I must have seen something about Helen Keller on TV when I was a child. I do not exactly remember what it was and when her name recently came into my mind I could not remember what the story was. I just knew that she had an unusual handicap. Wikipedia confirmed my vague memory that she was deaf and blind. I saw that her autobiography is available online and I started to read it. I got hooked and having been reading a bit each evening I have now finished it. Actually the text is not just the autobiography itself but also has other parts such as some of her letters and text by her teacher Anne Sullivan.
Helen Keller, born in 1880, was left deaf and blind by an illness (it does not seem to be clear what, perhaps meningitis or scarlet fever) at the age of 19 months. Being cut off to such an extent from communication she lost some of the abilities she had already acquired as a small child, although she did invent her own personal sign language. The development was only turned around by the arrival her teacher in 1887. Anne Sullivan was not happy with the way in which people exaggerated when writing about the achievements of Helen and herself. She rightly remarked that what Helen did did not require extra embroidery – the plain truth was remarkable enough. It was claimed that she (Anne) had become Helen’s teacher as a selfless act. She writes that in fact she did so because she needed the money. She had herself been blind for some time before regaining her sight. On the other hand what she did for her pupil was in the end very remarkable. The first route of communication for Helen was through her teacher spelling into her hand. Later on Helen learned to type and read Braille, to write on paper (although in the latter form she could not read what she had written) and to speak (in several languages). She got a college degree despite the special difficulties involved. For instance in mathematics, which was not her favourite subject, there were difficulties for her to be able to understand the examination questions which were presented in a special form of Braille which she was not very familiar with.
I think that the story of Helen Keller can be an inspiration for the majority of us, those who do not have to struggle with the immense difficulties she was confronted with. If we compare then we may complain less of our own problems. Of course she did have one or two advantages. Her family must have been quite well off so as to pay for personal tuition so that she was freed from certain practical difficulties. She had great intellectual gifts which could develop vigorously once a sufficiently good channel of communication to the outside world (and, very importantly, to the world of books) had been established. The prose in her autobiography is of high quality. When she is describing some experience she often describes it as if she had seen and heard everything. This makes a strange impression when you realize that this had to be reconstructed from things her teacher had communicated to her, direct sensations such as smells and vibrations and memories from things she remembered from books. She seems to have had a remarkable talent for integrating all this information. I can only suppose that this integration was done not just for her writing but to create parts of her day to day experience.
The book was published in 1903 and so only contains information about Helen Keller’s life until about the turn of the century. She lived until 1968, was later a prominent public figure and wrote many books. Perhaps in the future accounts of her later life will cross my path.
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