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The Story of My Life

by Helen Keller

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Discussion Topic

Helen Keller's struggles and hardships

Summary:

Helen Keller faced numerous struggles and hardships, including losing her sight and hearing at 19 months old due to an illness. Despite these challenges, she learned to communicate through the help of her teacher, Anne Sullivan. Keller's perseverance and determination enabled her to become an influential author, activist, and lecturer, advocating for people with disabilities.

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What struggles did Helen Keller face?

The primary struggle Helen Keller faces is her multiple disabilities. At a very young age illness left her blind and deaf. This threw her into a limited realm where it became difficult for her to communicate with anyone, except in the simplest way. As she got older and her brain developed, the lack of communication and stimulus (despite her loving parents) left her increasingly frustrated and angry. Her frequent tantrums led her parents to seek help. This, in turn, led them to hire Anne Sullivan to be Helen's teacher. Sullivan, who had been trained in working with blind and deaf children, was able to communicate with Helen through manual writing, which was writing in her hand.

Helen refers to the arrival of Miss Sullivan and the way Miss Sullivan became her bridge to rest of the world as a miracle akin to God parting the Red Sea so that the Israelites could escape bondage in Egypt. Once Helen could communicate with another human being on a more sophisticated level, and once she learned to read, the world opened up joyfully for her.

Keller did, however, face more challenges. This included a plagiarism charge that turned some supporters against her and was a very painful blow to her. Another challenge was getting a college degree from Radcliffe at a time when universities had no accommodations for handicapped students. Without Miss Sullivan to translate lectures in her hand and read and translate all the books she could not get in Braille, Keller would have been lost.

For all her struggles, Keller conveys a remarkably upbeat spirit in her memoir. She suffered a huge blow at an early age, but she focused on all the gifts that she could have in life, not on what she was denied.

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Comment on the struggles and hardships in Helen Keller's life.

Rendered blind and deaf from an illness during her infancy, Helen Keller had to overcome many obstacles on her journey to become an author, activist, and advocate for the disabled. One might argue that two of the most important obstacles she first had to overcome were her own emotions and her family’s reaction to her disabilities.

Since she was only about a year old when disease robbed her of two of her senses, Helen could not communicate the way a normal infant does. Her lack of hearing, which made it impossible for her to learn to speak, caused her a great deal of anger and frustration. Having no other way to make her needs known, Helen resorted to acting out at home. Although her parents loved her, they also found it difficult to communicate effectively with her and as such, were reluctant to discipline her. Their decision to overlook her frequent outbursts out of pity only made matters worse. Through Anne Sullivan’s intervention, Helen’s family was persuaded to treat her differently, and then Helen was eventually able to cultivate the discipline she needed to begin the long process of learning to read, write, and eventually, speak.

Helen also had to overcome the pervasive public attitude towards people with disabilities. Remember, she was born in 1880, during a time when people with mental or physical defects were frequently institutionalized. Few schools existed exclusively for the blind and deaf at this time. Viewed as incapable of being educated or trained in any vocation, many with disabilities were simply locked away in asylums and received no rehabilitative treatment. Helen helped change that view by receiving an education and eventually earning a degree from Radcliffe.

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