Helen Keller is one of the most inspirational people in American history. She had to overcome physical disabilities and many other obstacles to live the life that she did. Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her parents, Arthur Keller and Kate Adams, both served for the Confederates in the Civil War (Thompson, 2003). Like most parents, they were ecstatic when Keller was born. At 18 months old, she was a happy, healthy baby already learning to say her first few words. However, one morning, she woke up with an extremely high fever and had to go to the hospital. The doctor told her parents she had a serious illness know as “acute congestion of the stomach and brain.” This illness caused her to lose her sight and hearing for the rest of her life (Wilkie, 1969). She was unable to communicate with anyone and was shut off from the entire world.
For years, Keller would just hang on to her mother’s skirt to get around and feel of people’s hands to try to find out what they were doing. She learned to do quite a few things this way including milk a cow and knead the dough bread. She learned to recognize people by feeling their face and clothes. By the age of six, Keller had made up 60 different signs to communicate with her family (Keller, 1988). She was a bright child, but she started getting frustrated and angry that she could not talk and began throwing temper tantrums. The family knew they had to do something to help the child, so they began looking for a teacher.
In March of 1886, 21 year old Anne Sullivan arrived at the Keller’s house; she immediately began teaching Keller how to communicate by spelling letters into her hand. A month after Sullivan arrived, Keller had a big breakthrough in c...
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...to the National Statuary Hall Collection (Wilkie, 1992). Keller has even had multiple films made of her life story.
Keller was an author, lecturer, political activist, and an individual that many Americans will never forget. She conquered multiple obstacles and rose above her disabilities to gain international fame. Her dedication allowed her to help other disabled people live fuller lives. The struggles she had to overcome prove to people that if they put their mind to it, they can accomplish anything.
Works Cited
Forrest, Ellen. Helen Keller. Tucson: Learning Page, 2005. Print.
Keller, Helen. The Story of My Life. New York: Bantam Dell, 1988.
Thompson, Gare, and Nancy Harrison. Who Was Helen Keller? New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 2003. Print.
Wilkie, Katharine E. Helen Keller: From Tragedy to Triumph. New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1969.
Alice Cogswell - The Beginning of American Deaf Education - Start ASL. (n.d.). Retrieved September 19, 2016, from https://www.start-american-sign-language.com/alice-cogswell_html
Helen Keller was one of the most successful people in the world. She helped in so many ways to change many people's lives. She was a very humble person despite her successes. I want to tell you about a story I read which touched me and shows what a special person Helen Keller was.
In an Article titled The Radical Dissent of Helen Keller published July 12 of 2012 Peter Dreier walks through his own views on the life, and the greatness of the conspicuous Helen Keller. He shows this in her early life, when she lets her voice be heard, and
One of the things I found to be the most astounding about Helen Keller was how many organizations she had a hand in founding. To start, her own organization, Helen Keller International, was founded by Keller and George Kessler in 1915. This organization was focused on Keller's yearning to help others with vision problems, as well as other health issues. (Keller, My Later Life 123)Scarlet fever is now thought to be the culprit that took the young girl's sight and hearing at only 19 months of age (Keller, The Story of My Life 16). In her later years, Keller became a strong political activist, an author, and a lecturer. After overcoming her own impairment, she sought to help others with similar disabilities, concocting speeches and presentations to aid them in their own travels.
Thomas Gallaudet was a young healthy man. He had family In Connecticut and in 1814, he decided to go visit them and noticed that his younger siblings where leaving a girl out. He decided to go see why, he found that this young girl, Alice Cogswell was deaf. Him not knowing sign language tried to communicate with her by writing in the dirt. He was wearing a hat and so he decided to point to his hat and write H-A-T. She understood, which the inspired him to teach her more. Alice’s father, Mason Cogswell who was a doctor, paid for Gallaudet to travel to europe. Europe was one of the few places where the idea of a school for deaf children had be established.
The day was sunny and Keller had been waiting on the porch for something she did not know was coming. Keller’s teacher had approached her, and she began teaching her things such as spelling and associating the words with the object that was its name. This made Keller feel as if she were on top of the world. She even states, “When I finally succeeded in making the letters correctly, I was flushed with childish pleasure and pride.”, which depicts her feelings for that moment and how it was inspiring and life-changing for her. Although this feeling was one of a kind, it would not stop there.
Mother Teresa was one of the most renowned humanitarians of her time. She dedicated her life to other people never to herself. She had many missions throughout her lifetime and was well known throughout the world. Mother Teresa was a kind-hearted woman whose quest was to make this world a better place.
Keller's story is also a member of the genre of disability autobiographies in which the writing of one's life story takes on the characteristics of what the philosopher J.L. Austin called "performative" utterances: The primary function of The Story of My Life, in this sense, is to let readers know that its author is capable of telling the story of her life. The point is hardly a trivial one. Helen Keller was dogged nearly all her life by the charge that she was little more than a ventriloquist's dummy--a mouthpiece for Anne Sullivan, or, later, for the original editor of The Story of My Life, the socialist literary critic John Macy, who married Sullivan in 1905. And even for those who know better than to see Helen Keller as disability's Charlie McCarthy, her education and her astonishing facility with languages nevertheless raise troubling and fascinating questions about subjectivity, individuality and language. Roger Shattuck and Dorothy Herrmann's new edition of The Story of My Life--supplemented as it is with Anne Sullivan's narrative, John Macy's accounts of the book and of Keller's life, Keller's letters and Shattuck's afterword--not only restores Keller's original text but highlights questions about originality and texts--questions that defined Keller's relation to language from the age of 12, when she published a story titled "The Frost King."
Both of Philip’s parents attended oral schools. Her father later learned signed through his friends who were active signers. Her mother learned sign language when she met her father at age 18. By the time Marie was born, her mother, age 22, did not sign fluently. When Marie was old enough to go to school her parents endeavored to send her to Clarke School for the Deaf, a very famous oral school. Here she was rejected because she knew how to sign.
Helen Keller, against all odds, became a mouthpiece for many causes in the early to mid-twentieth century. She advocated for causes such as building institutions for the blind, schools for the deaf, women’s suffrage and pacifism. When America was in the most desperate of times, her voice stood out. Helen Keller spoke at Carnegie Hall in New York raising her voice in protest of America’s decision to join the World War. The purpose of this paper will analyze the devices and methods Keller used in her speech to create a good ethos, pathos, and logos.
On June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama an inspirational figure was born. Her name was Helen Keller. Helen was born as a normal and healthy baby with perfect hearing and sight. She had developed fine and started to speak when only at the young age of six months old, and starting walking at the age of one. In 1882 Keller got a disease known as “brain fever” by the family doctor that made her have a severe high temperature and fever. One night when the dinner bell was rang Helen didn’t come downstairs, and she did not react to a waving hand in her face. Keller had lost both sight and hearing at only 19 months old. At the age of six Helen had met Anne Sullivan, which would become her tutor. Anne taught Keller the alphabet and opened up a new world
Fast forward to the year 1813 in Hartford, Connecticut; a young man by the name of Thomas Gallaudet notices a young deaf girl, Alice Cogswell, having difficulty communicating with her siblings during outdoor play. Sympathetic to her disability, he takes the initiative to try to communicate with her by writing a word in the dirt with a stick, then pointing to the object that correlated to the written word. After patient encouragement the words were soon understood by the young girl, and “In that one afternoon, Gallaudet was convinced that she had the capability to learn just like the hearing kids” (33).
“It would have been difficult to find a happier child than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of that eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time longed for a new day to come. I had now the key to all language, and I was eager to learn to use it” (Keller 146). The ability to actually comprehend words and associate those words to thoughts and feelings rejuvenated her. Keller was reborn that day, with a new ‘vision’ and a new direction. What started that day, culminated into Keller becoming the first deaf person to earn a bachelors degree. She learnt to speak and ‘hear’ by following the movements of people’s lips. Keller was extremely hardworking and she personified willpower and diligence by patiently untangling the taboos of society to prove her critics wrong.
Helens mom and dad noticed that she needed a little special help, so they decided it would be best to contact the Perkins Institute for the blind in Boston. The director told them about Anne Sullivan. She had also been blind, but the doctor saved her eyesight in surgery. Anne arrived on March 3, 1887 and she immediately began to work with Helen.
The next 6 years of Helen’s life were spend in tantrums, darkness and all around loneliness. “I got used to the silence and darkness that surrounded me and forgot it had ever been different, until she came- my teacher” (Keller 1902 Pg. 8). She had many fits, and refused any instruction. Her family was very poor, and could afford very little. The “teacher” as Helen called her; was Anne Sullivan who had contracted trachoma as a child and was as well legally blind. Annie was said to have saved Helen. Within 6 months of teaching from Sullivan Keller quickly advanced. She became well known to reading and writing in Braille, as well as writing in a manual alphabet.