ENGLISH HOLIDAYS HOMEWORK

THE STORY OF MY LIFEBY HELEN KELLER

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

BYGURLEEN KAUR 10 – CROLL NO.28