The Story Of My Life By Helen Keller

INTRODUCTION

About the Author

Helen Adams Keller was born on 27th June, 1880 in Tuscumbia, a small rural town in Northwest Alabama, USA. [footnoteRef:1] She was the Daughter of Captain Arthur Henley Keller and Kate Adams Keller.[footnoteRef:2] She was born as a normal child with complete sight and hearing ability. She was an admirant of nature, In Simple words, she was as fit as fiddle. Her Mother was tall, statuesque blonde with blue eyes. Her Father was loyal southerner who had proudly served in the confederate Army during the American civil war.[footnoteRef:3] [1: Hellen Keller, The story of my life] [2: ibid] [3: Supra Note 1]

Hellen got his name after deep considerations by her father and mother. Both were suggesting different names according to their respective reasons. His father wanted to name her after an ancestor whom he respected very much on the other hand her mother wanted to name her after her former mother Helen Everett.

Her life took serious turn when she was around nine months and suffered from bad headache and high fever for many days. Eventually it came into light that she has lost her hearing and seeing ability. This led to frustration in her life. It becomes really difficult for her to communicate and make other understand what she wanted. She sometimes just hit others in anger and frustration. ` Soon everybody felt that she needs someone and they contacted a helper named Anne Sullivan who became her helper and companion for the next 50 years.

Firstly, Anne taught her how to recognize words. Soon, she began to expertise in doing this and a new world of hope opened up for her. This experience was the happiest one for her. Secondly, the next level to which Anne rise her up to was reading i.e. how to read Now she was able to read a whole book using Braille (a special reading system for deaf and dumb persons). It is truly amazing that how she overcome her sufferings. As she was getting excited to learn more and her confidence was growing level by level. She wanted to talk and learned talking from Sarah Fuller a teacher for deaf people. At 16 years old, she attended Radcliff College for Women in Massachusetts. [footnoteRef:4] She graduated from that college in 1904 with honors.[footnoteRef:5] [4: Hellen Keller, The story of my life] [5: ibid]

During college she began to write articles in which she shares her experience as being blind and deaf. Her articles began to publish in a magazine called Ladies’ Home Journal and later, published together in a book called “The Story of my Life”.[footnoteRef:6] [6: ibid]

After so much achievement in her life Hellen decided to help other people same as her. She even visited with wounded army solider in World War II to encourage them for not giving up. She spent much of her life raising money and awareness for person with disabilities.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Story of My Life may be a heart cacophonic story of the challenges Helen Adams Keller and her teacher Sullivan face to speak with one another till Sullivan tries the strategy of finger-spelling the words on Keller’s hand. With this methodology, Helen Adams Keller gets a breakthrough into the globe of communication. For the primary time, Helen Adams Keller recognize the word ‘Water’ through this methodology, and as she goes on to explain it in her book, “that living word, woke up my soul, gave it light-weight, hope, joy, set it free.” With the assistance of her teacher, Helen Adams Keller learns to browse and write and speak innumerous languages, additionally and effectively learning with the braille system.

Keller wrote this book as a student at the age of twenty-two. The book is within the style of letters compiled from her infancy to adulthood years, that she wrote to her family and friends, informing them regarding her struggles to coach herself moreover as different events happening in her college and faculty. She engages the reader along with her thoughts, emotions and opinions. Her determination, diligence and strength ar displayed through her writing.

An enriching book which supplies the reader a fair deeper insight into the globe of the blind and deaf individuals. a requirement browses for everybody, across all ages.

Helen doesn’t need her readers to assume, however, that books square measure her solely amusement. She takes nice pleasure in physical activity and also the wildlife, and enjoys sailing, rowing, and canoeing. the maximum amount as she has return to like faculty, she treasures her escapes to the rural area in Wrentham, wherever she will be able to escape from the dirt, grime, and speed of the town and realize peace in beloved nature. Helen conjointly enjoys taking in art and museums, attending the arena, and seeing the planet through the eyes of others.

Helen provides due to her several friends; UN agency have enriched her life on the far side live. She is grateful for her friends each renowned and obscure, still as those friends whom she has ne'er met however with whom she has corresponded. others have created her life what it's, and have turned her limitations into stunning privileges.

Helen Keller pushed the us government for additional help to the blind. In 1935, President Roosevelt signed the social insurance Act, that offered state insurance, retirement funds, and help for kids to the disabled. because of Helen Keller's labor, blind folks were enclosed within the class of 'disabled,' that meant they may apply for money facilitate. As author traveled the globe, she modified the lives of several folks with visual impairments. She brought them spirit and hope. because of her visits, several real enhancements became accessible like higher job coaching, additional braille books, books on tape, and higher academic opportunities. Today, many folks WHO are blind or visually impaired look to author as their model.

As associate degree adult, Helen Adams Keller furthered Sullivan’s Progressive ideals and distanced herself from what several northern girls at the time saw because the slowness of Southern womanhood. She came go in favor of workers’ rights, enfranchisement and racial equality. “Keller,” writes Nielsen, “had become a displaced American.”

Despite her growing estrangement each along with her family and her Southern identity, writes Nielsen, Helen Adams Keller was usually thought-about clearly Southern by observers within the North. She capitalized on it perception to lift awareness of civil rights and therefore the challenges of disabled African-Americans, solid ties with the NAACP, and used her ill fame to lift awareness of social policy in African country, altghough she ne'er in public criticized the system.

“While claiming her Southern ties lovingly,” Nielsen notes, “Keller cared-for do thus solely by linking them with related statements of shame and disclaimer.” Helen Adams Keller might have spent abundant of her life making an attempt to disconnect herself from her Southern heritage, however the terribly combination of her position and her personal experiences as a disabled person whose physical limitations restricted her freedoms allowed her to spot even a lot of keenly with African-Americans living below the South’s discriminatory racial code. joined of her day’s most known Southerners, she was unambiguously poised to purpose out—and challenge—that troubled racial heritage.

Today, However, Keller is embraced as a national icon representing the triumphs of the disabled. Her image is now divorced from her southern identity. She is viewed as an American, devoid of regional affiliations or associations.[footnoteRef:7] [7: The Sothern ties of Hellen Keller, Kim.E Niielsen, Vol.73, No. 4 , Nov 2007]

After lecturer had created the choice to commit herself to socialism, she quickly became a number one figure within the movement. In fact, several recognized her mutually of the foremost dedicated and effective propagandists of the socialist cause. She wrote regular columns within the party press; she went on nonstop lecture tours across the country; she supported and popularized all the main strikes and industrial battles of the day. Later, once she grew more and more hopeless of what she deemed to be the Socialist Party’s conservative, electoral-based ism, she became a steadfast person of the efforts of the economic employees of the globe (IWW), that advocated for the organization of AN expressly revolutionary trade union movement.

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One newspaper in Albany predicted in 1912, “Helen Keller promises to become one of the greatest of Socialist lecturers within the next few months. Miss Keller expects to become the most influential Socialist lecturer among the women of the US, at the same time speaking in the interests of deaf, dumb, and blind children.”[footnoteRef:8] [8: Joseph P. Lash, Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy (New York: Delacorte Press, 1980)]

Helen Keller’s most militant and outspoken amount was from 1910 through the mid-1920s. This was a time within which the aborning socialist cause had enjoyed its greatest ascendance, touch a crescendo with the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

Like uncounted USA radicals, Keller’s radicalization brought her initial into the political party, then into the commercial employees of the planet (IWW), and at last into the camp of Bolshevism. “The commencement toward social regeneration,” she wrote in 1918, “has been taken in Russia. The not possible is going on. The Russian individuals have taken possession of Russia! At a time once all nations area unit torn by competition and fierce rivalries, the Russian individuals with boldness proclaim the identity of human beings.”

Despite her retirement from public life, writer wasn't forgotten. In 1964 she received the antecedently mentioned Presidential honor of Freedom. In 1965, she was one among twenty electives to the Women’s Hall of Fame at the big apple World’s honest. Miss Helen Adams Keller and diplomat received the foremost votes among the a hundred nominees. writer is currently honored within the Hall of Fame for Leaders and Legends of the sightlessness Field. Helen Keller died on June one, 1968, at Arcan Ridge, many weeks wanting her 88th birthday. Her ashes were placed next to her beloved companions, pedagogue Macy and Polly Thomson, in the St. Joseph’s Chapel of Washington Cathedral. on it occasion a public memorial service was command within the Cathedral. it had been attended by her family and friends, organization, outstanding persons from all walks of life, and delegations from most of the organizations for the blind and deaf.

Keller worked for many causes during her life. She was an outspoken change in herself, a ardent advocate of rights of worker and an strictly oppose child labour in any form, but she is very well known for her commitment to improving the quality of life for people who are blind and deafblind. As a student at Perkins, she initiated and ran fundraising campaigns to establish a Perkins kindergarten for the blind and to pay for the education of Tommy Stringer, a poor boy with deaf blindness whom she met.

As a grown woman, she lobbied for programs for the prevention of problems related to eyes, laws for the education, protection and awareness of the blind and deafblind, as well as programs by the state to help people with full awareness and to deal with persons with disabilities with job training and placement.

In a nutshell, we cannot define her achievements and struggles any more than that after all she was the one who has experience all that. But we can say that her story is not an ordinary one and everybody should think thousand times before giving up anything they have taken up to achieve or to succeed. Hellen Keller’s life inspires the whole world to perform remarkably in every field and not to leave anything which they have determined to do. They should do it by listening to their conscious after all these struggles forces us to do move forward in life. They are the reason behind our success.

Before her education and her developed conscious she was not at all aware about the racial discrimination present but after gaining knowledge about the same she was distanced from the southern identity and made her own distinct thoughts and ideas. She became considerate and finally able to make a difference. In this assessment, I am assessing the cultural and racial things which were prevailing at that time. The greatest reason behind her education was her willingness and her eagerness to learn something in life. A new world of excitement and adventure opened up before her eyes. She made her own new educated world full of opportunities and possibilities. She had distanced herself from all those hypocritic practices happening all around. She is a live example that everything can be achieved and nothing is impossible because impossible itself says I’m possible. Earlier, she imagined her life a total hell with no purpose but later rays of hope filled her life with brightness. In any way, it cannot be denied that she went through a lot of difficulties.

Shas wrote a lot of books including for her teacher. The movie “The Miracle Worker” truly depicts her struggles, achievements and the golden period or the life changing experience she went through. She gained fame back in her time as she inspired a lot of people with the same disability who had never ever think recovery from their state. The whole world, even today has proud of what Hellen Keller has done and she will be remembered for ages to come. According to my personal experience, the autobiography of Hellen Keller is full of inspiration derived from her struggles, which played the role of a push to force someone to go further. What I have derived from this piece of work is that life for people with these disabilities is not as easy as it is for us. They have somewhere down the lane disturbed peace of mind. Despite these conditions, such a brave behaviour which was shown by her is very much inspiring and undeniable.

CONCLUSION

The Story of My Life shows, Helen Keller’s life is neither a miracle nor a joke. it's an incredible accomplishment. it's destined to be jailed darkly and isolation for the remainder of her life, Helen Keller engineered upon the sensible work of her teacher, educator, to become Associate in Nursing inter-nationally recognized and revered figure. In 1908 Helen Keller printed “The World I Live In”, Associate in Nursing account of however she skilled the globe through bit, style and scent. In magazine articles she advocated for enhanced opportunities for the blind and for up strategies of reducing childhood vision defect. In 1909, Helen Keller joined the Socialist Party of Massachusetts and supported several progressive era causes, as well as contraception, labor unions and therefore the right of girls to vote. In 1924, her quality somewhat recovered, Helen Keller began operating as an educator fund-raiser for the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB).

Helen was desolate once her companion educator died in 1936. once the Second war she toured quite thirty countries, continued her support for the blind. In 1955, she printed the chronicle of educator “Teacher”, and in 1957 “The Open door”, a group of essays. In 1964 she was awarded the Presidential palm of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by President On 1st June, 1968, she died at her zero in esoteric Ridge, Connecticut.

In the second a part of the book, we are able to scan the letters written by Helen Keller to her beloved ones throughout 1887-1901. It absolutely was quite fascinating and informative with surprise and curiosity. Through these letters, she opened her mind, saw, felt and touched the worlds of wonders. they're exercises that have trained her to put in writing. The book “Story of My Life” may be a story of spirit and determination and a piece of sacred literature.

Helen concludes her novel, ‘The Story of My Life’ by thanking people who helped, inspired, motivated, and touched her heart to carry on her fight against her disabilities. “She specially thanked Bishop Brooks, who revealed to her the wonderful mysteries of spiritual world of God; she learnt from him the fatherhood of God and immense faith in His fatherly love for all humankind.”[footnoteRef:9] [9: https://brainly.in/]

She in her books offers long and long description in order that it's straightforward for the folks to know. within the conclusion of her story of My Life tells that form of those that have everything in their life however they do not appreciate it. within the last chapter she thanks her friends and to all or any those that have brought amendment or created any form of totally different in her life. As she aforementioned her friends created the story of my life. Even the Helen Keller was awake to the things that her life may be utterly totally different however it influences principally positive those that enclosed her.

The ending lines of her novel beautifully express her thankfulness and appreciation of all the people and friends that encouraged and supported her. She writes: ‘Thus it is that my friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges, and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadow cast by my deprivation.’[footnoteRef:10] [10: Hellen Keller, The story of my life]

The National Family Association for Deaf-Blind (NFADB) works with families UN agency have a honey UN agency is deaf and blind. They try to make sure these people have constant opportunities as everybody else. they're large proponents of education, support and connecting families to others like them supported their desires and interests. They conjointly advise professionals and supply coaching for people who can work with deaf-blind people.

The Hellen Keller Services (HKS), which has the author National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths & Adults (HKNC) and also the author Services for the Blind (HKSB), strives to alter deaf-blind, blind and people UN agency could have combined hearing and vision loss to “live, work and thrive within the communities of their selection.”