and also of the similes and tones of biblical text. Toward the end of chapter two, for example, she writes, "Thus it is when we walk in the valley of twofold solitude we know little of the tender affections that grow out of endearing words and actions and companionship." At times, she makes direct allusions to biblical stories, as in chap...
Affectionate Recollection
Despite the hardships Keller overcame, there is no sadness, self-pity, or bitterness in The Story of My Life. She willingly tells of her childhood fits and how angry she was at the time, but she relates these episodes with calm recollection. Her focus is on the people she loved and the wonderful experiences she had in the first twenty-two years of her life. She wistfully recalls moments spent in the orchard or up a tree. Remembering her summer at Cape Cod, she writes, "As I recall that visit...
Role of Women
When Keller wrote The Story of My Lifeshe was not yet active in social reform. Still, her attendance at a college was an impressive feat for any woman at the time, and especially for a woman in Keller's special situation. Her determination to receive an education equal to that offered a man was set early in her life. She recalls in chapter eighteen, "When I was a little girl, I visited Wellesley and surprised my friends by the announcement, 'Someday I shall go to college—but I shall go to Har...
Compare & Contrast
1. Early Twentieth Century: Educational opportunities for the blind and deaf are extremely limited. There are very few schools to teach children with these needs, and in many cases the blind and deaf are sent to mental asylums. Public sentiment toward the blind and deaf is negative and uneducated.Today:There are numerous schools across the country specializing in instructing students with these needs, and many children who are blind or deaf learn to function in public schools. Laws require th...
Perception of the Physically Challenged
In 1903, when Keller published The Story of My Life, the public was indifferent to the needs of people who were physically challenged. Among those who had never dealt with such a challenge, there was usually ignorance and negative stereotyping. There were few specialized schools for instructing students who were blind and/or deaf. Often, deaf and blind people were institutionalized in mental asylums, where they neither belonged nor received any kind of education. After completing her degree,...
Written when Keller was only twenty-two years old, The Story of My Lifereviews the author's early life. Critics were, and continue to be, impressed with the presentation of the story as well as with the inspiring content. Because Keller was a celebrity in her day, the autobiography caught the attention of readers and reviewers, who found the book s...
Jennifer Bussey
Bussey holds a master's degree in interdisciplinary studies and a bachelor's degree in English literature. She is an independent writer specializing in literature. In the following essay, she examines Helen Keller's rather surprising use of sense references and imagery throughout The Story of My Life . Helen Keller is regarded as a heroic figure who overcame extreme hardship to accomplish impressive goals, both personally and publicly. At the age of nineteen months, she fell ill with a fever...
What Do I Read Next?
1. Dorothy Hermann's acclaimed biography, Helen Keller: A Life (1998), complements The Story of My Lifein its thorough and objective portrayals of Keller and Sullivan. Hermann depicts Helen as she was in private as well as in public, and she explores the complicated relationship between the student and her teacher. 2. Keller's autobiographical follow-up to The Story of My Life is Midstream, My Later Life(1929, 1968). Here, Keller tells about the twenty-five years after she graduated from Radc...
Beth Kattelman
Kattelman is a freelance writer who specializes in writing about the arts. In this essay, she considers the poetic elements present in Keller's autobiography. Keller's frequent sensory images bring her autobiography to life in such a way that many readers may not even notice that the blind-deaf author is using surprising descriptions." In The Story of My Life Helen Keller recounts her early experiences of being awakened to a world of words and concepts through the brilliant teaching methods o...
Brown, Ray B., ed., Contemporary Heroes and Heroines,Gale, 1990. Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 8: 1966-1970,American Council of Learned Societies, 1988. Kendrick, Walter, "Her Hands Were a Bridge to the World," in New York Times Book Review,August 30, 1998. McCray, Nancy, Review in Booklist,Vol. 90, No. 18, May 15, 1994, p. 1702. Moy...
Keller's autobiography, The Story of My Life (1903), publicized her education and life with Sullivan. It was adapted as a play by William Gibson, and this was also adapted as a film under the same title, The Miracle Worker. Her birthplace has been designated and preserved as a National Historic Landmark.
The Story of My Life is an autobiography by activist Helen Keller in which she recounts her early experiences and education. An illness left Keller deaf and blind at nineteen months, and...
